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Giving someone else a permanent mark is a personal thing to me.

I’m not a one-night-stand (or one-week- or one-month- stand) type of girl. I’m extremely commitment-oriented. This may lead (read: has led) to some frustration on dates. I take it slow, I make sure it’s really the design I want, I do the research and still stall to make sure.

I understand how casual sexual encounters and tattoo artists work, and how they see dozens of people in beds or chairs every week, and take 20 minutes or 2 hours giving pleasure or body art, and then send the stranger out the door, never to be seen again. But it’s not my style.

I prefer the intimacy of deeply understanding the meaning of the symbols I’m etching into your skin, poke by poke. I love the process of researching and debating size and placement and line. I have rarely been so excited as in the 2AMs when finally the perfect solution is reached and the design comes together. I love the closeness of skin-to-skin contact as I, the giver, furrow my brow and plunge the needle, and the receiver bites his/her lip and tries not to cry.

I treat tattoos like I treat sex. If I give you one or the other or both, you and I are permanently linked. For better or worse, past health and death, even after decay has erased all traces.