I got my first Tattoo on July 26th, 2019, at the tender age of 31. It’s that right there. That’s my shitty arm you’re looking at. A mustache on the back of my left upper arm about six inches or so above my elbow.

Frank Zappa was once my hero, and even now I still revere his dead ass to an extent. Once upon a time on another blog from long, long ago I wrote about why I would never get a Frank Zappa tattoo. I have that post located somewhere secret on this very blog but even I don’t know how to find it! My reasons for never getting the tattoo amounted to the following points: 1) Zappa wrote a lot of non-woke music that was ok for 1970s standards but are not very ok now, 2) I’m a huge pussy and tattoos are ouchie. I spent the better part of a decade mulling it over, and eventually I got to a point where I felt like I had to get the tattoo. And I got it. And I’m fine with it.

The lead up to the whole event was torturous. I remember taping a printout of the Zappa ‘stache to my work computer for months. They say if you can look at an image every day, all day, and not get tired of seeing it or start hating it, then it’s a Decent Tattoo Idea. I mean, objectively, it’s probably not a decent tattoo idea. But it was (and is) meaningful to me. Zappa changed my life when I was 17 years old. I still owe him for that.

Those months with the picture taped to my work computer were also spent obsessively visiting Chicago-area tattoo studio websites and trying to find a place — any place — that looked like they might be willing to take a walk-in and waste 40 minutes of their time putting a dumb picture on my skin. I settled on Great Lakes Tattoo in the city and got it done by Mike Dalton, a very talented artist whose skills are way beyond what I paid him $150 to do for me. He was perfectly nice and cool. A real gentleman. A good experience. Would go again, but I’m not too big on traditional tattoos, so I probably won’t go again. Sorry. Would definitely recommend, though!

Those months were also spent obsessively typing in every single question I had into Reddit. “How much does getting a tattoo hurt?” “Do you regret your tattoos?” “Can I walk-in or should I make an appointment?” “Where are my pants?” Any question I could think of got pounded into the search bar, and I would click every Reddit thread that popped up in the results. It turns out that tattoos sometimes hurt and sometimes they kind of don’t. It turns out that some people regret their tattoos and sometimes they don’t. It turns out that sometimes you just walk-in and sometimes you should make an appointment. It turns out that my pants were on my legs the entire time.

July 26th, 2019 was a Friday. I took the day off work to get it done so that I could spend the weekend crying and washing the tattoo obsessively. I remember getting absolutely no sleep the night before, tossing and turning with unbridled anxiety. I remember bringing a bottle of Minute Maid orange juice with me as I walked to the studio (yes, walked. I walked the entire way). I remember feeling so intimidated and out of my element when I walked through the door of the studio that I was about ready to pass out with self-conscious panic. I remember everyone being extremely nice. Most of all, I remember how much of a no-big-deal the actual experience was. I’m talking getting all worked up about the pain for nothing. Mike had me lie facedown on the bench the whole time, which kept my arm comfortable. I remember the actual process of putting ink to skin wasn’t as painful as I expected. In fact, it was more interesting than painful. I felt like a twiggy little badass.

Of course, now that I’m preparing to get a dang half-sleeve, my little Zappa tattoo feels lonely and insignificant. I’m already planning to get some weird, abstract mess to surround half of it. I’ll start on the edge of my arm near the shoulder and have it wrap around to the back of my arm. That’s what I’ll do. Unless I find 20 hours of sitting on my ass extremely not-fun. Then I’ll need to reconsider.

(I won’t)