Tattoos at any age

Taking a cue from Abigail to FTS about tattoos over 40

The best thing I read all week was 80-year-old Abigail Thomas’s essay “It Stands for F*ck This Shit” in LitHub about getting an FTS tattoo. Thomas already had a tattoo of a salamander, which she got when she turned 60. She went to get her salamander with a friend, who also didn’t yet have a tattoo, and wondered firstly, “Do you think it will hurt as much as having a baby?” and then secondly, “Do you think it will hurt as much as a really bad farming accident?”

I can’t say anything to whether tattoos hurt as much as or more than a farming accident, as I’ve never been in one, but I do have some experience with childbirth. Even though they don’t give you epidurals for tattoos, I’d still rather get a tattoo than birth a baby any day, which is probably why I have four tattoos and only one kid.

The whole essay is so lovely, paying attention to the most minute details—the other people in the shop, the other tattoos she sees, the conversations she overhears, like the woman who is concerned if a tattoo will affect her future chances at winning the presidency.

This essay reminded me that tattoos and tattoo shops are magical. They allow people to manifest their personality, their history, their desires onto their skin. There are still at least a half dozen tattoos I wish to etch into my skin, but as I near 40, I wonder if that’s something I should even be considering. If I were to ask Abigail, she’d tell me to “fuck that shit,” that tattoos are for any age, and I know she’d be right.

I don’t watch and I barely feel a thing and it is over in no time. I wonder why she is so quiet. It turns out she is upset because the ink of the F is blurred, and she worries it might not disappear. “Your skin is so thin,” she explains, apologizing, “Please come back in a week if it doesn’t look right by then.” I tell her don’t mind, and give her a big tip. I love it. The imperfection is perfect. Because FTS.

- Abigail Thomas

The last tattoo I got, my Marvel Movie tattoo, which is five years old now. I’m due for another.

Two years ago, I wrote an essay about all four of my tattoos, which was published in the lit mag ang(st). At the time, I was still a bit embarrassed with the fact that I had gotten a tattoo from something in a Marvel movie, but I worked it out writing this essay.

My pointer finger presses my pin number onto the keypad of the card reader. As my ring finger stretches out to the side, the dark lines of a tattoo are obvious. Under the knuckle: a circle, a vertical line cutting it in half and some horizontal lines giving it wings.

“Oh, cool tattoo,” the barista says.

I look up from the screen. “Thanks.”

“What is that, like, a Chinese symbol or something?”

“No,” I say, and pause, unsure what to say next. People usually ask what it means, and I can easily give an uncomplicated summary (“It’s a symbol for courage,” for example, although that’s not really what it is), but they never try to place its origin. “It’s kind of…made-up Nordic.”

He looks at me blankly.

“Did you see the third Thor movie?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s the symbol of the Valkyrie.”

More blank stares.

I move to the end of the counter, and he turns around to start frothing the milk.

I’m not sure what warranted the blank stare. Did he not remember the movie? Did he not understand what I told him? Or did he understand but silently judged me for etching a symbol from a Marvel movie on my finger, embedded in my skin forevermore?              

I’m reminded of when my brother was in high school and his girlfriend got a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on her ankle. I had no tattoos myself yet, and I silently judged her. That Mickey Mouse is going to be there when she’s 80 years old, I thought. She’ll regret it for sure.

I never asked her about that tattoo. I don’t know what significance it held for her.

At least it made sense for a 16-year-old girl to get a stupid tattoo. I was 34. What excuse did I have?

There’s more essay here (clink the link above and download the whole issue) which explains how my other tattoos are not really what they seem, just as this Marvel movie tattoo wasn’t what IT seemed. What it really symbolized for me was a reminder of my ovarian cancer diagnosis and how life is short.

My husband and I watch Thor: Ragnarok one night. It had been a rough week for both of us and we needed some laughs. In the movie, Scrapper 142 orders a drink at the bar, and as she takes a sip from a bottle, Thor notices the tattoo on her inner wrist: circle, a vertical line cutting it in half and some horizontal lines giving it wings.

“My God, you're a Valkyrie!” he declares. And she looks at him with disdain; Valkyries were honorable, self-sacrificing warriors, but Scrapper 142 is a self-loathing deserter. I feel the same when people call me a cancer survivor: a fraud. I might be a cancer survivor, but I haven’t sickened myself with chemo and radiation, haven’t had to lose my hair and my appetite, haven’t had to fight for my life every day. My experience with cancer lasted a week, and then it was done.

But that doesn’t change what I am. And eventually, Scrapper 142 stops denying who she is. She dons the armor of a Valkyrie and helps Thor and his people defeat the goddess of death.

And I realize, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do, defeat death? And I did this one time.

That’s a cool-looking tattoo, I thought to myself. Maybe that should be my next tattoo.

Then I thought again. I’m a grown-ass woman. I cannot get a tattoo from a Marvel movie.

Why couldn’t I?

Since my diagnosis, I found I cared less and less of what people thought of me. I got lucky this round. Life is short, but mine could have been significantly shorter. I should do what I want.

Writing this essay helped me own it. Helped me say FTS. I’m sure there will be another tattoo in the near future. And that probably means there will be another essay. Such is the writer’s life, amiright?

Even though it barely got above 40 degrees last weekend, the tulips are also saying FTS and blooming anyhow.

Speaking of the writer’s life, I was out for a walk last week on a rare decent day, and I had a *great idea* for an essay about Ted Lasso. It’s obvious the show is giving the Nate character a redemption arc, and I wondered if he deserved it. Of course, when I got back, I found quite a few essays already on the internet about Nate’s redemption arc, and realizing I had nothing new to say, decided to scrap the idea. I’m not very good at writing “timely” essays; my brain doesn’t work that fast, and I don’t normally watch things as soon as they come out. Silver lining, though, was that I found this excellent Atlantic article written by Megan Garber which sure, talks about whether Nate deserves our sympathy, but also explains the mastery behind writing complex characters in television shows. A great resource for aspiring screenwriters (like me).

Nate, after all, is someone who has been marginalized, within his team and beyond it. He is working class; he is a man of color; he is physically unimposing. These things have made life harder for him in ways that are indictments not of Nate, but of the society that has failed to see him. He is resentful, and he has a right to be. No amount of success will give him what Ted can take for granted: the ability to walk around with a perennial smile, confident that the world will smile back.

- Megan Garber

That same rare nice day when I got to take a walk, our chicks got a brief taste of the outside.

I’m currently working on my FIRST EVER novel, and I was researching successful women novelists, as I don’t know anything about being a successful woman novelist (yet!) and because there’s one in my story, and I stumbled upon this NYT article about Emily Henry, who is the only romance novelist I’ll actually read, and I love what she said on the difficulty of writing but the importance of sticking with it.

“Books are puzzles,” Henry reminded a writer who complained of feeling “majorly” stalled. “Sometimes the pieces snap in in the wrong order but keep walking past it every so often and eventually you’ll see what you need to do!”

- Emily Henry

I had to sit through a 2.5-hr work meeting this week but they were kind enough to give us pictures and colored pencils to pass the time and I’d say I got some pretty good work done.

What I’m Watching:

We saw Ghosted this week on Apple+ with Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, and while it isn’t getting the best of reviews, I will say that I found it cute and even quite clever in parts. I don’t regret losing those two hours of my life, which is saying a lot.

What I’m Reading:

I read Rebecca Serle’s One Italian Summer this week, which again, was quite clever, and even though I’ve never been to Positano, Serle’s descriptions transported me straight back to Italy…and made me want to go again!

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