How to Never Regret Anything

Ok, perhaps I'm overselling this, but it is about making long-lasting choices without tears

The most memorable tattoo I’ve ever seen was on a guy I interviewed many years ago in Boston. He was a stout, avuncular man with a shaved head as shiny as a new coin. On the back of his head, he had tattooed a life-size photorealistic image of his own face. It was an astonishing sight: You almost weren’t sure if he was coming or going, like a Janus.

At the time of that interview, I had no plans to get a tattoo or any of the body modifications I saw in the course of that story (split tongues, cartilage sculpting, filed teeth, gauged ears, what have you, no thanks). Tattooing was still transgressive back then. It signaled that you were either a sailor, a member of a motorcycle gang, a sideshow attraction, or a bit of an anarchist. They weren’t yet just decorative.

A few years later, though, I was in Canada, and went to a spa one night, and in the scrum of naked bodies I noticed that almost every single woman had a tattoo. Canadians are a lot cooler than Americans, so the fact that they had embraced something a little renegade before Americans had wasn’t that much of a surprise, but the fact that so many of the tattoos were on women was. For the first time, too, I saw tattoos that were pretty. Up until then, most tattoos looked like the cover of early Grateful Dead albums, with lots of skulls and daggers and dead roses and gravestones alongside the occasional flowery “MOM”. Now I was seeing butterflies and tiny stars and cute insects like ladybugs. What was going on??

The mainstreaming of tattoos for women can be traced to a few rock stars and models who dared to have them early on, like Sinead O'Connor and Cara Delevingne, and then it took off like a rocket. At the time I wrote that story, in 2001, the fastest growing market segment for tattoos was middle-aged women. I still didn’t want one, especially since it seemed to me that if I couldn’t tattoo my face on the back of my head anything else seemed humdrum. But I started browsing “cute tattoos” and “pretty fine-line tattoos” online, just out of curiosity. Sometimes when I was out doing errands, if I saw a tattoo parlor I’d go in to take a peek, but the featured offerings were the usual bare-chested stuff—lightning bolts, Harley Davidson logos, barbed-wire bicep wraps. Definitely not me. I also wondered if there was any image I liked enough to commit to eternally. I know you can have tattoos lasered off, but if you go into the process with the exit strategy already in place, perhaps you shouldn’t get a tattoo at all.

I started playing around with temporary tattoos, thinking they would satisfy my now-persistent yen for a real one, and I did have a blast with them. But it reminded me of when I was in elementary school and wanted long hair when my own hair was short. I thought I had fixed the problem. I bought a long red fake-hair ponytail—I seem to remember I got it from Woolworth’s or another undistinguished purveyor of ponytails—and it was as coarse as straw, but I dutifully bobby-pinned it to my head and ran around like a house on fire, proud of my swishy long locks. I wore it on special occasions. On one such occasion, I was caught up in a game of spin-the-bottle at a party, a lark that involves sticking two quaking, hyperventilating kids in a closet and making them kiss, or pretend to kiss. I was wearing my pinned-on ponytail and realized that the boy I was matched with might possibly touch my head and feel the bobby pins and perhaps even yank the ponytail off, and I was so overcome with horror that the minute I got home I ripped it off my head and stuffed it in the back of my closet, never to be worn again.

A fake tattoo didn’t expose me to quite that level of shame, but it seemed so fakey that I felt silly, especially when I got compliments on “my rad tattoo”. Around that time, I happened upon the Instagram account of a young woman tattoo artist who specialized in beautiful, delicate designs; I bookmarked it thinking that if I ever really took the leap, she was the person I wanted.

What made me finally do it? I don’t know, really. I had just finished writing The Library Book, and was full of emotion about that, and had sort of figured out what I would want if I ever got a tattoo, namely, something that looked like a bracelet but also contained the initials of my son, my husband, my mom, and my dad. I was hardly trailblazing; by this point I knew plenty of people with tattoos, and a few of my younger friends had full sleeves and multiple images all over their bodies. By contrast, I was going demure and dainty, but it still felt epic to me. I didn’t tell my husband because I knew he would try to talk me out of it. I told him I was going out to lunch (technically not a lie because I did eat some lunch en route). My friend Laurie accompanied me, saying that it was tragic to go for your first tattoo alone.

Here it is:

When I got home, my husband asked me what I’d been up to, and I showed him my arm. He said he thought it was adorable, and then asked, warily, if it was temporary. No, I said, it’s forever.

Hopping on the tattoo bandwagon this late in the game means I do not, in any way, feel badass, but I do feel a little tiny bit tough, which I like, although this is the most un-tough tattoo you’ve probably ever seen. I get compliments on it all the time, and I’m relieved to say I’ve never once thought, Damn, I wish this stupid thing weren’t there. I got one more little tattoo a year later, without really intending to. A friend was going for her first tattoo and I was her first-tattoo-escort-buddy, and she seemed like she would feel better and less nervous if I was getting one that day, too, so I did.

I think there is a potato-chip-like quality to tattoos, which is that you feel like if you’re going to have one you might as well eat the whole bag, but I have so far resisted bingeing. Only recently, as I have gotten closer to finishing my book, I have begun toying with the idea of getting one more, and this time I even know what it would be. If I just get tattoos to celebrate finishing books, I think I’m in no danger of ending up looking like the Illustrated Man. At least, not unless I really pick up my pace.

SHOW NOTES

—I keep meaning to mention here that I have a class on Skillshare about writing non-fiction—it’s one of those video classes that you do at your own pace. I’m going to brag a little and mention that I’ve had 21,000 students over the years, which is a lot of students! And no one has asked for their money back.

—I’ve queued up my next audiobook, which is Little Rot, by Akwaeke Emezi. I can’t wait to plow through the remaining chapters of Wolf Hall and start it; it sounds fabulous. Let me know if you’ve read it and what you thought of it…

—Have I raved about Hannoh Wessel yet? If I have, bear with me while I rave again. I stumbled on the brand in, of all things, a little store in the Catskills, and I felt immediately seen: I can’t quite figure out how to quite describe it but it’s sort of Japanese-y and French-ish and pretty but also tomboyish in a way that I love. I almost always order it online because it’s hard to find in real stores, although I did persuade the owner of Noodle Stories (my favorite Los Angeles store) to carry it. I really need to write a Wordy Bird about retail (or lack thereof) but it’s too depressing to write so maybe I won’t. In the meantime, if you’re in LA go to Noodle Stories and say hi.

—I haven’t bedazzled my crutches yet but if I’m on them much longer I might have to.

—Who didn’t faint over Michelle Obama’s outfit at the DNC? The brand, Monse, that made her gorgeous warrior suit, is incredibly cool; I’ve bought a few of their pieces on TheRealReal over the years (they are very expensive fresh out of the box). Apparently, everyone in the world has preordered her suit, and I was sorely tempted until a friend pointed out that it will forever be Michelle Obama’s suit and everyone else will look like they’re doing DNC cosplay in it. Yes, true, but it really is stunning.