PWT

When I was seventeen I entered what would be the first of five colleges I would end up attending. My days were filled with backgammon, soap operas, and smoking cigarette after cigarette in a room the size of a prison cell. Evenings often involved driving the winding rural roads surrounding San Marcos listening to Guns-n-Roses drinking beer. Sometime during this year of freedom to exercise stupidity, I decided to get my first tattoo.

It was Christmas break and for the life of me I don’t remember what brought us to the seedy Montrose area that night. I remember drinking a bottle of cheap champagne (a habit I unfortunately have not kicked since that first year of college) then the next thing I know I have my leg hiked up on a stool while a fat man in leather shoots ink under my skin with a needle. I would love to tell you it was something cool, or at the very least something people would recognize, but alas my first permanent marking was nothing but the infinity sign. Yes, a sideways figure eight smack dab on my ankle that matched the one my girlfriend at the time put on her ankle. At least it wasn’t a name!

A year later when infinity ended and the relationship took a sharp turn in the downward direction, I attempted to cover the infinity sign with a shark. Why a shark you ask? It was on a model’s ankle in a magazine. The entire shot was of her ankle so I am not even sure what product the ad was for but boy did that tattoo speak to me. It said “you are a beach bunny with sandy blonde hair that glistens in the sun as you frolic in the waves on white sand beaches.” Truth be told, even after the tattoo I sadly remained a bleach blond, beer drinking, flunking out college student. A girl can dream.

After the tattoo, I wore socks whenever I was around my parents. Willing to fight the independence fight when it came to my curfew (“But I don’t have a curfew at the dorm”) but not yet willing to fight the doing the same stupid thing everyone is doing fight (“All my friends are getting them”). One day driving in the car with my father I had forgotten the all important socks. It took awhile but he noticed and asked, “What is that on your ankle?” I replied “A tattoo” with all the confidence I could muster. His response was “Congratulations, you have finally graduated to poor white trash”. Oh, but if he only knew what I did when I was twenty-one.