Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 17, 1993 TAG: 9403230002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Leigh Allen
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The original attraction was rooted in a desire to find out how people would react when I broached the subject.
I realize now that I have an entire lifetime of looking forward to enlivening dull parties with remarks such as: ``So, would anyone like to see the tattoo on my butt?''
I can't wait.
As an upper-middle-class Washington and Lee senior - the son of a corporate lawyer, no less - I can safely say most of my friends don't have tattoos. Say what you will about it, but the stereotype is still there. A biker and a heavy-metal fan I'm not.
My biggest mistake in the whole deal was admitting my plan to some of my advisers before leaving the office.
Predictably, controversy raged.
``Don't do that to yourself, son,'' implored one senior editor. ``You'll be sorry the rest of your life.'' He even threatened to call my mother.
One reporter suggested that I could chicken out at the last minute, then write a story about chickening out.
But being the lowest on the newsroom food chain, you take stories wherever you can get them.
I went.
After telling the artist that all I wanted for my tattoo were my university's initials, I could see he was disappointed in the simplicity of the design.
But the idea has roots in greatness. George Shultz reportedly has a Princeton tiger on his rear end. I'm not likely ever to become secretary of state, of course, but you never know.
Resigned to the conclusion that that he was about to burn the hide of a not-very-creative preppy, the tattoo artist maneuvered for a less subtle approach.
``It'll be ugly,'' he warned.
He wasn't making me feel any better. Neither was the guy with pink hair and what looked like a large safety pin stuck through his tongue. I inquired and found out he was an apprentice tattooer/body piercer (the latter service I will never have use of).
As the moment drew near, Safety-pin Tongue smiled at me from behind his fluorescent dreadlocks, and started laughing that crazy laugh.
Things weren't going as I had expected, and I was legitimately nervous.
I had imagined a scenario in which the tattoo artist would sit me down for an avuncular lecture about the implications of my choice. He would start by making sure I was sober.
He would follow by explaining how tattoos are eternal and that I should only get one if I was completely sure about it. In short, give me a good excuse to bail out at the last minute with some lame escape like: ``Oh, wow. I thought these were the kind that come off in the shower. Glad you warned me.''
He might even have tried to talk me out of it.
No such luck. He just smiled and handed me a waiver shorter than the form I signed the time I rented a jet ski at Smith Mountain Lake. I was disappointed to be getting off so easily.
He shuffled me to a surprisingly elegant room where I was ordered to lie down and ``bare the spot,'' one which I had chosen with care.
``Girlie-man,'' he quipped, revealing candidly his belief that tattoos on the butt are for wimps.
The only hard news I can reveal about getting a tattoo: yeah, it hurts.
It feels a bit like getting hooked up to a sewing machine, if you can imagine what that feels like. Needles are no fun, and this was no exception.
But 10 minutes later, I buckled my belt, plunked down my $50 and swaggered out the door a new man.
No, I didn't feel any strange urges to start a bar fight, join the Navy or buy a Harley. But looking at the instruction card telling me how to care for my new tattoo - no swimming or nude sunbathing for a while - I had a brief flash of a scene from my future:
Thirty years from now, I'll be standing at a podium to accept my promotion to president of the world's largest multimedia conglomerate.
One particularly nasty reporter will emerge from the mob of ill-tempered journalists and silence the crowd with a piercing question:
``Sir,'' he'll say. ``Is it true that you have a Washington and Lee University trident tattooed on your butt?''
``The answer to that question,'' I will respond, with years of inside knowledge on how to stifle the media, ``depends on whether you can believe everything you read in the Roanoke Times.''
Leigh Allen, a summer intern at this newspaper, wants his family to know that he didn't pay for his tattoo. His editors did.
by CNB