removal

tattoo
Originally uploaded by kaitlynwhat.

i got this tatto a month before my nineteenth birthday at art to the bone in sherman oaks. my friend paul came with me and held my hand. the guy giving me the tattoo almost wrote "see" instead of "sea". i could've killed him.

it really didn't hurt that bad. when it was done and i was allowed, i pulled on the paper towel covering it and on the paper towel there was my tattoo, written blood. at first it tripped me out to think about it, how permanent it was. and there were a number of time when i thought, what have you done? but after a while i forgot that it was there, and i was happy with it.

but while working at the theater a lot of customers would ask me about it, complete strangers grabbed my attempting to read it, then would get fed up and say, just read it to me. whatever meaning the words had to me quickly disappeared. when i would read it to people most would just look at me, and nod, or smile. the worst was when they would say things like, oh that is so beautiful, that is so true. it made me feel phony, because i didn't get the tattoo so strangers would read it and gape over it's profundity. i think i got it to remind me of lacy, and what we went through together. i think. that is a whole other blog though.

so after a while i decided that i wanted to get my tattoo removed. i couldn't take it anymore. so i started a fund, a tattoo removal fund. the way in which i raised money was whenever someone asked what it said, i told them i would tell them for a dollar. a lot of people thought it was very charming, and i raised $14 in one year. i realized this was going to be very slow going, too slow going, so one day when i didn't have any cash and billy, dane, and i wanted to go get hot dogs in the park i used the tattoo removal fund and i bought us all hot dogs and sunkist orange soda. it was a nice afternoon, but the tattoo removal fund was done.

after i transferred theaters from encino to santa monica customers stopped asking me about the tattoo, and i too forgot about it again. but a friend found me an agency that removed the tattoo for free if it was under your elbows. i called them and i was put on a year long waiting list. as the year went by i thought about whether or not i really wanted it gone. and usually i came up with the answer, yes. but i couldn't remember when exactly i called and i was starting to believe that they were never going to call back. but yesterday, while i was making a garden burger they called. and now, today, i have an appointment at 2:40pm, to get my tattoo removed.

i have though about this, and i don't want to get my tattoo removed because of other people. i want to get it removed for the same reasons i got it, for me. looking at it now, i don't dislike it, but i know i can remember these lyrics and they can still mean something, and they don't have to be permanently inked into my arm. i'm not getting rid of it because it was just a phrase or because when i am a mom i'll regret it (daniel actually said moms aren't supposed to have tattoos); i am getting it removed because i am different from the girl who got that tattoo, and maybe some of the differences i am not used to, or ready for, but i need to accept. the girl i am now wouldn't get a tattoo. anyway, i don't even like the handwriting it is in so here we go, so the lyrics can exist eternally on the world wide web instead of on my body:

all of us go down slow and then we rise again and just like a tide out at sea, we lower and rise again