A marked woman

When I decided to get a tattoo with a man I'd only known for two weeks, my children worried I'd lost my mind. But I knew that whether it was in ink or emotions, love would always leave me scarred.

By Ann Bauer

Read more: Love, Sex, Relationships, Writing, Life

March 11, 2006 | It happened on Valentine's Day.

First, there was the rush from work to home, the nervous man at my door, and a long ride east, through rush hour, over bridges, in the murky dusk of Midwestern midwinter in that period just before the streetlights click on. Our arrival at the stroke of 6 in a windswept, ethnic neighborhood north of St. Paul: a Polish-American legion hall, a bar with a neon Miller bottle in the window, a large brick building with a pretty hand-lettered sign. Acme Tattoo.

Then there was the wait, the hardest part. A quick walk along damp sidewalks. Terse words. And finally submission to a woman in flannel pants patterned with hearts and mud-flap girls in silhouette, to her rubber-gloved hand holding a tool that looked like an electric drill but actually contained sterile needles and ink that caused my skin to burn.

"It'll feel like cat scratches," she said. And it did, only better.

Afterward, there was relief. His, mine. Vaseline and bandages. A dark evening sky and a slower walk back to the car, during which he commented, smiling now, that it might not be wise to get matching tattoos with a man I'd known for only two and a half weeks. I said no, but I wasn't really in this for wisdom. And then he asked, "So is it for the story? Are you going to write about this?"

Which made me pause.

Once inside the car and firmly belted, I may have been cool toward him. I'm nearly certain I was. That he took my hand and I let him but held his only loosely. Closed my eyes. Felt the rhythm of the wheels turning under us, the slow heat of my left shoulder, the place on my neck where she, the woman with the heart-and-silhouette pants, had rubbed me gently while whispering in a hoarse voice, "You're done."

He waited patiently. Drove us toward the restaurant and a nice bottle of Spanish wine. I opened my eyes into the brilliant lights of the cathedral on the hill.

"I can't," I said, as if only seconds -- and not minutes -- had passed. "There's no story yet. Something happened, and it's interesting, but I don't yet know what it means."

"Because you have to know what will happen with us?"

"It's not just that." I was warming fast, reeled in by his questions and the hand slowly wandering up my thigh. "The tattoo. I haven't figured out what it is to me. It has no context, no real meaning, no slant."

I find myself giving this lecture quite often, about the slant. And not only on dates.

This would make a good story, someone will say. You should write about it. This will be after something big or funny or tragic. And I'll explain that yes it would be a good story, in terms of plot, because a lot happens, and that makes for a nice narrative arc with well-paced bursts of action. But it's missing something.

What? they will ask.

Theme, I will say. Something underlying. Back story. Emily Dickinson called it slant. This is the point at which most people lose interest.

But for those who hang on, still curious, or for the students who are compelled to listen when I begin to speak, I go on. About Red Riding Hood and the underlying message: Don't talk to strangers. About soap operas, their constant roiling battle of good vs. evil and paradoxically cheerful theme of redemption (you can always come back from the dead, even if you get thrown off a moving train or bludgeoned by a madman; salvation is never impossible). About essays. "Once More to the Lake" is not about a trip to a fishing cabin but rather about mortality, as it is when confronted by a father whose youth and life are reflected in an unwitting son.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant, Emily Dickinson wrote from her solitary room in Amherst. Enlighten, enrich, illuminate. There are only seven major plotlines -- something like that. We're all writing about death or war, fear of the monster, man's search for God, true love. What is there new to say? Nothing, I tell my students. Whatever your idea, your plot, it has been dreamed of or experienced before.

It is all, I say to them, in the slant.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

So. It happened on Valentine's Day. I rushed home from work, made a pot of spaghetti using organic hamburger and canned sauce, then changed my clothes -- exchanging the suit for a camisole and sweater, so my shoulder could be easily exposed. Then the doorbell rang and I might have kissed the man who stood on the step, but I might not ... I cannot recall.

I do know I led him through the living room, past the table where the flowers he'd sent stood shredded because the cat liked to nibble them, and into the kitchen with its too-bright lights and oregano scent, to say hello to my children. My older son stood, rising 2 inches above the man, at least, and tucked his head down as if trying to minimize the difference. There were awkward handshakes, desultory talk. My younger son made his sister laugh and she stumbled, crumpled to the floor, farted noisily, said excuse me, laughed some more. And through all of this he stood solid, one hand on the shoulder I later intended to bare.

The design he'd made using a CAD program and sent for my approval was lying on the counter. We'd discussed it the night before, the children and I: Did I like this symbol meant to signify the union between his life and mine? Was the man a good artist? Was he, for that matter, a good man? A man who would still be around, whom I would choose to have around, after the ink had dried and the scab had formed and fallen away?

"I think it's nice," the 18-year-old had said in his eternally gentle way, then floated off with iPod plugs poking insect-like from his hairy ears.

"I don't know." The 15-year-old, sitting at the kitchen table, spoke from under a middle-aged furrow of brow. "This is permanent. You have to ask yourself, will you want this on your body when you're 60 years old?"

"Maybe you should get something else," suggested my daughter. "If it were me, I'd get Scrappy Doo."

There was an hour spent looking at images of Scrappy, the short, chesty dog of Saturday morning, and debating the merits of various cartoon characters. Rafiki, the sage baboon from "Lion King," Foghorn Leghorn, Sebastian the crab. The middle child relaxed, his forehead smooth by the end, his laughter nearly childlike. "I say, I say..." he stuttered, eerily perfect in his mimicry of the laconic barnyard rooster who was developed in 1946, 20 years before I, his mother, was born.

Now, as the man and I stood in the kitchen preparing to leave, someone poured boiled noodles into a colander and steam rose in a cloud. He raised a hand to the children, patted the cat, and took my arm. Out the door and into the night, we entered the stream of rush-hour traffic, fell silent on the ride to east St. Paul. Then there was the Polish-American legion hall, the Miller sign, Acme Tattoo.

He stopped the car and we stared at the building, square as a fire station. "My friends told me to make sure you went first," he said, voice lilting, a touch of my cheek meant to convey that he is not serious.

"Of course." I opened the passenger side door, levering myself out, slamming it closed. "I intended to go first."

He was concerned, contrite, and came around the car to slip one arm around my shoulders and apologize. But I am the sort of woman who cannot be so tamed, especially when holding back fear through sheer will. Once a challenge has been issued, there is no taking it back. I would go first if it meant kicking him with my high-heeled boot to move him out of my way.

Next page: "What made you decide to do this?" the artist asked as her tool whirred and my skin burned and twitched