A Permanent Reminder of a Temporary Situation

I was barely fourteen, and my fake ID wouldn’t work there—that very street, St. Marks Place, was where I had gotten it. It was after school, and Dee and I had gone from shop to shop, remaining optimistic while receiving one rejection after another, until finally one Puerto Rican guy didn’t care to check how old I was.

“I only take cash,” were the first words he spoke to us. He was bald, short, covered in tattoos, but not threatening. If anything, he was the opposite; his failure to ask for my ID seemed a lazy move, rather than an advantageous one.

As if paying with credit card were a choice, I agreed to pay in cash.

“Well what do you want?”

I looked around the walls...not technically walls, this was not technically a shop. It was more of a booth; the street was lined with a dozen or so of them. They all sold the same things: body jewelry, hair clips, bongs, tattoos.

“I’m not sure,” I answered, looking at what were clearly photo-copies of photocopies. “I have forty dollars. What can I get for that?”

“That’s all you got?” he laughed. “For that, I can give you a heart or a star. Not no big one, neither.”

I turned to Dee. “What do you think?”

“Definitely a star,” she said. “You’re gonna regret a heart when you get old.”

“Okay, lemme get a star,” I told the guy, and took my forty dollars out of my North Face asspack.

I was seventeen. My boyfriend at the time, Kevin, drove me to New Jersey in his dad’s car. His dad didn’t allow Kevin to drive, but once a week or so, we slipped the parking attendant twenty dollars, and he would pull the car out for us.

I had searched “permanent makeup nyc” on Craigslist, and while hers was not the first name to come up, she was the closest to the city, and based on my feeling, the least likely to ask about my age. We went into her basement, which makes the situation sound much shadier than it actually was. Or maybe it was that shady, and I just wanted my eyeliner tattooed on that badly. Kevin watched The Simpsons on the sofa as the lady put numbing cream on my eyelids. I could hear it was the episode where Maggie was going to say “Dada” for the first time.

“Will I be able to wear makeup tomorrow?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “You won’t want to wear any kind of eye makeup for at least a week. I’ll give you an after-care pamphlet before you leave.”

Even with the numbing cream, it was painful, much more painful than the star on my forearm. Tears involuntarily spilled out of my eyes as I apologized, fearing it would make the process harder for her.

“Don’t worry,” she smiled. “You just stay still.”

We drove home in silence as I held a bag of frozen peas on my eyes. Kevin didn’t need to say anything; I knew he thought I was ridiculous.

Kevin is dead now, and my tattooed eyeliner is long gone—it faded slowly over the years, and there’s no trace of it now. I miss them both, but I can only get one back.

I had just turned nineteen. It was my first time in Las Vegas, my first time taking a prescription opiate, and my first time getting married. High and happy, I signed a waiver promising that I wasn’t on any drugs. We were two weeks into our relationship; we were two weeks into knowing each other, and the night before, we had participated in a drive-through wedding in the backseat of Mike’s car.

“Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we got married today?” he had asked.

And I had agreed.

It was now four hours before our flight back to NYC, and we were walking around a casino, enjoying our new titles as husband and wife. We passed a tattoo shop. “I wanna get a tattoo!” I exclaimed. “I’ll get one too,” he answered.

He went first. He got my name tattooed on his back. “What if we break up?” I asked. In my opiated logic, I felt the chances for regret were higher for a tattoo than a marriage.

“A tattoo is a permanent reminder of a temporary situation,” he smiled.

“That’s not an answer...”

When it was my turn to sit in the chair, the artist asked me what I wanted. I pointed to a picture of a naked lady on the wall.

I was still nineteen. I was still high on opiates; I had been every day since the drive-through wedding. Although I had done drugs throughout high school, I had somehow managed to stay away from prescription painkillers, until Eddie. He opened me up to a new world—no longer did I want acid, or ecstasy, or cocaine, or even my favorite ketamine; all I wanted was to feel the warm happiness Oxycontin brought me.

The worst part of an opiate habit is the irritability it brings; because of this, we constantly fought. Every day was another unnecessary fight—he hurt my feelings by making a certain facial expression, or he was mad at me for getting too high and making a mess in his friends’ country house. We fought not just at home but everywhere—our friends knew that hanging out with us was a gamble. If we all drove someplace together, there was a good chance we would fight, and getting home would mean finding another means of transportation for half the group.

This time, we had been in the car. He pushed me out of it while it was moving, in broad daylight in the middle of Soho—I don’t deny I deserved it; I was punching him while he was driving, causing the car to swerve in and out of our side of the street. I walked home sobbing, running away from pedestrians trying to help.

The best moments of our relationship always followed fights like these, and this time was no different. I took another Oxy, we swore to be together forever, and I left the house telling him I’d have a surprise for him when I got back.

Dee sat with me as the man prepared the needle. “Are you sure?” she asked. “You guys were just breaking up an hour ago...”

“I can always cover it up,” I shrugged, as the man tattooed Eddie’s name on my ankle.

I was around twenty-one. No, I was twenty, definitely twenty. For certain, I had been high on Oxy every day for over a year. We were at Mike’s house, his cousin the tattoo artist was in town from Los Angeles. He was tattooing us all. I had chosen two flowers from a Japanese vase in Mike’s house for my shoulders.

“You need to put her in rehab,” Mike said right in front of me. I wasn’t sure if he knew I heard.

I scratched my face and didn’t say anything.

I was twenty-four. In porn for a little over a year, divorced for a little over three. I was sober now, living in Los Angeles, and honestly happy. I went to Mike’s cousin’s shop, the one who had tattooed me last when I was high.

He laughed when he saw me. “I walked into the kitchen, and you were getting your butthole fingered,” he said in a pothead drawl.

“I don’t remember that,” I replied. It was the truth.

“Do you still talk to him? I heard you guys broke up.”

I shook my head. “I think he’s in jail. I’m actually here because I want this covered up.” I pointed to my ankle.

“That’s why I never do names,” he sighed.

I was twenty-seven. Sober for over four years, I was at the height of my porn career and in the best shape of my life, both physically and mentally. Toni had kept telling me he had a surprise for me—and I had assumed he was going to propose. It’s what I wanted, badly; we had been together almost a year, and I was enamored. But when he showed up in New York City where I was visiting my family, with my name tattooed on his wrist, I realized a proposal was not the surprise I had been hoping for.

But then, a few days later, he got down on his knee at Rockefeller Center and asked me to marry him. “Your parents already know,” he beamed after I said yes. He had asked them for my hand in marriage the night before, which meant even more to me than the tattoo and the proposal combined. Yes, this is how two whores who met in a DP scene got engaged.

We were married a week later. It was my second wedding in Las Vegas. An Elvis led the ceremony.

Some days after that, back in LA, I tattooed Toni’s name on my wrist.

This time, Dee didn’t ask me if I was sure.

Besides, I could always get it covered up.

I am thirty. Perhaps the most profound tattoo is the figurative one on my forehead. It will not fade over time, I cannot cover it up, it cannot be removed, and it is more hindering than if it were literal. It is the one guaranteed permanent thing in my life: my porn career. When I walk on the street, the strangers I pass have seen my most private moments. When I eat at a restaurant with my parents, fellow diners are shocked that I am somebody’s daughter. If I have my own children, their friends’ parents will be wary of letting their kids come over for a playdate.

I have been lucky. My porno tattoo has been worth it. I wouldn’t trade it for any amount of money in the world, for any other experience, for any kind of love.

But I cannot help but feel saddened for girls with the same scarlet letter who want it to fade over time, want it covered up, want it removed.