Commitment issues - Day 32 of 35 days to 35

Let me just put it out there...Charlene is a bit of a bully. I mean that in the most non-threatening and complimentary way possible. But she is. Most of the daring, out of the ordinary and possibly crazy things we have done have been her idea and have taken quite a bit of coaxing for me to go along with. It all started with the piercing of the top of our left ear when we were freshman in college. I knew our parents were going to freak, but somehow Charlene convinced me that it really wasn't that big of a deal and that they wouldn't be that upset. She was wrong. And you would think the tongue lashing and "I’m so disappointed in you" speech would have made me tell her where to go and how to get there the next time she came up with some nutty idea. But no...my dumb ass continues to follow the lead of my "big sister" (she is only ten minutes older than be but the hear her tell it, you'd think it was ten years!), doing one crazy thing after another.




After the ear piercing was the tattoo.....then the belly button piercing...she tried to get me to do the tongue piercing with her but I had to draw the line there. But she did talk me into a tragus piercing (the tragus is that small flap of cartilage on the front of your ear, the part you push down when you are trying to plug your ears) a few years ago but that is where it stopped. The thing about piercings and tattoos is that they can be kind of addicting. You get one, and something compels you to keep going, and what you once thought was out of the question now seems like not such a big deal. The good girl in me was fighting these urges but doing a bad job with the coaxing of the devil on my shoulder, otherwise known as Charlene. She had convinced me to get another tattoo, and we wanted to get something that symbolized our twinship in the same place on our bodies. You would think the issue would be what to get, but no. the issue was WHERE to get it and HOW BIG it would be. Of course Charlene wanted it to be really big and on a place that would be very difficult to hide if need be, like the shoulder or back of the neck or something. I, on the other hand, wanted a dainty one on our ankle or someplace non-threatening to "normal people". So we haven't gotten the tattoo yet.


When this project started, she re-introduced the idea of a "twin tattoo" as one of our things. Technically we couldn't do it anyway since we have both had tattoos already and this was supposed to be something we had never done before. But Charlene, ever the manipulator, I mean creative thinker, said that we had never gotten a TWIN TATTOO before so it would still count. But even if I agreed with this flimsy logic (which I didn't) we still had the problem of location. And it seems as if her idea of the size of the tattoo had gotten bigger as well. This was so not gonna work.


So I, feeding off of Charlene's creativity, came up with a perfect compromise: a henna tattoo. This would be perfect. It wouldn't be permanent so we could get it wherever she wanted it and however big she wanted it because it would be gone soon. And it would actually fall into the real rules of our project because neither of us had ever gotten a henna tattoo. Surprisingly, it did not take much to convince Charlene that this was a good idea. I think she thought she was winning since she got to pick the size and location and I felt like I won because it wasn't permanent. Ah, the art of compromise. Isn’t it beautiful??


Now I had the task of finding a henna artist. You would think that this would not have been that difficult: Cincinnati is a fairly large city and there are a million tattoo and piercing places around, so logically you would think that one of them would have a henna artist. Nope. I called five or six places and all of them said that they did not have a henna artist there. I was getting discouraged because the websites of these places said that they offered henna but they were all telling me I was S.O.L. I called the last tattoo place on my list, hoping but not hopeful, and I finally struck gold. The guy on the phone said that they did not offer it there but he had the name and number of a henna artist (Caitlin) who would be able to help me. FINALLY!


After playing phone tag with Caitlin for a few days, I was finally able to reach her. She did not work in a shop or anything but said that she could come to us or we could come to her, whatever would be more convenient. This is great! We made an appointment to go to her house on Thursday morning and I was starting to get really excited. We had picked the yin yang symbol as our tattoo and Charlene decided we were going to get it on our left shoulder/upper back area. I would love to get a real one there but frankly, I’m just too much of a weenie to commit to it so this way I get to play rebel tattoo girl without the pain and permanency of a real one.


We arrive at Caitlin’s apartment on Thursday and are greeted by a short, young-looking white girl. at this point I am a little skeptical of her abilities...she doesn't really look like she would know what she is doing, but I figure we are here now so we may as well go for it. She explains that she will do the design with the henna and we are to try not to move that part of our bodies very much. We are supposed to let it dry and then keep it moist with a wet paper towel for the next hour to hour and a half. this could pose a problem because I do have to drive home so I have to move and it is snowing outside so the tank top I am wearing right now is not going to cut it, I will have to put my sweater back on which might mess it up. Maybe I didn't think this through. Caitlin starts on my tattoo first and in no time she is finished. It’s on my back so I can't see it but Charlene assures me it looks good. Caitlin finishes Charlene’s just as quickly and she is right, it does look great! The henna is dark brown and globby and Caitlin says we need to keep it moist for as long as possible so it will get dark and last longer. It occurs to me that we are kind of the same color as henna and it may not show up very well. Again, maybe I didn't think this through....


Caitlin gives us each a moist paper towel and instructions to keep pressing it on the tattoo to keep it moist. But before we even get home, part of Charlene’s tattoo has flaked off! She had been keeping the paper towel on it but that didn't seem to help. It had definitely not been an hour and half so we were worried that part of the tattoo would not show up. By the time we got home, part of mine had done the same thing. DAMMIT! Okay this is not what I bargained for at all! We called Caitlin and asked if we could come back and have her fix it and thankfully she agreed. So we headed back over to her apartment for a quick touch up and another moist paper towel. This time it was about 45 minutes before pieces started flaking off. Charlene and I looked like crazy people running around in tank tops in 30 degree weather, but that's the price you pay, right?!


By late afternoon we weren't sure if the henna was going to "take" but we agreed that we were sick of holding that stupid paper towel on our shoulders so we decided to let it dry and see what happened from there. I was really hoping that it turned out the way we hoped and that we didn't make two trips for nothing, but I wasn't real hopeful.

We went about the rest of the afternoon and evening and, to be honest, I kind of forgot about it. Later that evening, while watching Grey's Anatomy, I get up off the couch to grab a drink and Charlene yells "the tattoo looks awesome!" It took me a second to realize what she was talking about but when I did I ran to the bathroom to take a look. IT DID LOOK GREAT! It was perfect! Now I had to figure out a way to show it off...on my shoulder...in the middle of winter.


Don’t worry, I am sure I can come up with something!