Ink'd.

My friend Frances recently blogged her New Year Goals, one of which was to get a small tattoo. We were talking about it yesterday (over a mound of peanut butter cookies -- oops) and it got me thinking about tattoos. Again. After my Leaving Cert., I decided I wanted to get a little tattoo over the summer: I was convinced that this was what I wanted. This, like the blonde I stuck into my hair in June, was part of my post-Leaving Cert rebellion. The hair worked out, the tattoo didn't because I just couldn't decide on a design. I had plenty of ideas, of course. Just like when I was in Transition Year, and third year, and fifth year...

Tattoos and I have had a long and checkered non-history. It started off when I was fifteen, when I decided I wanted lyrics from The Killers' "All These Things That I've Done". Specifically, I remember thinking that getting "I need direction to perfection, you gotta help me out" up my arm was a good idea. In retrospect: it wasn't. While I still love The Killers with every beat of my heart, it's just not the most optimistic of things to get slapped on your arm. While the reminder to get help with things probably would have helped while I was crying over history assignments last term, in retrospect I'm glad fifteen year old me didn't have the guts to go through with it. Plus: up my forearm?! For all to see?! How about no!

Of course, I didn't stick with this idea for long. The fancies of the teenage girl never stick around, and pretty soon I had hit on a new idea: I wanted to get the lyrics of "La Vie Boheme" from RENT tattooed up my back. In case you don't know about RENT,  I wanted to post the video, but Blogger won't let me post videos, inexplicably. So here's a link.


Don't get me wrong. It's not a bad song. But for a start, my back isn't that big. The idea of getting an eight minute long musical song on my back was nonsensical. I'm five foot four, for God's sake. However, the real issue is: cringey or cringey? I can't listen to the song without wanting to curl into a ball and go to bed forever, hoping that anyone who remembers my oh-so-earnest tattoo plans will be dead by the time I get up again. Can you imagine a middle-class, Irish country girl getting ~bohemian~ lyrics tattooed on her? It's been three years and I've only just discovered who Allan Ginsberg is. I couldn't be less Bohemian if I tried. (Well, I could, but that would mean agreeing with people like Ronan Mullen and wearing bodycon, and I'm not prepared to do either of those things. They just don't suit me...) It's incredibly embarrassing to think about, but I was sweet on that idea for a good year or so. Christ. If I ever, ever mention wanting to get the word "yoghurt" on my person again, please slap me, friends.

Fast forward a year and a half to June of last year, when my longing for a tattoo reared up again. Picture it: I'm studying all day every day, mostly English. Mostly poetry. Mostly Adrienne Rich, in the vain hope that she'd come up on that pink paper in June (spoiler: she did. And I got an A1. Mwahaha.). So of course, the obvious conclusion was a nice homage to the wonderful feminist poet who I loved so dearly. I had the quote picked, the spot on my body picked, even the font had been chosen. ("The words are purposes, the words are maps" on my right hip in Courier, in case you're interested.) All that was left was to scrape some money together and head to a tattoo parlour: but I never did it. Something stopped me. Maybe it was the pain factor, maybe it was the idea of the two-year rule with tattoos...but something did. Thank god it did, because four or five months later I studied Adrienne Rich's feminist theory in college. Turns out she is something of a raging douchebag who believes motherhood is a social construct and that Trans* people are 100% not okay. Much as I adore Diving Into The Wreck (and my god, do I), the woman has too many poisonous ideas for me to tattoo her words on my body forever.

So now, I'm stuck. I desperately want a tattoo -- what Caitlin Moran calls "a marker pin on your body, to reclaim yourself, to remind you where you are: inside yourself. Somewhere." Since starting college, I've been a bit all over the place, and I want something that's really me: something that would have been ten year old Áine, is nineteen year old Áine and will be forty-five year old Áine. I don't want one for the sake of a tattoo. I want something that'll look cool and that will remind me of who I am, who I was and who I will be. Apologies for the odd, biblical sound of that last line. Maybe I just need to get very drunk and make a snap decision. Though knowing my luck I'd end up with a Bane from TDKR quote on my leg forever...