BY LAUREN REITZEL

– one across the side of my left foot and three on the inside of my arms– all of them small, taking up as little space as the tattoo artist was possibly willing to do. Starting at, I don’t know what age– a young one, but old enough to have a sense of what I want to do with my body as I grow into it– I’d mentally debated the idea of permanently inking myself. My parents don’t have tattoos, nor do most of my family members, excluding Uncle Joe, who has a lizard or something like that on his ankle. My mother always used it as an example of what not to be. But, as I got older, the tattoo phenomenon became inked onto my brain, matching what would someday be stained upon my skin. It wasn’t until I actually had a tattoo of my own that I was able to understand what it is about them that I’m so drawn to, its purpose washing over me, inexplicable to those I felt I needed to justify my choices to. As if it isn’t my own body. As if I’m not the one living in it every day. 

Rockstar Life: August 2022

It’s probably the most embarrassing story I have about myself, but also one of the best anecdotes I can pull out of my back pocket like some sort of party trick. To get the formalities out of the way, yes, I know that was dumb. Yes, I know you shouldn’t get tattoos with strangers. Yes, I know you shouldn’t get tattoos in a foreign country when you’re drinking. Yes, I thought of all these reprimandable choices before going under the needle for the very first time. “Do it for the memes,” I think is what I said at the time. 

Traveling is something I’ve made into somewhat of my life’s purpose, if you will. Since I was fifteen, probably, all I’ve thought about is seeing the world. Working at the pool, my feet paced the floor, my head light from spending 12-hour days in a chlorine-ridden wasteland; I’d dream about the beaches in Bali and the glimmer of the Eiffel Tower. The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and the technicolor, cascading architecture built upon the Amalfi Coast. The northern lights in Reykjavik and sand littered with chunks of pearls on the coasts of Greece. Coming from a family of wealth, I saved money religiously despite my parents telling me what a silly thing to be doing. Why was I working fifty hours a week at the pool, frugally sidestepping dinners with friends at the child-like age of sixteen, when I could have help from my parents? To this notion, I said fuck that. 

The summer before my junior year of college, I was freshly twenty with a collection of eleven thousand dollars in my bank account, all of which I’d saved under the pretense of a travel fund. It said dormant, waiting for the day I was brave enough to pull the trigger, until I booked a two-week group trip to Athens, Santorini, and Ios, Greece, with a group of 18 to 29-year-old strangers I’d meet when my flight arrived in Athens. Mind you, I’d never traveled abroad, god forbid on my own. A month and a half, two flights, and a few thousand dollars later, I’d done it! I traveled! I was a Traveler (capital T) now. 

I met a girl, her name is Annie. Annie is the type of girl you think you’ll only read about in books, the characters themselves too elusive even to come close to replicating on a screen. She writes songs and plays guitar and piano, and puts them on her Instagram. She worships Lana Del Rey– something we bonded over– and painted her nails black, the color chipped and left behind in the Argan Sea. She’s– for the sake of brevity– a real-life, non-ironic, captivating, magnetic Manic Pixie Dream Girl. But, to be frank, Annie is rude in the sense that she’s a total bitch. She’s stubborn as hell, too-cool-to-care about things that can’t be used for her art, and reckless to the point of destruction.I can’t explain this first tattoo without explaining Annie. It would’ve been easier, less complex, maybe, to render her a nameless, faceless character, the twin-flamed ink staining us both but without a mention of the other. 

