Tattoo day!

Well as previously mentioned, we had met with a tattoo artist 2 weeks ago, gave her some basics and a deposit to come up with a design. Yesterday at noon was the appointment to have it done and I was looking forward to seeing what she had come up with. I didn’t know how feminine it would actually look and giving someone an open book can be a scary thing.
From the time I met Kat I got a good vibe from her. She seemed like a free spirited girl, good at her work and incredibly cute in a Betty Page type of way.

http://www.wanted-ink.com/

When we had gone on for the initial appointment she asked me some questions, had me look at styles of roses and did her best to get a read on me.

We awoke to a pretty good sized snowfall overnight Friday night so we had plenty of clearing to do before we could head up there. At one point I was getting nervous because I didn’t think we would make it on time and even texted her to let her know, no big deal she was running late because of the snow herself.

When we got there she had just arrived and had been getting her workspace in order. Then we sat down to look at the tattoo design. She explained that she hadn’t fully completed the design because she was having an issue getting the closed rose to look good and she was pretty much right, it screwed the whole flow of the piece. We both agreed the best idea was to go with 2 open roses and she set out at adding the newer idea to the paper. Both Dee and I loved the piece but I still felt there was something missing and asked if she thought it would look good with some eights notes and musical symbols floating around the piece, she thought it was a great idea and just what it needed and she proceeded to add those.

Before we had gone any further we happened into some idle chit chat and the topic of me being trans came up (I told her before I came in that I was) Kat seemed to be intrigued by it and had a lot of questions for me. She had only ever seen it on TV but never met anyone on the process. She told me that if I hadn’t have told her that she would never have known. I love hearing that but not because I have anything to hide, it just makes me feel more at ease. After all this we lost about 2 hours of time and at about ten minutes of two started setting up to do the piece.

I had given Dee the option of picking where the art should go and after seeing it she chose my lower back, she felt it flowed better there. It was nice making this a personal thing with her and it ended up being my birthday present which is even nicer. All in all it took about 2 ½ hours for her to do the entire piece and this would pose to be a problem, we were supposed to be at my inlaws for dinner at 5:30 and it was 4:40 pm when it was finished. We still needed to head home and then down to Massachusetts, about an hour or so worth of driving in heavy snow.

When we arrived at my inlaws house it turned out to be a surprise birthday get together for me . When we walked in several of my friends were there and Diane’s family. Dee even went so far as to have pizza and meat pies from a place that I used to love when I was a kid “Tripolis pizza” in Lawrence Ma. (What a nice touch)

All in all a busy but memorable day, I definitely felt loved yesterday. The icing was the tattoo that I’d wanted for the last 20 years was finally here.

If anyone is in the Manchester NH area and wants a tattoo, go see Kat at Spider-bite, she is awesome!!

Karyn