Currently Chasing: Ink Remover

Tattoos. They are pretty, they are colorful, they are addicting and they are … permanent. Well, unless you want to spend countless hours and plenty of money getting them removed. And by removing them you realize you basically have that skin burned off. Nothing says I don’t want to remember, like a burned area of flesh to stare at.

I’m all for tattoos. I have a few of them. I’ve gotten them here and there over the years. I’ve only really regretted one. The first one. But I was 18 and you know, what do you really know at 18? You fall in love with Madonna and she makes a movie called truth or dare, and she has a tattoo on her back and you decide, “Hey, I’m gonna get that tattoo on me!”

You don’t realize at the time that her tattoo is fake…and yours is now, embarrassingly real.

But besides that first nightmare, I love my ink. I’ve basically only had one rule when it came to going under the needle. No names. Not my husband, not my children, not even mine. In fact, when my father decided to get a tattoo (his first one ever and he’s 54) he decided to get my name. Even that was a bit strange for me. Names just seem a little out of the question.

So last week a good friend of mine calls up and tells me that her and her boyfriend of a few months broke up. I felt really bad for her. She had told me a couple of months earlier that he was considering getting a tattoo. The tattoo was of his family crest with her name wrapped around it. I begged her not to let him get it. She said she would try. I said, do more than try. Absolutely do not ALLOW him to get your name on his body. But a man in love cannot be stopped. He went ahead with the tattoo, just seven days before the breakup.

And imagine my surprise when, through the tears, she tells me that she got his name tattooed on her as well. Good Lord I said. And that’s really all I could say. Besides, “Where is the tattoo located?”

Right below my belly button and just above my “secret garden,” she says.

What in the fucking fuck! I say. Seriously? My life is a complete wreck, but my advice is usually right on the money. And not only didn’t she take it and pass it on to him, but she didn’t even let it penetrate her thinking. I mean come on.

Take it from the girl with a school girl crush on Madonna…you’re never as in love as you think you are. I've been walking around with "ALL ACCESS" tattooed on me since I was 18. And there's nothing more stupid than that. Well, besides a name.