Booze and Tattoo Blues

When I was fourteen, I tried to be a little bit punk. When I was seventeen, I wore costumes instead of clothes. When I was eighteen, I donned kaftans and wooden beads and had part shares in a Kombie van. I’ve lost all of these things now, but there’s one, special thing that I’ve kept since I was sixteen years old and wear every single day.

My name is Juliet Buckler, and I have a lower back tribal tattoo.

I groan and curse my liberal parents every time I catch a glimpse of it in the mirror. What in God’s name were they thinking when they signed the permission form? The only thing that consoles me is the possibility that I could have chosen something even worse, like a Playboy bunny on my thigh, or dolphins jumping over my belly-button.

One would think that this moment of insanity would have left me with at least a very permanent reminder: that I should think before I act. Trouble is, it’s on my back, so I often forget about it.

Two years ago I was working in a call centre in Glasgow with my friend Grace. We were selling car insurance, were badly paid, and were working twelve-hour shifts. Worse still was the presence of Claire, the girl who sat between us. Claire and her fucking yo-yo. Our jaws would clench as it unraveled, our teeth grinding as once, twice, three hundred times a day it would come to a standstill on the ground. I can still vividly remember her slowly winding it back up, oblivious to the idea that perhaps she wasn’t doing it right.

The stress caused by Claire and her yo-yo made us hit the bottle pretty hard. At lunchtime in phone booths, on toilet breaks, and after work; vodka was the only thing that kept us from grabbing the yo-yo from her hands and putting it through the paper shredder.

Vodka does not inspire good decision making. It was a great help in my forgetting my little tribal mistake as we set off to the tattoo parlour one day after work. Thank God the tattooist noticed our slurred speech and sent us home. This became my first near miss.

Three or four months later I found myself sitting outside a tattoo parlour once again. We had finally saved enough money to get out of Glasgow and were travelling, like typical New Zealanders, in a Volkswagen Morrison. April, a girl always quick to give everything a catchy nickname, named it ‘Van Morrison Weird Van’. Those words were to be the tattoo.

Although I spoke against the idea with absolute conviction, I was worried at one point that April was going to convince me to get it. She’s a very persuasive girl, and decided that there would be no point in having it done unless all six of us did. A reluctant flash of my tribal tragedy eventually convinced her that it was a terrible idea. This was my second near miss.

Since then I’ve taken particular notice of other people’s tattoos. A good tattoo to me shows a person as thoughtful, rational, and artistic. Bad tattoos, like mine, expose those people who are impulsive, irrational, and can’t always rely on their own taste.

There’s Ben, who decided to tattoo his wrists with the Latin words for ‘left’ and ‘right’. Now every time he flashes his left arm he exposes the word ‘sinister’ in gothic print. Hardly a friendly handshake.

Hamish must have known what he was doing when he got his tattoo. I can only hope he was making fun of bad tattoos when he tattooed his leg with a picture of an emo kid saying the words “I cut myself with Daddy’s credit card cuz he touches his secretary more than he touches me.” He’ll have some explaining to do to his grandchildren.

And what about poor Pamela Anderson? She had to get the word ‘Tommy’ changed to the word ‘Mommy’ after her first out of three divorces. Luckily she had learnt her lesson by the time she married and divorced Rick Saloman, although I can imagine one or two things that she could have done with the word ‘Rick’.

My flatmate Rachael is going to get a tattoo soon. It is going to be of a beautiful drawing she saw in a book years ago. Even I, with my tattoo-phobia, have to admit that it’s going to look lovely.

So, if the time comes when a child of mine presents to me that same permission form I handed to my mother five years ago, I’ll ask them what they want done. If it’s anything tribal, I’m afraid they’re going to have to see mummy’s lower back.