Tattoo storytime

It’s a good day when I have conversations about my tattoos that end up with people wanting to read Shaun Tan books, and a bad one when they creepily ask “do you have tattoos anywhere I can’t see right now?”

I’ve contemplated tattoos since I was 17, but it wasn’t until I was 38 (in 2017) that I got my first one, and then spent the next 2 years getting mostly covered. While I’ve always wanted a tattoo, I sorta got my first one because someone told me they didn’t think I’d do it and I’m a natural contrarian so simply had to do it. On January 21, 2017, I got a strawberry plant at Easy Tiger in Edmonton. People often ask what deep meaning strawberry plants have for me and I’m like, strawberry plants are cool, do I need more meaning than that? It was really just a gateway tattoo to the world of being an inked woman. Afterwards I met friends at Next Act and got a little drunk to cover up the tattoo pain, but later found out the itchy healing phase is way worse than the initial hurty phase.

Next up, Mission Tattoo Parlour in Calgary on April 1, 2017. I got 3 tattoos from one artist and 1 from another all on the same day, as one does. In the morning I was tattooed by Leme, a Brazilian artist who told me he was hit by a car (on his bike) on the way to work but he’d be ok, as long as he could have frequent smoke breaks. The little creature - which I later named Trevor - was his own creation, based on some ideas of Shaun Tan creatures I sent him from The Bird King, and he added some Brazilian coati and magic. The little boxes - windows - were based on two scenes from Tofino I sent him, one of the view off the pier in town and the other the view out the Mackenzie Beach cabin windows into the trees. We visited Tofino a few times when I was a kid and I’ve now gone a few times with Jeff too, and it remains one of my all time favourite places in the world.

In the afternoon, Michelle tattooed some marigolds and forget me nots. This tattoo is for my mom, who died on September 12, 1996 and I fondly remember a garden in our North Delta house full of marigolds and occasional forget me nots.

On June 16, 2017 at Showdown Tattoos, I continued my Shaun Tan collection. I don’t know why I went to this artist and shop and I honestly don’t recommend either of them, as he was very disinterested the whole time I was there, talking to his buddies but not to me, and he forgot a few letters of the alphabet that I needed another artist to add later.

Tales from Outer Suburbia is one of my favourite Shaun Tan books and I especially love the short story Eric. He’s an exchange student who stays with a family and speaks a different language so they don’t know if he’s enjoying himself until he leaves, and they discover he’s planted some small beautiful things in the pantry to say thank you.

The Red Tree is a beautiful book also by Shaun Tan, about childhood depression. On the first page, the girl is yelling into a megaphone but her letters and words go unnoticed and fall to the ground. I wanted her letters to travel upwards from my leg onto my arm, because I do feel like I am heard and supported in this life.

On August 9, 2017 - at a studio upstairs on Whyte Ave (that I don’t even remember the name of, is that bad?) I got my dorky Frank Turner tattoo - the original FTHC (Frank Turner Hardcore) logo from the England Keep My Bones album. I just remember that it was a tattoo/ comic shop and for part of the time I was there, some comic nerds were wandering around while I got a sternum tattoo and had my tank top mostly hiked up over my breasts. This tattoo has faded worse than any of my others (despite rarely being in the sun) and my stomach is a bit less photogenic now so I treasure these photos.

I waited until November for my last tattoo of the year, yes I know I got a lot of tattoos in 2017, I was making up for lost time or something. This time I went to Katreena at Fountainhead and got what I affectionately call my Inca ghost tattoo. In 2003, I traveled in South America for 4 months and while on the Inca trail (where our guide warned us never to leave the tent at night, because we might get cursed by Inca ghosts) my lady bits encountered some stinging nettle while peeing in the bushes at night. The next day, while hiking to the top of Dead Woman’s Pass, I was experiencing severe altitude sickness and/ or food poisoning (following a night where I had gut pain so extreme the guide thought I had appendicitis and offered to cut out my appendix and carry me back to town) and puking/ shitting along the entire trail but finally made it to the top a couple hours later, where my group was waiting and clapped for me. On the descent, I stopped puking but started getting itchy. Really, really itchy. By the time we made it to camp that night I was covered from head to toe in a terrible rash, then had an allergic reaction and went into shock a bit. I don’t remember the night very well but apparently I was hallucinating, screaming and crying and everyone at the camp thought I was dying and might need to get helicoptered outta there. I somehow made it through the night and to Machu Picchu a couple days later and the general consensus (of our guide and porters) was that I was cursed by Inca ghosts (along with the stinging nettle).

It took me 14 years, but eventually I acknowledged those Inca ghosts with a tattoo.

Because a whole year of tattoos apparently wasn’t enough for me, in 2018 I decided to travel to Europe for a tattoo. I had fallen in love with many different European artists and started emailing them to see which had availability in the next year, as some of them booked up to two years in advance. I had success with Lina, a Croatian artist working in Berlin at Noia studios. I emailed her a few times about my idea for a phantasmagoria (my favourite word) tattoo roughly in the style of Ralph Steadman but also entirely of her own creation. The day I got to her studio and she showed me the idea, I was instantly sold and let her use my back as a canvas over the next two days. We had such great chats, listened to some amazing music, she went to get me snacks and painkillers at a local shop when my migraine took over, it was a painful (and expensive) but wonderful experience that I feel so privileged to have had. In retrospect, I don’t really recommend two back to back 6 hours days getting inked, but it was the time I had so we went for it, and the rest of my time in Berlin and then London was a hurty, sweaty, itchy and scabby experience.

My last tattoos were at the end of December 2019 and January 2020, where a lovely artist named Jenny At Atomic Zombie helped do some filler. We decided that Trevor needed a magical pink crayon and would draw a line on one arm, and that Eric would plant colourful vines on the other arm. She asked if I wanted realistic colours and I said I was not tied to reality and she was just fine with that too. As it turns out, the colours she chose match many of my dresses, so both she and my tattoo creatures have excellent taste.

I was supposed to visit Lina again in Berlin in 2020 (which would also coincide with Frank Turner’s Lost Evenings festival) but that was cancelled because of the pandemic. The festival was rescheduled for 2022 and I again made a booking with Lina but then Jeff and I decided to cancel that trip (despite the festival going ahead), and now it’s unclear whether I’ll get back to Europe again for a tattoo or if I should settle with some cool Canadian artist for my lower right leg.

Over the last few years, I’ve helped enable a few people into getting their first tattoos. Anytime a woman says “oh I can’t, it would hurt too much” I always says there are three main considerations for tattoos - cost, pain and commitment - and cost is really the only relevant one to most people, as we’ve all experienced pain and commitment challenges in our lives. If I can be that person to help enable you right now, I’m happy to help. Do it. Get the tattoo. You won’t regret it, and even if you do, you’ll have a good story to tell about it.