It’s taken 13 years but we’ve finally made it to Uni, guys! All that exam prep and those (pointless) General Studies exams have paid off, and so it’s only fair that we celebrate in true student style: spending our entire loan in Fresher’s Week… After all, living off the reduced aisle from Tesco isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
For most people after Fresher’s, they nervously tap in their login details to their online bank, pass out from shock, and vow never to buy anything ever again.
Ever.
However – annoyingly – this wasn’t the case for me. Seeing that I could probably only afford to eat 16p noodles for the rest of my university life, I thought it would be a smart idea to book a £200 tattoo.
Cue the despairing looks from my mum as I sheepishly tell her of my less-than-frugal decision over a tense evening Skype session.
It’s lucky that my parents aren’t the type of people to banish me from the household and sellotape a picture of my face to a dartboard when it comes to these things. After getting my nose pierced and subscribing to tattoo magazines at age 14, it was obvious to them that I was going to be a pain when it came to body modification… And I am.
I got my first and only tattoo in 2012 for Movember, a (pretty cool) campaign that asks for men – and women if they so desire – to sprout a beauty-of-a-moustache for 30 days to raise awareness for testicular and prostate cancer and mental health. My local tattoo studio in Plymouth was doing a flash deal: £20 for a moustache tattoo and, seeing as I had just turned 18 and was itching for some sense of ‘individuality’, I booked myself in for a next day appointment.
I jelly-legged it into the studio the following day, plonked myself down onto a surgery-esque bench and hoiked up my shorts. I decided to get my moustache done on my thigh, seeing as it was my first, and no one (mother) could yell at me for getting it in a visible place that “might affect you getting a job when you’re older”. BOOOOOO.
Watching the likes of Kat Von D work magic with a tattoo machine on TV, and seeing the clients happily nattering away to her about the symbolic meaning of the art they’d chosen, had wrongfully made me assume that tattoos didn’t hurt that much. If anything, they were pleasant and soothing. But I guess that’s only the feeling when you’re ACTUALLY being tattooed by Kat… *girl crush*. What ensued over the next 20 minutes was the most painful thing I’ve ever been through. Granted my pain tolerance levels are next-to-none and I’ll complain for days if I stub my toe, but I’m pretty sure it would have hurt like hell even if I wasn’t such a wimp.
So then I fainted.
Yes, laugh all you want; I’ve grown used to the sniggers that have arisen from this, my most embarrassing moment (uh huh, it EVEN beats running full pelt into a lamppost… whilst sober… in broad daylight). The tattooist, now with black ink spilt over his jeans, looked incredibly unimpressed as I came to, blurry eyed and slumped on the floor. Apparently you’re meant to eat before you get a tattoo. Who knew? So he begrudgingly fetched me a lollypop whilst I repeatedly apologised for being quite so cringey. After my Chuppa Chup fix, I was feeling ready to continue being tortured with ink, and I even wound up getting a top hat tattoo thrown in for free (probably because he felt sorry for me being so lame).
You might think that after this traumatic experience I would throw in the towel and deem myself ‘just not up for anything exciting and edgy’. Well, for a while I did… And that ‘while’ lasted all but two weeks until I started researching more and more tattoos and listing what I wanted and when. I planned on getting the bulk of my tattoos when I had left University and had started a career, mainly so that I could afford to pay for them. But, as previously mentioned, this is not what happened.
I did that thing where you go on research trips around your city of choice, looking for the best artists with a style to suit you. However, being the most impulsive person I know, I booked into the first tattoo studio I visited.
Massive oopsie.
This time next month, I’ll be able to let you all know how theatrically I make an idiot of myself and how to survive off of less than £5 a year, without resorting to cannibalism. Hopefully. Wish me luck, guys!
Image Sources:
Image 1: http://1funny.com/
Image 2: Own Photo
Image 3: http://www.marvin.com.mx/
By Ottilie Spottiswoode