So, we’re sitting on this balcony in Ios, Greece, an island that’s lesser known than destinations like Mykonos, Santorini, or Crete, but holds up the reputation in terms of the classic Greek beauty you search for when shelling out however much money and spending however many hours on a plane to get there. I might even argue it’s the best of the Greek islands, with its winding, blue-and-white-hued village of Chora built upon a mountain that overlooks the ocean, but without the suffocating tourism intoxication. Five lazy days were spent on Ios, our time divided between wasting away on the beach, trying to fend off a hangover from the night before, and wandering Chora’s streets across the days and nights, which was about a twenty-five-minute walk up the mountain from where we were staying on the resort strip. Wine flows, and conversation does so even easier. We talked about New York City and writing and our boyfriends at the time and how easy it would be to live without them. We talked about our group trip leader, a Greek man named Greg, who was covered in ironic tattoos. We talked about how silly, how goofy it was that he had a tattoo that said “ROCKSTAR LIFE” with a guitar beneath it. We talked about what does “rockstar life” even mean? A bottle of wine later, we decided it meant something similar to YOLO. A profoundness washed over us as if by sipping away at a bottle of two-euro wine, we had discovered the secret of life, of how to stay young, of how to live forever. You only live once, is what we reminded ourselves amidst that dusk on the balcony, waves singing white noise behind us. Too many of us forget that. And what’s the best way to live if you only live once? Well, that would be to live the Rockstar Life. 

And living the rockstar life isn’t drugs and groupies and parties; no, no, that would be dramatic. It’s merely living like you could die tomorrow. And so the next day, a tomorrow unpromised by the unforgiving hand of life and death, we would get Rockstar Life tattooed on us. 

But, oh! Look what we stumbled upon! A tattoo parlor, open late during the height of Chora’s nightlife. Its neon glow smothered us with whispers of mortality, hypnotizing us until Annie lay on the table, sandals removed and the smile on her face flickering with pain. Graced in the face of what I saw as bravery, Rockstar Life inked itself on my left foot and her right. We were forever branded with the memory of each other. 

After we left Greece, we never spoke again. 

Yet, there wasn’t a second that I regretted it, because, how can I be forgotten if we have twin thin skin? I’ll linger until death, typed in ink on her right foot, making cameo appearances on her Instagram scattered with songs and stories– I’m just another song and story for her. And maybe it was a rash, impulsive decision, yet, again, there won’t ever be a second that I regret it. On our last night together in Athens, sharing a hotel bed I wouldn’t be sleeping in at the hands of a three a.m. departure time, I saw my first tattoo in the mirror, peeking out underneath flare leggings, and I saw myself and my body and I felt a sense of relief wash over me; I was me. More me than I’d ever been before, and I liked myself for it. 

Love you to the moon and to Saturn: September 2022

I’d just moved into my house in Ann Arbor a few weeks before my first semester at U-M. Living among me are seven other girls I’d met upon move-in, all of them strangers to me before living with them. In this story, we highlight Olivia, a fellow Swiftie, lover of books, traveling,  and decorating the house for Christmas. Soft-spoken and kind, we fell instantly in place with one another, our friendship kindling over The Cardigan slung over the chair at her desk and vinyl records by The 1975, Phoebe Bridgers, and Taylor Swift. So when one of our roommates, Jessie, told us her ex-boyfriend, who was about to begin his apprenticeship as a tattoo artist, was coming over with his tattooing things and willing to tat us for free (free!!!! Zero dollars!!!!), Olivia and I looked immediately at one another and said absolutely, yes. In fact, three of our other roommates– who had never gotten tattoos before– were in, too. 

Collin comes over, sleeves of black ink covering his arms, a dark cloud of confidence (or maybe delusion) hanging over his head, reminiscent of that of a hurricane or thunderstorm. (The tattooing ex-boyfriend used to be called Collin. Now, we call him a son of a bitch) Yeah, he can totally Tat Us Up for free, he told us. And, of course, it’s free since he’s just in training. In fact, we get free tattoos for life for letting him practice on us. I remember this, his words now slung in my back pocket for a rainy day. Jitters and “omg, I can’t believe we’re doing this” sentiments are exchanged. Six girls lingering around our “brand new” Beechwood circular table, its story lost among the “free” filter on Facebook Marketplace. 

The first girl– the girl my roommate had over from class– gets a small rose on the side of her arm, fully visible when she’s not wearing something with long sleeves. To this day, it still looks pretty damn good. She’s the only one to leave our table without a horror story on her arm. (Oh, and since this was an amateur session, everything being permanently inked onto our body was drawn freehand. Because, of course, it was.)

