The Sardine was double codenamed "Codename PANDORA" before I awoke to the madness of my pursuit of her. The division of CADMUS concerned with the search that will culminate in winning the heart of The Last Angry Bride and donning with her the irrevocable shackles of matrimony is codenamed Project PANDORA. This is coincidence, in that both were codenamed after the myth of Pandora & Epimetheus; Project PANDORA was not named after the erstwhile longing for The Sardine. I do not want The Sardine, beyond the purely physical level: she is cute and possesses "huge… tracks of land." She is maddeningly insecure and infuriatingly indecisive. As a friend, these traits drive me up the wall; as a paramour, they would be intolerable. Yet, a very curious sensation arose during my recent sojourn in Old New Amsterdam. Every time I saw her (thrice in total, two evenings meandering through the streets of lower Manhattan and breakfast on the day of my departure), I was almost overwhelmed by the desire to kiss her. I wanted to spin her to face me, stare at her for but a moment, and then roughly taste her lips. Only by the skin of my teeth did I summon the willpower not to do this when I bade her adieu and stepped into the taxicab that would whisk me to the aerodrome.
From whence in my mind or soul does this blast from the past come? Is this a rerun, a leftover from that long ago frustrating summer: I leaned in to kiss her when leaving her apartment after watching a movie (I'd been invited to come over after midnight) but was instead waved off into an awkward hug? Or is this something else, something other? Really and truly, I do not want to be with The Sardine, not in any part of my conscious mind. So, what the devil? Were I to (when I?) move to New York, which would invariably lead to seeing her far more frequently than I do now, would this curious near-compulsion persist? Would I be able to be her friend, or would it become too difficult? Would I eventually kiss her without the usual preamble and invitation? I really thought all of this with The Sardine was behind me, no more relevant to the wooing of The Impossible Ingenue or Comrade Coquettish than such erstwhile pursuits as Never Girl, From Russia with Love, or A Girl Named Hell-ya. Of course, might not be a recycled fancy after all, and it would be a mistake to fixate upon that possibility to the exclusion of all others. There might well be something altogether more contemporary and sinister afoot.
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
—L. P. Hartley
Ink Anniversary
Eight years ago to the day, Mrs. Sacramento (the then-Never Girl) & I walked into the tattoo parlor as ordinary citizens and left, unbeknownst to us, as members of the ubiquitous Inked Club. The most interesting thing about having a tattoo is having a tattoo, of having altered your body without altering its shape; my skull-and-crossbones is daily a source of delight and, inexplicably, surprise. The second most interesting thing about having a tattoo is the assumptions people make about both people who have tattoos in general and me as a person with a tattoo in specific, based upon nothing more than the presence of the ink on my arm. (See "Ink" below, from the end of April.) Was I a fundamentally different person on 11 May 2002 than I had been on 9 May 2002? The Mike of 9 May was dedicated to acquiring a tattoo on the following day and the Mike of 11 May was well pleased with the tattoo he's acquired on the preceding day. So, why is it that the Mike of 11 May and all the days unto the present has been treated by some, and these curs are by and large people who never knew the Mike of 9 May and before, very differently than was treated the Mike of 9 May? Of course, I'm not asking the question with any aspiration of arriving at an answer. Mayhap it reflects a weakness in my character, but I long ago resigned myself not to comprehending vast swaths of human behavior, and into this broad category have I placed the behavior of those who assume they know my mind and my tastes merely because they've noticed I have a tattoo.
I have not acquired a second (or third, or fourth, or fifth…) tattoo because I cannot justify the expense as long as I remain in debt; so, there shan't be any new ink anniversaries to celebrate until the successful completion of Project RADIANT. But once I am monetarily indebted to no one but the U.S. Department of Education and any private institutions from which I might take out a house and/or boat loan (boat loan!) a torrent shall be unleashed. Or, if you prefer, things are going to get a little bughouse around here. No fewer than, depending on how one counts, seven designs have been approved by the planning committee and have survived the requisite waiting period and review process. An tattooist or tattooists need to be selected, but aside from that all the public works department is waiting on is the funding.
A close-but-no-cigar match for my tattoo.
4 comments:
any chance for the return of the BTW tattoo?
I know of the BTW design (which I heard had the kibosh), and the blood donor design. Which others?
If I could get a tattoo (my body is not my own), I would get lightsabers on my triceps. Probably Luke's and Obi-Wan's, but if I did Luke's and Vader's (or even Obi-Wan's and Vader's), then I could get the imperial logo and the rebel logo on the elbows.
It would look so sweet.
I think tattoos are too ubiquitous these days for people to make broad assumptions about "the kind of people" who have tattoos, but then again, I also live very close to Allston Rock City, where virtually half the population has sleeves.
To my knowledge, B.T.W. does not at present have an official logo. However, K. Steeze & The Guy, once such a logo has been certified & a location on my body has been determined (allowing for the waiting period & review process), I will be only too pleased to inscribe my loyalty to Blue Tree Whacking in ink.
I concur, Watergirl. Even were I a longshoreman in the 1950s with an anchor on one forearm and a heart that sez "Mother" on the opposite shoulder, seemingly reasonable assumptions made about my beliefs and profession assumptions would be highly dubious, for I disagree wholeheartedly with the central tenant of sociology: I believe that a man is more than just the sum of his background and circumstances. But in the 21st century, with upper middle class kids from fancy pants suburbs wearing skulls-and-crossbones on their arms and every other girl who was between the ages of 22-27 in 2003 walking around with a "tramp stamp" at the base of her spine, not to mention all the whole arm and three-quarter "sleeves" hidden by long-sleeved shirts, there is not any one "kind" of person with a tattoo. To claim that there is is to alert all the world that you are pudding-minded at best and bigoted at worst.
1) or 1a) Blood drop with blood type.
2) or 1b) "I am an organ donor, take what you need. X M.W."
3) Maltese cross over the heart.
4) "He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead."
5) The burning man.
6) or 6a) A map of the British Raj, entirely in black.
7) or 6b) "The Black Raj" in Hindi-esque script.
8) Red dragon tattoo.
9) M I K E & the cross with three dots.
10) B.T.W. logo.
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