cockroach

i was thinking this morning about my tattoos. i think about my tattoos a lot, i hate to admit, since i just got them a couple of weeks ago. but i do. they're kind of like my little under-my-shirt secret, since no one can see them unless i'm wearing a sleeveless shirt, which i don't often do at work. the ladies at the office would inevitably spend the whole day gazing at my bulging arms trying to feel them. not only would it be uncomfortable, it'd keep me from getting any asthma research done.

just.

kidding.

while i was getting coffee this morning, thinking about my new tattoos (multitasking), i started thinking about why i got tattooed. i've wanted to be inked since i was 17, so it was bound to happen at some point. and it had to happen before i hit 30, because it seems to me like if you don't have tattoos by the time you're 30 you should just go without. kind of like adult braces. if you've made it 30 years with crooked teeth or no tattoos, just keep going. you've only got like 50 years left, right?

was getting tatts the last way for me to claim my identity as the most deviant of the deviant? i mean, i'm already queer, which makes me an outsider. by not wearing abercrombie or trying to act "str8," by calling myself queer and getting a big ol' tattoos of butterflies and bees (or, as dan thought, a cockroach), am i just making myself all the more the "other?" i think maybe so. and being the queerest of the queer is kind of a fun place to be.