the joy of pain posted by imani , Saturday, December 12, 2009 at 11:57 AM, in Labels: freefall

last tuesday, december 8th, i finally saw my best friend since time immemorial - monette. nosh and i were supposed to meet her around 8am but my sleeping habits got in the way - i woke up inexcusably late. so we ended up having brunch instead of a decent breakfast. the funny thing about setting up a meet in starbucks paseo de roxas is that there are three starbucks branches in that stretch alone. so you can just guess the confusion and what ended up being a 15-minute wild goose chase.

after brunch, we hailed a cab and went straight to recto, manila. i don't even remember the last time i was in that place. not much has changed - there's still a lot of people, the pollution worsened (i think) and national bookstore in avenida is still alive! i like going to that place because you can really find a lot of good books there - which, for some reason, makes me think not a lot of people in that area likes to read.

anyway, the very reason we went there is because nosh and i have been itching to get a mandala etched on our back. it has been two years since nosh last had a tattoo and almost six months for me. and i tell you, nothing excites me more than the idea of paying someone to inflict pain on me (i don't care if that particular statement did not come out right. you are all free to take it any which way you want to ahaha).

we met ding fernandez, tattoo artist extraordinaire. he was highly recommended by monette (and has done three of her five tattoos) so i figured this is the best time to try the merchandise (the merchandise being kuya ding ahaha). the studio's squeaky clean. as someone who digs the art of tattooing, the very first thing i check is just how clean the place is. nothing to worry in that department, he's a member of philtag and has won numerous awards in various competitions including the most recent dutdutan festival.

before i sat down to get my tattoo, i had to kill the nerves and went down for a quick smoke - which translates to a cup of coke and three cigarettes. it is an odd and funny thing, to still feel the jitters each and everytime i get inked. i am not sure what that means.

when we went up, he has already prepared the machine and in five minutes time we started the session. the first sixty seconds is always tough. my phone wasn't cooperating with me so i really couldn't listen to my music using my earphones. kuya ding, monette and nosh had to endure listening to the carpenter's 'merry christmas darling' five or six times. after a few minutes, i couldn't feel anything on the right side of my body anymore and wasn't distracted by the humming of the tattoo machine. it meant one thing - i was free. free from nervousness, free from the daunting sound emanating from that machine, free from pain. i suddenly remembered a friend of mine asking me a few weeks back: 'why do you look forward to pain?' my only retort was: 'because it is real.'

my session lasted about an hour and ten or fifteen minutes while nosh' tattoo was done in a mere fourty-five. and that i think is totally unfair. ahaha. but the thing is, once you have started getting the tattoo, no matter how queasy or painful it gets, you don't want to be asking the artist to stop...because that would mean you'll just be prolonging your agony. so more than anything, if you are planning to get inked, the one thing you should have a lot of is courage, or strength of will. because once you are there, there is no going back.

for some twisted, weird reason i always feel 'different' - emerging from the whole ordeal. somehow i feel empowered and i feel like nothing can break me. nosh said i looked like i will break the jaw of the next person who'd mess with me - now that i have tattoos on both my shoulderblades.

aside from the sporadic lashing kuya ding got from me (i think i yelled 'that's my shoulderblade' more than twice at the onset of our session), i feel really happy about the outcome. when you get inked, you somehow surrender a huge part of you to the one who will brand you - there has to be trust, and that factor of the relationship cannot be breached.

kuya ding did a really nice job and though my wound hasn't fully healed, i am already thinking of this backpiece that i would like for him to do. on the other hand, before we left the shop, he quipped that it'd be nice if i'll get a sleeve.

hmmm...let's see about that.

*i will try to post the pictures we took of that day on my blog, if i don't succeed, you can always view them on my facebook.