My tattoo dates back to my prison days. Me and my bitch, we ... Oh, *alright*, that's not completely true. Let me start again.

I ran away and joined the circus when I was in my teens, my tattoo is a souvenir of ... Stop it. Stop looking at me that way. Alright, alright, it was like this:

I woke up after a three day crack and liquor soaked binge with 50 of my closest friends from the local Hell's Angels chapter. All I was wearing was my new tattoo ...

OH ALRIGHT.

The truth is that one day a few years ago my kid took me to a tattoo parlour in The Big City and I got a tattoo.

There. Are you happy?

Since I'm now spilling my guts, I might as well spill it all out. I couldn't even have *found* the place on my own--in addition to being grace-challenged I am also severely directionally impaired.

You people know way, way too much about me.

Getting a tattoo wasn't a spontaneous thingie where free spirit Marn waltzes into any old place. Oh no, I'm too ummm Marn for that. No, there was a checklist. (Pay attention, you never know when I'll spring a pop quiz on you):

1) Licensed by all the necessary health boards and professional organizations

2) Steam sterilizer for the tattoo gun

3) New tattoo needle for each client

4) New ink for each client

5) Tattoo artist wears latex gloves that he changes for each client, washing his hands with a disinfectant between glove changes

6) Anything that comes in contact with skin sterilized between clients

7) Immaculately clean building

8) Tattoo artist's hands are not shaking from drug and/or alcohol withdrawal so that when he puts a piece of permanent art on your body which you will be wearing until you croak, that piece of art will closely approximate the stencil he has put on your flesh. (Try saying THAT without taking a breath, I dare you. Thppppptttt.)

As you can see, I am *not* a wild and crazy girl. Sheesh, I told you I make Emily Dickinson look like a party animal. But then I want to live to be even older than I am now. (Yes, you can get even older than Marn).

AIDS, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C are the kinds of cooties that will dead you, and you can get 'em if you aren't careful about tattoos. Okay class, now we can get back to my big adventure.

Anywho, Jesspoo and I enter the kind of rundown part of Montreal where you'd expect to find tattoo parlours. The area had seen better days, and we passed one of those beautiful, simple stone churches that came from those days. It had been updated a tad.

On the side of it, in enormous flashing eye-stingingly bright neon lights, were the words "The Wages of Sin are Hell." I don't think they meant to crack up people, but for some reason getting yelled at in day-glo neon just killed me.

The tattoo parlour itself was equally subtle. The walls and ceilings were plastered with tattoo patterns and photographs of past clients. There were also books and books of patterns.