The rest of the girls getting tattooed were all ink virgins at the time, with Olivia and I being the only ones with any sort of tattoo experience. Unfortunate because, aside from the first rose, they all look like shit, if I’m being honest. But, in the moment, we couldn’t have been having more fun. “If we weren’t all friends before this, we sure are now,” Jessie said, affirming the solidifying bond created between black lines on our skin. Six perfect strangers who persist past this defining moment. Except for the friend from class, funny how we sometimes disperse away from people who were there for memorable moments. As if that person doesn’t exist outside the moment itself. 

But there wasn’t any sense or thinking beyond the passing minutes of a late summer night. When it comes down to it, Oliva gets a moon, and I get a Saturn. It’s supposed to be derivative of the Taylor Swift song, “seven,” which includes the lyrics “Love you to the moon and to Saturn,” but the problem is that her “moon” ended up looking less like a crescent and more like a croissant, maybe a cashew even. Unfortunate but funny. Mine, well, it was easily discernible as Saturn, but as for the quality itself, let’s just say it was obviously a free tattoo. Somehow, the lines didn’t completely connect, and there are parts where it’s nearly a squiggle rather than a fine curve. I’d say it was embarrassing, but nothing, and I mean not a single thing, could be as flush-inducing as zockstaz life. 

When I got my Saturn, Olivia was the second person I’d gotten a coordinating tattoo with, an essential stranger to me at the time, too. We joke about the croissant-cashew periodically, yet the conversation constantly steers itself to the topic of getting hers fixed. Each time, a forced chuckle escapes my mouth, my lips curving into a smile that doesn’t quite reach my eyes and the masked anxiety behind them. She wants to get it covered with something else. To replace to moon to my Saturn. 

What will become of me and the eventual meaningless, spineless symbol on the inside of my right arm? Will she forget what it once was and who it was once attached to? She will forget what it once was, and who it was once attached to. She will cover my memory with a butterfly or a stamp. 

I can’t imagine anything worse than being inexplicably drawn over, erased from someone's life out of a mere aesthetic attempt to shape themselves into someone they would rather be, with me not being a part of that vision. As of November 2023, our love is still passed down like folksongs, skimming the surface of the stars all the way from the moon to Saturn. Or, I guess you could say I love her to the croissant and to Saturn– I haven’t been replaced yet. Her room is still up the stairs and down the hall from mine. Her name in my calendar, accompanied by the words “Lisbon, Munich, Budapest, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague, and Dublin.” I haven’t been replaced yet, and I don’t know what my fear of that says about the notion that my tattoos make me me. Maybe I’m just a walking contradiction. Or maybe the people I’m connected to are what makes me. 

The Daffodil and The Water Lily: July 2023

It sounds like the title of a folktale, the way it's written. Maybe a piece of it is. Out there somewhere, folklore exists about two sisters, one older, one younger, with resemblance uncanny to one another, but who they are contrasts drastically. Potentially, in a tale in which life imitates art, the sisters are unintentionally pitted against one another at the hands of childhood illness. The youngest daughter born out of a parental celebration of the girl who lived, who survived the medical odds, and continues to live and shine. How could the youngest sibling even begin to compete with the golden girl who survived when she should be going on nineteen years six-feet under? Favoritism arises, blatant and brutal. Resentment instills itself into their fragile sisterhood. It wasn’t until our family was entirely deconstructed that we were able to finally rebuild again, the foundation stronger now that it’s no longer built upon unacknowledged bias for the one who eventually grew into the baby clothes our mother assumed she’d have to throw away. 

It was sometime around our reconstruction that I proposed to my younger sister that we should get tattoos together. At this point, I’ve got an affinity for twin stains of ink on my skin, serving as a reminder that somebody is important to me, and I’m important to them. Four months later, in this past July of 2023, I have the birth flower of March– a daffodil– on the inside of my left arm, and Hailey has a water lily– July’s flower– on her hip. She’s a mere seventeen years old, straddling the fine line between adulthood and adolescence. In Illinois, minors can’t get tattooed, even with a parent’s permission, so we had to think outside the box– with that box being the regional borders of our home state. 

