A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

This post is only vaguely BDSM related, but there’s a difference between “politely out” and “let’s have my family read this, shall we?” that Livejournal simply fails to address. So it’s here instead.

I went to visit my grandmother this weekend, and happened, in walking from the space between the bathroom and the hall, to catch a glimpse of her back, naked, as she was coming from the shower. She’s 90 years old, and her hips could put a porn star to shame. Her skin is dry and speckled and ruined; it folds in little waves like water with a strong wind blowing on it. She’s shrunk, and white haired, and scarred. And that’s fine. She looks unexpectedly beautiful, often the best kind of beauty.

People have curious relationships with scars. There’s the idea that we should protect ourselves, wear sunscreen and not pick our scabs, maintain ourselves pristinely for as long as possible. I’ve been bullied into wearing sunscreen since before I can remember; fighting off the insistence of my mother and later of May because I like being sunburned. I like how it tingles, and wrinkles be damned. I rip the scabs off of my blisters, I pick incessantly at wounds. I have scars on my hands from everything from baking accidents to wayward fireworks.

But then, that determined maintenance that our mothers teach us gets all upside down and twisted when body modification comes to play. Marks. Scarification, branding. Tattoos. How do you balance the unreasoning worry of age and ruin against the passionate fascination and ritual claiming of yourself that come with deliberately altering your body?

Blaise has a brand of four stars, huge and stretched, that are scattered over his back and down his side. He got them in a scene. He has burns from lighters and scars from cuttings and countless lines across his back that take ages to fade down from angry red to mild whites. He’s not going to win any beauty contests. Yet he is irresistibly, overwhelmingly attractive, and his life, his kinks and his needs can be traced on his skin.

Body modification was, in my experience before the scene, the province of stupid children and the carefree elderly. Stupid children ripping up their ears and inking their bodies without any evidence of thought, of reason, or of compassion for their future wants. I know, I know, I sound like the very people who drive me crazy. I sound like a close-minded conservative adult, and I never thought I’d get to a place where I could say this, but seeing people getting tattoos worries me. Not because I care what they put on their bodies, but because in my experience people so rarely think. Are so rarely self aware in their decisions. I think traditional parents freak over their children getting tattoos because those are the kinds of decisions in which your lack of self awareness visibly, insistently and permanently makes itself known. I also think that the word “children” is entirely inappropriate in this case, because children are wonderful, generally wise, and people can be stupid at any age at all. Rather, body modification has become increasingly prevalent within our culture, and has, like technology, been embraced most fervently by the younger generations, sometimes for the gorgeously better and sometimes for the ludicrously worse. Therefore, the percentage of stupid young people seems to display itself more insistently than the percentage of stupid old people.

And then, of the carefree elderly, because I’ve always figured that in 50 years once I’ve had kids, retired, settled down and watched myself grow into my scars, I’ll dye my hair blue, get a motorized wheelchair with a rocket launcher attached to the back, and have myself tattooed from my ass to my elbows.

I realize now that stupid decisions can be made at any age at all, and wise ones as well. I’m a bit too liberal to really understand the aversion to body modifications, and a bit too conservative to undertake them myself. And lately, this mixing of opinions has been pissing me off.

I want a tattoo. I have a tattoo, actually. After eight years of wondering if I should get one, on my 22nd birthday I took my wallet and my best friend down to the East Village and had the word “yes” done in my own handwriting, on my ankle. I love my tattoo. I want another one. And not just any little thing; I want a big, sprawling, gorgeous tattoo, up my thigh along my side and curving to a finish beneath my breasts. I’ve been thinking it for months, running my hands over that part of my skin, how much I want it.

However, I also want a painted silk sun dress, a collection of glass dildoes and a blue vase I saw in a shop window a month ago. I’m materialistic and sensualistic almost to the point of lunacy. I’m aware of this. I’m also aware of every single solitary reason why so many people say that tattoos are a bad idea, including the biggest and baddest reason; I’ll grow old, it’ll get stretchy and ugly, and eventually I’ll hate it. Regret, topped off with a big fat slice of mockery.

I have serious, deep seated control issues, and even more deep seated body image issues, and those two things mixed together do not a confident tattooee make. I am utterly and entirely freaked by the thought of relinquishing control of myself in such a specified way: by allowing a portion of my body to become a land mine for potential regret or self consciousness.
And then, there’s the worry I have about being stupid. About not being self aware. I am guilt ridden and worrisome and constantly questioning myself, and I love the scene sometimes because it’s one of the very few places where my brain just shuts the fuck up. Consequences thoroughly under control, and therefore consequences be damned, so to speak.

I pour over all the reasons why having a tattoo is a bad idea in my head, and I think of how frustrating it is that I’m allowing issues like regret and fear stop me from doing something that I want to do, and I say to hell with it all, I’m going to do it. And then, where for most people this thinking process would stop, mine keeps going, because it always keeps going. No matter how stupid it is to do something without thinking at all, it is infinitely more stupid, it seems, to do something as a reaction to negative reasons. That is the very earmark of the thought process of every stupid kid or adult out there; a decision based in rebellion. Hold the fuck up, I say to myself. I don’t want a tattoo to express a rebellion against traditional ideas. That’s a crap reason to put things on my body. That is reactive reasoning, and any decisions I make in regards to my own body should be made with proactive reasoning.

Often people are tattooed or scarred or branded with images that are meaningful to them. The tattoo I have now is representative of an idea that is immensely meaningful to me. It’s as though imbuing the modification with ritual negates the cycle of reactive reasoning, allowing us to assert proactive thought processes over our modifications. I didn’t go out and change myself radically just for the hell of it, just because it was pretty, just on a whim. I thought long and hard, and I have concrete reasons that have nothing to do with everyone else and everything to do with me, which are imbued with personal, relevant meanings.

I don’t think Blaise had stars branded on his back because they’re meaningful. I think he got them just for the hell of it, because they were pretty. They are, and I’m desperately fascinated and more than a little jealous of whatever it is in his brain that allows him to make decisions like that.

It seems that I’m asking a common question in response to body modification: “Why?” to which the answer “Just because I wanted to” is simply not good enough. But not good enough for who? For me? Why? Regret and fear, because inevitably what I want tomorrow won’t be what I want today; wants change with time. And then, am I afraid to have the evidence of yesterday’s wants inscribed on me permanently tomorrow, forever? It’s simpler to rest easy within the safety of a meaningful symbol; our ideas change ever so slowly, when compared to our wants.

Blaise will be able to look over his skin in 50 years and see the tracks of his life. I saw the tracks of my grandmother’s life in her body and her skin. I’ll have scars and scabs and freckles and wrinkles. I have all of these things already. I could get a tattoo as an act of bravery, an act of memory, an act of beauty. But wait, says my brain which never stops thinking, are those reactive reasons? Are you sure this isn’t a rebellion? Are you sure you’re really being self aware? I don’t know, I say back. I don’t know much at all. I know I want it. But I’m afraid. But I want it.

That’s the thing for me about self awareness; it seems so often wrapped up in uncertainty.