Sunday, January 17, 2010

I'm a Devi-Aunt

It's a headline article on NBC News this week; "Study: Tattoos linked to deviant behavior".  Go ahead, check out the story.  Finished?  Good.  So, now that you've been enlightened let me just tell you that I have 9 tattoos.  (Damn, I'm unbalanced...I need another one.)  According to the study I must be creating, cooking, selling, growing, using all kinds of illegal drugs, binge drinking, and sleeping with bees, birds, boys, and babes.  Whew, I'm a wild thing.  (I do sleep with a cow-bunny, but again, that's another blog.)  Hahahahahaha!  The reality is that I'm old, slightly more conservative than I'd like, and increasingly boring.  But I still have 9 tattoos.  Oh...and piercings.  I have 2 sets of "traditional" ear piercings, my belly button is pierced, and my conch.  (Go ahead, look that up www.dictionary.com )  I'm considering another ear piercing, but I haven't decided yet.  I binge drink coffee.  I smoke Pall Malls.  I'm in a long-term, monogamous relationship.  (I'm sure there are a lot of people who might think the whole lesbian thing is deviant but that's another blog.)  Our kids have curfews, and we know their friends.  I think I'm the only person on the entire flipping planet who doesn't watch porn.  (I'm almost positive that last one IS deviant behavior!) 
The study might have had more meaning to me if the researchers had included adults 
instead of just college students.  I've been to college, that environment encourages, and almost requires "deviant behavior" just to survive.  This can be proven through the years by recalling many of the on-campus trends through the years; swallowing goldfish, bed races, panty raids, Greek Week, pub crawls, fraternity parties, and on and on.  You learn in college to conform, resist, or ignore and that choice will most likely impact your entire future.  So, college kids are probably not a good group to study when looking to qualify deviant behavior.  Maybe they should have used college kids to study levels of deviance. 
Some time ago Laurie did a paper about tattoos and how they tell the story of the person wearing them.  The final thought was what will your tattoos say about you?  It's a good thought.  Unlike a lot of people I took a great deal of time and invested a lot of thought in choosing each of my tats, and where to put them.  Each of them tells a little about who I was, and where I was at the time I had it done.  They start out a bit small and placed in areas that are conservative, private, easily covered.  As I live and age and learn they've become a bit bolder and perhaps a bit more complicated.  They've also become more meaningful.  My most recent one is a celtic knot rendered into a ring and applied to the fourth finger of my left hand.  This is a tattoo that has been talked about, planned and drawn and changed and drawn again.  This seemed like the perfect time for this tat.  It's beautiful, meaningful and so important.  It honors that part of my life that is most private and most public, the woman who makes my heart pound and my blood hot, and at the same time offers me the great gift of stability in an unstable world.  This is a public symbol of a private commitment.  This is the symbol of my most reprehensible of many deviant 
Qualities, it represents love.  Plain, deep, endless, blessed, patient, awe inspiring love. 





And for the record....using a feather is erotic, using the whole chicken is kinky.

2 comments:

Waytwisted said...

I can help you leave behind the deviance of not watching porn....maybe for another blog....
I think the presentation was one of the best I did. What is your story?

Garret said...

1- I only have a few moments to comment as my porn ques up.

2- I was expecting photos of each tat with a small story for each one.

3- I miss you guys.