Our family trip to Colorado in July proved itself the perfect occasion. Despite my mother’s reluctance– and horror at her seventeen-year-old daughter getting a flower on her hip– the Flatirons painted a mural in the skyline behind us, Boulder’s altitude heavy in my lungs and fresh in the air. The tattoo shop compassed itself around a theme of monkeys. Monkey paintings stained onto the glass windows. Banana imagery swirled over my head. A comically large stuffed gorilla sat in the crimson leather padded chair next to the entrance, waiting for eternity to get a banana on his thigh. 

This all aided in my anxiety.

Though, there was nothing to be anxious about, really. Just the physical manifestation of a newly formed sisterly bond blooming on my arm. Disassociation treads easier in a place like this.

Later that night, on our way to dinner, my sister and I got into a fight, per usual. My parents got involved, per usual. It ended in tears, per usual. These fights we get into, they’re typically unremarkable at first. Just the Typical Sister Fight. I wore her perfume or was insensitive about our tension-ridden past, and it turns into screaming sentiments of “Remember when we were kids?” or, “Why can’t you just accept you ruined my life? By existing?” No, I don’t remember; my mind chose not to. They say that your body carries trauma your mind does not even remember anymore and that your body doesn’t know how time has passed between the pain you felt two, four, ten years ago and today. For all I know, that’s probably true. The tale of the daffodil and the lily is kind of like that– a lingering hurt forever carried on my body, like self-harm scars, a physical manifestation of pain that’s only ever been inside. If our sister-stained skin doesn’t serve as a reconciliation, then I guess it’s the longest-lasting scar I can’t cover up, no matter how hard I try. Her body remembers where mine forgets. Maybe sometimes tattoos are more like scars we attempt to decorate with beautiful permanence rather than bitter remembrance. 

And if that’s true, then is that why I get tattoos? My entire life, my body has never been my own. Congenital diseases, voyeuristic eyes, boys with too many drinks who couldn’t, or chose not to, comprehend the word “stop.” My body has never been mine; the fact of it plagues, taunts, and keeps me up at night. But, with each centimeter inked into my skin, my body became something I had power over– something I continue to have power over. The daffodil on the inside of my left arm, just as the two that came before it, is a small rebellion against all those who have told me what I should do with the vessel I’m forced to live in until I die, slowly regaining autonomy until I feel like me. 

 1996: October 2023

Do you remember that son of a bitch, Collin? I do! We’d been debating for months, Olivia and I. The moon and the Saturn, well, they looked bad. Ever since the planet’s curved lines implanted themselves onto me, I knew at some point I was going to need to get it touched up. There was just no chance in hell that I would keep that squiggly, amateur tattoo on my arm the way it was. 

So, it’s August, and we’re fed up. And we’re not paying a hundred dollars to get a tattoo fixed that we didn’t pay for in the first place. At this point, too, Emma’s “I Love You” has somehow peeled off, leaving behind illegible remnants of self-love– she’s just as bothered as me.  Burning a hole in my back pocket, Collin’s words reemerged into my consiousness, a melodic tune accompanying the words, “free tattoos for life…” Say less. Instagram DM’s with bitter undertones fly across cell towers to our respective digital mailboxes. Yes, he’s willing to give me a free tattoo. Yes, he can touch up Saturn. Sure, he’ll take a look at Emma’s “I love you” too. And so, he did. The man was cold, unwanting to work for free. While my skin warms against a black padded leather chair, my arm in a misconstrued angle, needle blazing into it, he makes declarations of “never doing free tattoos again.” I hope he realizes that will only ring true until the next time I feel like making him pay for breaking my friend's heart. In this scenario, I’m a vigilante of sorts. 

The story here is slim, really. My parents got married in 1996, their love story solidifying in the abstract of a year– and how meaningless the social construct of time really is anyway– and is now on the inside of my right arm, not more than five inches below the newly connected rings of Saturn. As I’ve grown up, watching the only true mediator for love I have, I came to learn no matter the fading bruises and salted wounds; love chooses to persist. I needed a reminder that love is diligent; it’s perseverant. It’s brave. I added “1996” in my notes app, the page titled “tattoo ideas.” 

