I mistakenly talked about my tattoos out of order! In the last installment, I said that my cat jaw bone was my third tattoo but it was in fact my fourth! That means to me, that I have gone far too long without getting tattooed, if I can’t even remember what order they were done in. My first tattoo was created in Feb around my birthday, my second in March, my third was in May on a trip out of state. My fourth, previously written about, was in December of the same year.
This is a pretty terrible pic, but it’s hard to get a shot of the back of your own leg. Step back from it tor make your window very small to view it better. Maybe I will retake this photo one day.
My THIRD tattoo was created four months after my first. It was on a whim, in a way. I had traveled to New Orleans for the first time and was so taken by the city, I decided a permanent keepsake was in order. I only had three days in NOLA, and started looking for a tattoo shop almost from the start. I found one, way out in the Bywater, that had the right vibe for me. It was brightly colored with taxidermy and various alters, voodoo symbols and artwork. But it looked lived in. The man who I first talked to didn’t immediately put me at my ease. Scruffy and gruff he asked if I wanted a fleur de lis. Absolutely not. I tried to better explain why I was struck by New Orleans and what a tattoo momento meant to me. He got it a little more and suggested a modified voodoo symbol. Being voodoo practitioners, he and his wife could safely make me something so that I was not tinkering with bad juju, he explained. His wife would be tattooing me the next day. And then his wife emerged from the back room with a book of voodoo symbols. She was striking. Rail thin with pale porcelian skin, covered in bright and bold tattoos. She had white blond hair, delicate limbs. The longest neck I’ve ever seen, also covered in tattoos. She smiled and showed a row of silver teeth. She was eight or nine months pregnant, her huge belly protruding from her lithe body, like an hard boils egg under a silk napkin. The suggested a tribute to the goddess, Erzulie Freda, and I agreed. I was to come back the next day. When I did, the matron of the shop was very sweet, so ethereal and beautiful, perhaps an incarnation of the goddess herself, all love and ink. I laid down on the table making the regular small talk one does until the tattooing starts. When she began the tattoo, I was shocked! I had only been tattooed by one artist previously, a lovely Japanese woman with an exceedingly gentle touch. I only imagined this white light creature would be the same way. But she went at my upper calf with a determination and frim grasp. I felt like someone was digging a dull spoon into my leg, just below the knee, for more than an hour. It was hard to reconcile the two sensations together: this delicate tattooed sprite, and her jackhammer approach. In the end, I came away with a sore leg, a perfect tattoo souviner, and a great story.
Looking back at this tattoo, I realize I haven’t thought of the symbols meaning in a long time. In some ways, I wonder if it was a bit of a joke on the tourist, as Erzulie’s nature can be fleeting and vain. In other ways, I think they might have known a lot more deeply what I needed than I did at the time. This was right after I met my now husband, we were texting while I was on vacation. Either way, then and now, I believe they gave me the exact right talisman to carry forever.