MELLIPOP AND THE TATTOO

OK, so I've been seriously thinking about getting a tattoo for a few years now (I can right this moment hear my mother wailing from 4000kms away).

Something small. Something discrete. Something that means something.

It's something I keep putting off doing, not because I am unsure about the unquestionable permanency of branding my skin with a symbol that will last forever. But for the denial of what that symbol stands for. The ineradicable truth of what that symbol means to me - which is something I have lost forever. Something which goes much further than skin deep.

I lost one of my best friends almost four years ago. Someone I still think about at least once every day. More than just a friend, she was the little sister I never biologically had, and she was only 17 when she was killed in a car accident. Of the many things we excitedly talked about, were all the things we would do together when she finally turned 18. Clubbing, pubbing, credit-card shopping, prowling for boys.

Me with my few extra years of valuable experience accompanying her on those many rites of passage that make themselves available to us when we legally come-of-age. Me dragging her out onto the cheesy dance floor. Me warning her about the dangers of mixing drinks. Me watching over her maternally while she vomited in the dingy toilet cubicle at some dingy suburban nightclub, making all the appropriate, all-knowing, non-verbal gestures of comfort and sympathy while holding her hair back from the mess. Me kicking the worthless asses of the hordes of young men who dared to mess with her on my shift.

The other thing we talked about was that we were both going together to get tattoos when she turned 18, so neither of us could pussy out when it came to the pain factor. By “neither of us” I meant her. We both agreed that I was the brave one and she was the pussy when it came to the pain factor. I was going to have to hold her hand through it. I never knew exactly what my eternal epidermal totem was going to be, but thought that I still had plenty of time up my sleeve to work it out before the clock ticked around to the big 1-8 for my little sister. Turns out I had more time than I ever could have envisaged, and almost four years down the track I’m still tatt-free.

Amy always knew what tattoo she was going to get. In between bumming my fags, talking about boys, dying my hair some unspeakable colour from the latest Loreal home hair-care range, complaining about her teachers and updating me on the latest bitchy in-fighting going on at school, Amy would talk about her horse. And all things horse-related. And she’d play me the theme song from “The Man From Snowy River” on her piano just about every afternoon while I’d sit and drink endless cups of coffee. She hated playing the piano but she loved playing that song.

Amy wanted a galloping horse as her tattoo.

I quite dislike horses, myself. Truth be told, they terrify me. That didn’t stop Amy from trying to get me on that damn horse of hers. And as persistent as she was, she never did get me anywhere near the stirrups. The closest I ever got was feeding the darn thing carrots through the paddock fence, with my arm at a full superhero stretch. She always thought that was hilarious. But it didn’t stop her from continuing to try.

As it turns out, I never got on her horse and she never got her tattoo. So for the last three years I have been thinking about getting that horse tattoo for her. But I keep pussying out because of the pain factor. Not the physical pain of going through the process, but the emotional pain of what that process now represents, and how fundamentally it differs from what was supposed to be a celebration of our love, our friendship and our misguided sense of youthful immortality. Now - in addition to those other things - it represents mortality, mourning and separation.

So that’s why I haven’t yet gotten that tattoo. The pain factor. I guess maybe I did need her to hold my hand after all.