Normally, having a man young enough to be my son study my buttal region would be something of a coup. You know, one of those, "Oh yeah, I still got it" moments.

Normally, that's about as likely to happen as a monkey flying out of said buttal region.

So there I was, on a high stool, my pants part way down my buttocks, my shirt jammed up under my bra strap, clutching the kneeling bar in front of me so I wouldn't start yelling. My forehead was covered in sweat from the effort and even then the odd quiet yelp escaped me.

And there was this young man studying my buttal region.

"Looks good," he said to the tattoo artist.

For a brief, pitiful moment I was almost ready to delude myself into believing that he was commenting on the natural wonder of the region involved. Sadly, it was not because of the intrinsic beauty of the region. No, it was because he was checking out the skills of the tattoo artist who was applying a goanna to my body.

Oh, well, at least the goanna is beautiful. And to get it, I only had to endure an hour of pain which involved having a needle pierce my flesh hundreds of times over.

I know.

Why is it that these things always SEEM like such a good idea at the time? Huh? HUH?

While I was getting mine done, a young teenaged girl strolled in, obviously a tattoo neophyte. She took one look at my face and decided that maybe she should reflect a little more on the matter. Um, yeah.

Tattoos are like childbirth. You space them out so you forget the pain.

It took just under an hour to get my elaborate three colour goanna inked in. This gave me a lot of time to reflect upon the stupidity of being a middle-aged woman with half her butt sticking out in a public space while subjecting herself to the pain of a tiny needle being poked into her skin many hundreds of times.

Even better, the young man who had been studying my butt took his shirt off to reveal an elaborate two-week-old tattoo that covered most of his upper body and was very badly done. He had come to my tattoo parlour in the hopes they could fix it.

So, while I clutched the bench in front of me in a haze of pain, I got to listen to a detailed explanation on how a tattoo had better be done right the first time because it's very expensive and almost impossible to fix a botched job.

A botched job that will be on your body all your life unless you have enough buckazoids to have it removed by laser.

Oh happy day.

Well, mine is beautiful, but then I went back to the artist and the place I'd researched so carefully all those years ago, so I wouldn't expect anything less.

Now the worst part begins--the healing. It will be an odd mix of itchy and painful for about a week. I have to keep things from rubbing on it because if bits of the scab come off too early the colour will be mottled and I will have to go in for touch-up work.

I so do not want to go under the needle again.

So this means I will be walking around Montreal doing my Christmas shopping for the next two days with a long sweater over my pants which will be half undone so that they hang well below the region of my tattoo.

Yes, I will be wearing my ultra baggy pants with the crotch partways to my knees. If *that* isn't an image that induces retinal pain, I don't know what is.

So, let's see. Yesterday, I killed any possibility that tattoos are still fashionable.

This weekend I will spend the next few days wearing my pants in a way that will make every rapper wannabe quickly reconsider his fashion choices.

I tell you, a woman's work is never done.

--Marn

P.S.--If you're doing any of your Christmas shopping at Amazon this year, why not do it through Blue Sphere? Five per cent of what you spend will be donated by Amazon to Blue Sphere, and will be given to the Foster Parents Plan of Canada.

Yep, you get to make a large corporation cough up five per cent of its profits AND at no cost to yourself you get to help some poor kids out. What's not to love about that, eh?

NEWSFLASH! Now you get the chance at Canuckistani Hot Chocolate for getting the word out about Blue Sphere. Post a link and you're in the contest. Whatcha waiting for? Huh? HUH?