-15

i remember the day i lied to a woman.

i am not proud of myself but yes i have lied to a woman in order to have my wicked ways with her .

tattoos are incredibly personal. you have inked yourself permanently and you have to believe that in 20, 30, 40 years you are not going to be looking at yourself thing why the fuck did i do that. so far the 4 tats i have still stand up to my self scrutiny.

but i am aware of the fact that what i think is good is not what other people think is good. that a style that might float my boat is dead in the water to someone else.

my pal emma had a very large celtic rope knot design on her shoulder. i could admire the artistry and skill of the tattooist (it was an intricate and well done piece) the actual image left me cold. luckily when we discussed tats i had given up on going out with emma so we could be honest with each other – which is probably why she called me a cunt (but she was being affectionate. wasn't she?)

diamond was a place where lots of people got tattoos or piercings. there were lots of discussions about styles and techniques. i came late to the party but stuck pretty much to traditional looking tattoos – and all of mine done by the, now very famous and only does the stars, evil in the ink. (ooh get me – i was there before they were).

there were lots of ooohs an aaahs when someone would unveil their new tat.

also at diamond was beth. beth was a petite red head who was just a little off her rocker (though not quite as far out there as she thought she was). beth loved italian horror movies. beth dressed in a grunge hippy style. beth had multiple tattoos – they were all pretty simple black line things, the sort of tats you associate with prison (india ink and needle). most importantly i fancied the tits off of her.

for a short period we lived in the same house.

one morning we were having breakfast and she noticed my chest tattoo – a hand sized chinese dragon thing in colour. i was telling her about it and how it took around about three hours to do. she pointed to her own chest tattoo and said this took five hours.

now dear reader i confess i had looked lovingly at her chest tattoo many many times. i had imagined kissing that tattoo, i had imagined licking that tattoo i had even thought about drooling all over that tattoo. so trust me when i say i knew what that tattoo looked like: it was a simple six pointed star, two triangles laid on top of each other one pointing up, one pointing down. six straight lines, a simple star of david.

no fucking way did that tattoo take five hours.

the only way it took five hours was if you were to count from the time you woke up in the morning, had breakfast, did your daily shop, suddenly had an idea for a tattoo, spent some time looking for a tattooist to do the work, travel there, get the tattoo done, travel home, have a snooze and then have a relaxing cup of tea. then it might have taken five hours.

did i say that?

did i fuck!

of course i didn't say that because all i was thinking was if i tell her what i really thought of her tattoos then the chances of me getting to kiss, lick and drool on that chest tattoo went from slim to never happening unless you were the last man on earth and we were being attacked by lava breathing spiders.

so i said: really? it is a fine piece of work. there was no hint of sarcasm or scorn in my voice. i meant it – it was all i could do to prevent myself from saying it was a work comparable to caravaggio at his best.

i admit i was not proud of myself.

in the end it worked. i had a very brief fling with beth – that did involve some kissing, licking and drooling – though not nearly enough of it.

the funny thing about lying about women's tattoos is once you have done it once it is so much easier the second time. so when several years later i became involved with another woman who had dodgy tattoos i was straight in there with a 'that is a lovely piece of work' when really i should have been asking why did you go to the blind tattooist. i maintained my admiration for her awful ink work until long after we had ceased to be an item.

i am not proud of the fact that i am prepared to sink so low as to lie about a lady's tats, but sometimes the situation calls for a bit of silver tongued word play. i have learnt my lesson – next time i date a woman with tattoos i am going to make sure she has decent ink before we get serious.