The pain wasn't even in the neighborhood of my upper threshold – which genuinely surprised me, as the tattoo is on my inner forearm, and I'd been warned it was an especially sensitive spot. No, it isn't. Not really. Maybe a bit towards my wrist maybe. Now, this is not to say I was bored. Far fucking from it. Habañeros? I love them. It was, as I said exhilarating. And left me wanting a lot more. But you build things up in your head. Other people build things up. Then again, I'm so good at flipping pain to pleasure. I actually didn't realize when she'd started. Mostly, I lay on the table, lulled by the buzz of the needle, staring at the art on the walls, the guy getting a much larger tattoo on the table next to me, listening to the music playing in the shop (the Pogues, the Pixies, Tom Waits, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Beatles, Radiohead, etc.). It took about an hour and twenty minutes. Today, I hardly feel a thing, and the healing is proceeding much better and faster than I'd expected. The weirdest part is that I'm unable to game for a couple of days, and the only downside is that I'm unable to swim for the next two weeks (but, then again, Readercon 23 is going to eat up a big chunk of that time).
Anyway, there are a few photos behind the cut. And if you want text done well, go to Providence Tattoo on Angell Street and ask for Mariah. She'll hurt you good.
Oh. Also. I have very good aftercare instructions. Please, please, please...no aftercare advice. "Everyone will think they're an expert on tattoos. Please avoid their ignorance."
All Photographs Copyright © 2012 by Kathryn A. Pollnac
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I want to make a promise to you, the reader. And I don't know if I can fulfill it tomorrow, or even the day after that. But I put the bastards of this world on notice that I do not have their best interests at heart. I will try and speak for my reader. That is my promise. And it will be a voice made of ink and rage. ~ Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
Me, I'm trying. I promise, kittens. I've been trying all along. Well, I would have said "...and speak for myself." Usually. Not always, just usually. I could cop out and say, yeah, but the truth is that all are one with the Buddha. Only, I ain't a Buddhist, and don't much care for many of the tenants of Buddhism. But you know what I mean.
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Sirenia Digest #79 will be along in the next two or three days. Everything's written, and I have the art. I just need time for an Assembly Day. Also, thanks to Cam Collins, the first Aunt Beast's Salt Marsh Home Companion podcast should happen in late July, in time to celebrate the release of Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart. A concurrence which will be most bow tie, indeed.
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I'm going to say more on this subject, the one I'm about to touch on, in a subsequent entry. But, for now I will say this: Please DO NOT ever ask me to write an original story for an anthology for which you don't yet have a publisher. No, that's most emphatically not the way it works. And don't ask me to write that story on spec, hoping I might someday be paid. This is not professionalism, it's wannabe bullshit, and if you start out this way, you'll likely never make it past wannabe. Do not insult writers. Most of us have long memories (and bills to pay!), and me, I'm tired of getting ~one of these emails a week. Oh, wait! "You're" not reading this! Silly fucking me.
As Lost as Some Forgotten Promised Land,
Aunt Beast
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