{"id":15944,"date":"2020-04-01T01:00:33","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T06:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=15944"},"modified":"2020-04-01T01:25:44","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T06:25:44","slug":"does-your-tattoo-mean-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/15944","title":{"rendered":"Does Your Tattoo Mean Something?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At night, my neighbors\u2019 tattoos come to me and spill all their secrets.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m worried that people can tell I\u2019m shallow when they look at me,\u201d a monarch butterfly who pulled herself off my neighbor\u2019s ankle says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I sigh, I get out of bed, I put the kettle on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know that\u2019s not a productive thought pattern,\u201d I tell the butterfly. It\u2019s cold, so I retreat to my bedroom and get another sweater. <\/span>There are holes in the walls of my rowhouse, between the apartments upstairs, downstairs, and beside me. The wind and the mice and the tattoos come through.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m worried that people think I\u2019m stupid,\u201d a komodo dragon, clumsily drawn, says as he stomps his way in for a cup of tea. He likes it strong and black even though it\u2019s well past midnight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMore likely, they\u2019ll think you\u2019re compensating for something,\u201d I tell him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> compensating,\u201d the butterfly says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBitch,\u201d says the dragon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBehave,\u201d I tell them both.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

New neighbors moved in next door at the beginning of the month. They have a baby whose wails travel through the gaps in the floorboards. I don\u2019t know if the mother has tattoos because the tattoos can only crawl away once their bodies are asleep. The father has a Smiths lyric, though.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if you ever need self-validation, just meet me in the alley by the railway-station,\u201d he says every time he visits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCan\u2019t you think for yourself?\u201d the butterfly asks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI love my daughter, but I\u2019m worried that if I get too happy, I\u2019ll lose a part of my identity,\u201d the Smiths lyric says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother died alone, and I regret not being there,\u201d the butterfly says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only so much you can control,\u201d I say. I started buying St. John\u2019s Wort for the sad-sack tattoos: the crying Madonnas, the melancholy quotes, the portraits of the dead. One grandmother wreathed in daisies isn\u2019t so much sad to be dead as she is angry at the tattoo artist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe fucked up my teeth,\u201d the grandmother says, \u201cI had nice teeth in real life.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s better to be a little ugly,\u201d the Smiths lyric says. \u201cIt makes you seem more true.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOh for Christ\u2019s sake,\u201d says the butterfly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They sit around my kitchen table with me and drink their tea. My cat comes in and meows at them a bit, but she doesn\u2019t scare them even if she is a monster of legend to the mice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a pretty cat,\u201d a new tattoo says, a wobbly <\/span>Om<\/span><\/i> sign peeled from the base of my downstairs neighbor\u2019s neck. She used to be a hippie, but now she has a welcome mat that says: \u201cCome Back With A Warrant.\u201d
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t tell her that, it\u2019ll go to her head,\u201d I say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never once looked at my body and thought: <\/span>I\u2019m beautiful<\/span><\/i>,\u201d the <\/span>Om<\/span><\/i> says.<\/span><\/p>\n

The kitchen is getting crowded. Everyone is getting tattoos. Stars peel themselves off in crescents from the curve of my neighbors\u2019 ears and hang from my ceiling. Calligraphy unsticks itself from the smalls of their backs and curls at my feet breathing dead lovers\u2019 names. Whole sleeves of blooming flowers unfurl and strain upwards from my countertops toward my feeble ceiling light. There are a few goofy cartoon characters and old stick and pokes who\u2019ve faded into greenish blobs. Their worries are always the same:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m afraid I\u2019m not young, and the world isn\u2019t what I thought it would be.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandson is having an affair with his therapist,\u201d the grinning grandmother says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI used to have affairs,\u201d the komodo dragon says, \u201cbut I\u2019m not good looking anymore.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I never got any tattoos. Not when it was truly transgressive and then not again once everyone I knew had them. My mother told me you couldn\u2019t be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you had a tattoo. Turns out that\u2019s not true, but it\u2019s for the best. I don\u2019t want pieces of myself peeling away in the night to tell insomniacs that I feel bad about my body or that I\u2019m worried I will ruin every good thing I get from wanting it too much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When the sun starts to rise, the tattoos slink away. Some of them thank me for the tea. They disappear through the walls, following the mice and the music, the fights and the sex and silent sobs. I wash all the teacups as pink dawn creeps in.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DEIRDRE DANKLIN<\/a><\/strong><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At night, my neighbors\u2019 tattoos come to me and spill all their secrets.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m worried that people can tell I\u2019m shallow when they look at me,\u201d a monarch butterfly who pulled herself off my neighbor\u2019s ankle says.\u00a0 I sigh, I get out of bed, I put the kettle on.\u00a0 \u201cYou know that\u2019s not a productive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2041,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[62],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-49a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2041"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15944"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16062,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15944\/revisions\/16062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}