This Abe article on tattooed authors makes me want to get one:
The inspiration for this article is a Maine-based writer called Elizabeth Hand – the author of Generation Loss – who was interviewed by AbeBooks.com several months ago. Flick open Generation Loss and there’s her publicity shot on the dust wrapper – she’s leaning against a white wooden post with her hands in the pockets of her jeans and tattoos clearly visible on her bare arms.
And, yet, I’ve never been able to settle on anything. Also, I’m a wimp, especially when it involves the kind of pain you know is coming again and again and again. (Via the inspirational author.)
I could possibly handle the pain; the problem is that I change my mind and get bored too easily. Aside from my writing career and my spouse, there’s not much in my life I’ve stuck with more than a couple year. So it’s the permanent part that’s the issue for me. 🙂
In my very limited right ankle experience, WHERE you get the tattoo is directly related to how much pain is involved. I’m pretty sure a tattoo artist could go all over my calf for hours and it’d just feel like a paper cut, but more than a few seconds on my shin would be intolerable. Black outlines also hurt a little more, but that’s comparatively negligible.
I one of those inconstant people. When I think of my life ten years ago, it was as if that were a different person. Anything she would have gotten would drive me crazy now.
Upper arm doesn’t hurt at all; lower back and ribs really really really hurts.
I propose we usher you into the tattoo contingent during WisCon! Just something to consider. I’m sure many will be happy to enable you.
Cheers.
D
I have two with one more in the planning stages. Here’s one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabethgenco/29594040/in/set-665519/
Lower back. I can confirm that it hurt like a mofo. The triskele on my shoulder (done in late 2001 by the fabulous Anil Gupta) hurt much less, actually. It felt like an annoyance, a minor sunburn, for most of it. It didn’t start to really bother me until the very end, when Anil was adding some shading in white. “The white hurts a lot,” he said as I gritted my teeth. But even that was no big thing.
That said, ever since then I’ve maintained that one of the BEST physical sensations in the world is that splash of cool water from the tattooist’s spray bottle in the middle of a tattoo. I don’t know why that stuck with me so, but it did.
I’ll leave you with this wonderfully goofy video of an old acquaintance of mine, Mike Doughty, getting his latest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crU-07FR6bY
I was more thinking you could get tattooed IN MADISON during the convention and not actually AT the convention. That would be…unsavory.
D
No way! I’m not getting no Madison crunchy granola tattoo. 🙂
Ha ha ha. Well, I had assumed you would actually have SOMETHING in mind.
I’ll let it go, I suppose. They really don’t hurt so very much once the numbness sets in due to shock. Ha.
D
You are the worst devil’s tempting agent ever! Shock?!