OutLoud

by Sally Sheklow

SKIN TEST

Yow! Sally Gets Her First Tattoo

The tattoo shop opened early for me so I could catch my mid-morning flight back to the mainland. What could commemorate a dyke’s five-week Hawaiian adventure more unforgettably than multiple excruciating skin punctures? The proprietor, a living tattoo catalogue himself, scuffed across the paint-splattered floor in orange flip-flops. He set out little inkpots and plugged in his tattoo gun. Fiery skulls and bloody-fanged serpents glared from the wall. I was still tender from a recent breakup and needed to get away, assert my independence, do something for myself by myself.

With student-loan debt up to my highly educated eyeballs, my travel budget limited me to camping on the beach and foraging local produce. A tattoo would be my one splurge. I stood at the tattoo shop counter and leafed through colored drawings in a plastic notebook, no girlfriend to help me choose. I wasn’t used to making decisions on my own. The needle was buzzing.

My first day on the Big Island, a wave caught my backpack and soaked everything. My copy of Michener’s Hawaii drenched and swollen—a sensation I longed to feel again someday—made clear this trip would be what I made it. I laid the soggy book out on the picnic table in Spencer Beach State Park, where I camped for $2 a night. The next day I sat and read the crisp, sun-dried pages while I ate fresh strawberry papaya. Sweet thick juice flooded my mouth and dribbled down my chin. Who needed a girlfriend?

One hot night, I lay awake in my open tent, listening to the surf and wishing for a breeze. I felt a faint tickle cross my midriff and swatted at what I took for a mosquito. Something hard crunched under my palm. I flicked whatever it was off me. It thudded against the nylon wall. In the moonlight a cockroach the size of a Snickers bar waved at me with long antennae and possibly its middle finger. I clutched my sheet around me. The injured orthopteran bumbled away.

Despite bugs and book dousing, I loved my Polynesian journey. Can life get any better than body surfing nude in warm turquoise swells so clear you can see your shadow on the sand 30 feet below? Happy, free, relaxed, independent. I wanted to capture that feeling forever.

I spent hours on the beach planning my tattoo. Could I go through with it? Was I tough enough? Would it go on my arm? Chest? Calf? I poked myself with seashell bits to find the spot that hurt the least. My shoulder had the highest pain threshold. That is where I’d permanently wear my symbol of bliss.

But bliss was not the feeling in Honolulu that last morning. Alone in a bustling city, I searched for the tattoo parlor’s address. The seedy neighborhood smelled of rotting garbage and stale urine—a scent nothing like the fragrant frangipani described in the travel brochure. This was Oahu’s non-tourist side.

When I’d called, the guy told me not to come in drunk or stoned, so I had to change that plan. Too many drunken sailors back the next day, pissed off and full of regret. Would I be?

By the time I found the scruffy storefront, my resolve was solid. Clearheaded and resolute, I knew what I was doing. I would have my Hawaiian memories forever.

I picked a drawing of a big, red hibiscus, Hawaii’s state flower. The guy sketched it onto my shoulder and handed me a mirror. The veined petals looked erotically labial. Perfect. I sat backwards in the wooden chair, shoulder exposed. This was it, no chickening out. That moment was loaded with philosophy. I was fine alone. I could make my own decisions. I could face fear and endure anything.

I stared at those orange flip-flops, and the tattoo artist went to work. I immediately noticed how much the sensation of a rapidly plunging needle does not resemble a seashell poke. I focused on calming my screaming pain center. I breathed. I pictured myself doing tai chi on the beach. I threw up.

The radio crackled out oldies. You Don’t Own Me. Runaway. Born Free. This tattoo was scheduled to take half an hour—10 three-minute songs, give or take a couple of Gold Bond Medicated Foot Powder commercials.

Finally it was over. Flip-flop man smeared my shoulder with tattoo-healing goop. He instructed me not to lift the bandage for 24 hours, but in the airplane lavatory somewhere over the Pacific, I did sneak a peek.

I never returned to Hawaii—never felt the need to. I love my tattoo. But it doesn’t quite say it all. To anyone else it’s just a flower. Compared to the extreme designs some people have, it doesn’t convey toughness at all. Maybe I should have picked a cockroach.

Sally Sheklow keeps away from bugs in Eugene, Oregon, where she teaches writing and performs with WYMPROV!, the award-winning all-lesbian improv comedy troupe.

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