Getting a tattoo is a really personal decision. Some people are covered in them; some have one or two; some cringe at the thought of permanently mutilating their body. I love them; I’ve got many. Each one is loaded with meaning, and I got each one at a particular location for a particular reason.
Last week, I spent a few days in Tofino listening to the waves and watching the mist that hung over the pine trees and the sunsets. It created a perception similar to forest fire season, causing the sun to glow orange, but it was also the first time I had been able to properly see the beauty of the location.
I grew up fishing all over Vancouver Island, but it’s different when you’re fishing—you’re focused on depth sounders, downriggers, tides, and winds, not misty sunsets and the sounds of waves breaking on the black rocks.
The shift in focus meant lots of time to relax and think, so I decided to book an appointment for a tattoo. It was a design I’d been thinking about for a couple of years, and I’m thrilled with the result.
But the experience of getting it was hellish, and not because it involved blood and needles. My fiancée came to the shop with me. She was kicked out because she was talking, making it hard, the artist claimed to her, to concentrate on work. The location of the tattoo caused me to flinch in pain occasionally, as needles to flesh do. After she left, he started to talk.
“Women,” he said. “They think they can say whatever they want, and we’re the ones who get in trouble.”
I’m sorry, I thought. What did you just say?
For the rest of the appointment, I lay there as the needle scraped and tickled up and down, up and down; I was afraid to say much of anything because this man had a needle in my chest.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to my fiancée after we had gotten back to our hotel.
I’m marrying a strong woman; a fierce woman; a woman who is not afraid to stand up for herself. And she was shaken.
I told her of the experience of laying there, unable to move.
“Yeah, that’s how women felt for years,” she said.
It blew—and still blows—my mind that blatant disrespect based on a person’s sex is a thing some people think is okay in 2021. It’s disgusting. It’s sad. It’s pathetic. And that man doesn’t deserve my tears or stress, he deserves to be called out and put in his place, and told to sit down, shut up, listen, and learn. If a he didn’t have a tattoo gun to my chest, I would have told him that. But that’s a bit of a cop out, and doesn’t change the fact that on some level, I chose not to. It made me feel small, dirty, and weak.
I need to do better. The result of not doing better can be crying, sleepless nights, or feelings of inadequacy that harbour themselves in the gut.
That tattoo artist also—especially—needs to do better.
Tattoos leave their mark in many ways, and the depth behind this one grows as more time passes. As much progress as we have made as a society, there are people out there who try to slow us down, bring us down, and kick us around. And they need to be exposed; I should have spoken up in the moment, regardless of what kind of gun was held to my chest. I didn’t, and now a reminder of the importance of respect, equality, and speaking up is on my chest forever.