Mood for Thought

It was Friday the 13th and in lieu of getting spooked, I got inked.

The stress was high that afternoon. I was working as a Photo Agent, and waiting to sign off on a big assignment. It would be hours till I’d have the answer.

My tattoo laden, young spirited assistant, Kate offered me the best solution to the waiting game, “You’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for awhile now…..” This was true. I wanted to get good ol' fashioned anchor tattoo on my upper, right arm. Ahoy matte. “and a few tattoo shops in the city offer $13.00 tattoos on Friday the 13th”.

Elated, I called my brother who was also bragging about getting his first tattoo of Joan of Arc. A tall, slender, toned, shaven-headed, handsome, artsy guy, it’d be fitting that he’s already have one, or some. I think he’s scared, but he says it’s become too typical and contradiction to his independent ways.

But Kate stopped me in my tracks and informed me we could only choose from the shop’s flash, a set of 8-12 art-ready tattoos that are posted that day.
It was highly unlikely that they’d have Joan of Arc, but more likely that they had an anchor.

She warned me of the daunting long lines and being my own boss I left the office, and convinced my brother to come just for moral support in hopes that he’d change his mind.

On the subway ride over I wondered what type of limited art I could comfortably settle on: a ladybug, a heart, a unicorn.

The line wasn’t that bad but it was only mid afternoon. I saw the flash and my heat sank: a skeleton with top hat, a skeleton with a deck of cards, an ice cream cone, a broken heart, and the number thirteen worked into all of them. I turned to my brother and said, “forget it, they’re so bad they couldn’t even be ironic.”
He looked himself out of curiosity then said, “what are you talking about Bridget, there is an anchor.”

How could I have overlooked this?
There it was at the bottom left hand corner, an adorable navy blue and red anchor, but included that damn number thirteen.

I placed my name on the waiting list, handed over $20.00 ($13 plus, the lucky, mandatory $7.00 tip) scored myself a ‘to go’ margarita in a Styrofoam cup from a local restaurant and discussed the location of the tat with Jason.

Convinced that I could talk the artist into excluding the thirteen.I just knew I’d be able to. Sometimes I just knew when I wanted something to happen it just would, like I could will things to happen.

The last time this happened was back in art school when I was so broke and working three jobs, having three roommates that our school offered a semester in Florence, Italy. It was irrational to assume that I could enroll when I couldn’t afford food, let alone an international flight and boarding abroad. But, I knew I was going. The next day a friend at school bought me a ticket on her husband’s miles (first class) and offered to cover the boarding.

It was there in Florence that I got my very first tattoo at a late age of 27. I always wanted a sunflower tattoo and where better to get one than in the land of sunflowers; Tuscany.

It was hot, I was stressed, it was a bad day, and I made the great mistake of getting inked at the only tattoo parlor in the entirety of Florence in 1998. The artist who appeared to be on a heroin stupor carved the misshaped sunflower, sans the standard black border, into the inside my left foot area. She did it with one hand, cigarette in mouth using brown dried up ink. The pain was excruciating. It was the worst tattoo ever. Thirteen years later people still comment on my ‘henna’ tattoo.

It goes to show how I don’t put much thought or planning into getting inked, it is more spontaneous.

This would be my second.

Slurping down my margarita with anticipation, my brother and I discussed location. He warned me that my upper forearm was prime real estate, looking down at my left foot insinuating that I wouldn’t want to advertise a mishap tat.

I defaulted to the outside of my lower right calf, above my ankle. After only an hour, they called my name and I got the guy artist that I was hoping for. I sat down told him ‘the anchor please’. He said, “good choice.”
Using my feminine whiles, I asked him to exclude the ‘13’ as it was a great piece of art on it’s own. Annoyed, yet flattered he replied, “I designed this, and that’s not the deal.” I won’t say either way if he obliged, but I walked out a happily buzzed girl with adrenaline sparking through my veins.

My brother looked down at my ankle and said, “Perhaps this signifies that you are finally grounded, anchored if you will.”