I told my then-boyfriend– one who planted ticking time bombs and watched as the names of other girls were thrown into our relationship– about my newly minted idea, waiting in my notes to see fruition. He said he would do anything for me not to get any more tattoos, how there’s nothing less attractive I could do. We left the conversation at that, my boiling blood unwilling to speak because love is diligent, love is brave, love is patient and understanding. I needed to practice such patience! Such courage! I sat idly, a sad smile in my eyes, trying to remind myself that what he thinks of me and what I do with my body doesn’t matter. 

A year later, I’ve got a reminder of how perseverant love is tattooed on my body, a false-positive ex-boyfriend**, and a newly minted mindset that maybe love isn’t perseverant after all. That maybe all of this is just a grand illusion. That maybe it does matter; the attempted control over my body and choices he tried to exert. It matters in the sense that nobody who loves me—or claims to love me—would masquerade that love as a pawn in wielding power over the choices I make with my body. With each tattoo I got, I became closer to being the kind of woman who isn’t afraid to view their body as a source of power, comfort, and autonomy. The kind of woman who tells her Boyfriend to fuck off when he insinuates her body is for his pleasure. The kind of woman who’s body is her own.

**“False-Positive” (noun): the relationship that you think is The One. The one you’ll marry, the one who showed you what love really is. It’s not real, though. It’s just a sad, bitter ending.

***

I have four tattoos– one across the side of my left foot and three on the inside of my arms– all of them small, taking up as little space as the tattoo artist was possibly willing to do. The longer they sit, marinating in the sun, sweat, tears, disappointments, delights, all woven atop my skin like a blanket of consistency, the more “me” I feel. There’s this quote I’ve come across on Pinterest a few times, losing it amongst the swarm of beauty on my timeline at least twice before saving it to my board. It says, “Tattooing is an odd and beautiful art form; very interesting and more expressive of sentiment than any other thing. It is more fascinating than costly jewelry and cannot be lost, borrowed or stolen. It is a memento we can keep through life and retain after death. A sure identification in case of need upon Land or Sea.” 

For someone carrying all that hurt and fear in their hips and joints, putting something, no matter how frivolous or temporary in it’s signifigance, permanently over the invisible scars feels like a reclamation of your body. A reminder that it’s mine. And I have the right to exercise that as such. A reminder that I’m no longer locked in a freshman dorm room, questioning every choice I’ve ever made to end up in a room with a man I don’t trust. I’m no longer skin and bones, thinness affirmed by sentiments suggesting I needed to stay pretty in order to stay loved. I’m no longer stuck crumpled into pieces, my arms and legs contorting to arrange myself in ways that no longer fit. The stories I’ve survived, lived, and learned from will remain mine after I die, after the memories have left my mind, even before death. I will persist after death not just in my own body, but on the skin of those I’ve tied myself to. The people I love, and who love me, are what make me, are what make my tattoos meaningful. 

I imagine myself a few years ago, pre-Rockstar Life era, hopeful and scared and still, somehow, optimistic. The mirror shows me someone similar now, but distinct differences lie in the lines of my cheeks and the flicks of my irises. Not sadder, nor happier. Not more joyful nor less. Just weathered. Fed up, maybe. I picture myself in a few years, new rebellions and affirmations of bodily autonomy hiding on the inside of my arms, waiting for someone to ask me the story behind it. I’ll laugh, a million thoughts behind crinkled eyes.

That night in August, 2022, the incandescent light of the village reflecting off puddles collected in the concaved stones lining the footpaths of Chora. 

A love that spans across light years, before I even knew Olivia and I would come to be best friends. 

The folktale of sisters– they always end in the resolution of turmoil. 

A reminder that love can be brave, determined and true, if you put your faith in a true positive. 

Their request for the stories will allow me to again myself that my body is mine, and it’s no one elses. Not for taking, nor for hurting and abusing. My stories are mine, and they’re going to remain as such even when my mind and body no longer persists. 

And then I’ll tell them about zockstaz life and watch their eyes as they doubt the story, the disbelief tenfolding when they see it for themselves.