rain and rant

night rain at omiya, originally uploaded by seventeenstars.

Rain!
It's absolutely alright to be up late late late when it's RAINING!

I am a night owl (not a day owl) and I thrive in the wee hours. I like the warm-lit lamps and the rugs laying all rumpled on the wooden floors of the house, and the sound of the trains going past out there in the rainy wet fields. Every few moments I hear tottering high heels out in the leafy-strewn sidewalk and hear drunk conversations, long-legged bedraggled girls winding home from a Halloween party.

what I haven't done (and now it's two):
Make a Halloween costume
(this is inexcusable. Halloween is my FAVORITE holiday)

What I have done:
Written two long emails and watched a 20/20 special on transgendered children, piece by piece on Youtube.

Tonight I tattooed someone who was very much still a teen. I had sort of forgotten what it's like to be around them, and now I think I am different in their eyes, as in: OLD.
Being that I was a person of authority, a business person in this girl's eyes, I suddenly realized that she saw me as an adult and therefore, the enemy, even though she was the one paying for me to do this torture*/art to her. She had hired me, but she was being weird and sullen, like I was her mother forcing her to wear some shirt she did not like or something. She mumbled and had sudden bratty outbursts (that no other tattoo artist in the entire universe would have put up with) that were rude, immediately made our interaction into a overbearing parent/petulant child model, and showed quite clearly that I was someone to be rebelled against. Also, she was a squirmer.

It literally fills me with terror and dread when I have the gorgeous pearlescent virgin skin of a 1990's baby (18 yr old) stretched out before me, and I have a feeling that there is no way in hell that this tattoo is gonna go on easy, what with the twisting and random jerking and the sudden inexplicable hair-fixing that some people feel is important to do right in the middle of getting a perfect circle tattooed in the middle of your spine. As much as I love tattoos, I feel like I am desecrating something holy sometimes, especially if their MOM is there, watching you mark their moaning child and wincing. Which hers was.


I was quite close to crying and felt like I was goimg insane because I get connected to these people! I care about every client and I want every person to look in the mirror after the tattoo was finished and be overjoyed and dancing around and heady with satisfaction! When someone gives their tattoo a cursory glance and then says, "what now?" I feel dread and I can't help it. I have never had anyone tell me they didn't like something and I hope they WOULD.

My client tonight, after writhing and trembling in pain (she was a tiny elfin slip of a thing too, and looked about 14, so that didn't help. My motherly feelings were in high gear.) for 3 + hours, looked in the mirror afterwards, her face breaking into an amazing overjoyed smile and said "THANK YOU SO MUCH!!" My job is so bizarre.


(Siderant: I know this is horribly taboo put I don't think the world of body art would suffer if the tattoo age was raised to 21. The asthetic choices people make as teenagers seem have a shelf-life of about 2 years. Most people undergo an enormous shift in their early 20's, and stop thinking certain things are really important, namely astrology.
I got one tattoo before I was 21, and it was the kanji for "love". While now I would critique getting a langauge tattooed that I have no cultural ties to and can't speak (ahem), I feel like I lucked out. I see teen tattoos come in that have to do with BMX racing, or a metal band that wears clown masks, or their highschool trashy girlfriends name on their forearm, and I.....I.....I don't think it would make anyone suffer. The melodramatic kids with still get their tattoo from Mr. Sketchy in a garage or back alley. And then when they're a bit older they can come to me and I'll fix it! Ha ha.)

More rain.
I still haven't made my costume.

For Halloween: a Corpse Flower!