Caroline O'Donoghue: 'Why I got a tattoo last Saturday'
Recently I had nothing to do, so I went and got a tattoo. It is my first one. I am 30 years old.
You might think that, as someone who has avoided the unfortunate tattoo phase most commonly experienced by people aged 16 to 24, I would skip freely into the rest of my life, unmarked by an electric needle dipped in ink.
Actually, my lack of an unfortunate tattoo has become a joke over the years in my group of friends.
Whenever the subject comes up, Tash or Ella will turn to me and say: “I’m sorry, I just don’t believe you’re the type of woman to not have either a dolphin on your shoulder or a Tweety Bird on your ass cheek.”
I don’t blame them for thinking it. I have been on holidays to all the most unfortunate tattoo destinations in the world: Thailand, Magaluf, Benidorm.
When I was nineteen I went interrailing, and sat in a Dutch hostel while my two friends tried to bully me into getting a recycling tattoo. “Three arrows,” one pleaded, showing me the image on her Coke can. “Like the three of us, constantly moving, having the trip of a lifetime.” I said that I didn’t need a tattoo to remember this trip of a lifetime.
Sleeping in a Spanish ATM vestibule was memorable enough.
Since then I’ve flirted with the idea of a tattoo, but never quite committed.
I’ve run through all the usual ideas had by young women in a desperate bid to feel interesting: Alanis Morrisette lyrics, stars, lines from The Great Gatsby.
After my friend John died in 2018, I seriously thought about getting a tattoo to commemorate him, before remembering that John hated all tattoos, pronouncing it ‘tuh-two’, and was so cosmetically conservative he thought that jeans on women looked ‘common’.
So how have I ended up with a small line drawing of a dog on my inner wrist, after so many failed tattoo plans? Well….
I had a party in the park, spent all week reading reviews and interviews with myself, and by Saturday morning, felt queasy and unsettled. Like I’d eaten a bag of marshmallows at the cinema.
When you put a book out, you’re eager to hear what readers have to say, and the temptation to gorge yourself on other people’s opinions is too great to hold yourself back from. Like every other author before me, I discovered that publicity is like MSG for the human spirit: temporary satisfaction quickly followed by a bloated feeling, and then a gassy, ravenous hunger.
You look at pictures of yourself, read quotes apparently said by you, and there’s a feeling of being disjointed from yourself – that there’s a hologram of you, one that people are actively being invited to critique and judge, and you can’t control what it does. You begin to feel a little less real, even to yourself. Perhaps this is why I woke up at 7am on Saturday morning with one thought repeating itself, refusing to quiet: I’m going to get a tattoo today.
The plan had been to take a break from the manic launch week, to clean the house, to take myself for breakfast. The whole time, all I could think was: tattoo, tattoo, tattoo. There seemed to be signs everywhere. I saw a girl showing her tattoo bandage to the barista, telling him that it hurt, but not that much.
A giddy idea formed in my head: what if I got a tattoo today, and I didn’t tell a soul I was getting it? Not my boyfriend, or my best friend, or my mum? What if I didn’t solicit any opinions first? What if it was just between me and myself?
On the inside flap of my book is a small illustration of a dog called Satan, a fairly important character in the story, given that he is an ageing terrier. I started writing the book when my own dog Sylvie was just a puppy, and Satan’s many exploits were based on the frustrations of having a dog with a stronger will than I did. I took the illustration with me to my local tattoo parlour. The tattoo artist nodded. “I can do that,” he said.
“Fifty quid.”
“No backing out now,” he said cheerfully. And then, more sternly: “No refunds.”
But not as much as period cramps; not as much as the extensive dental work I’ve already had this year; not as much as getting the coil. The pain is hot and frank, nowhere near as terrible as, say, stepping on a plug.
I walked out of the tattoo parlour fifty pounds poorer, and feeling about three stone lighter. Some tense knot that had formed over the course of release week had unfurled, and I felt more myself than I had done in weeks. I keep looking at my little dog and laughing, thrilled to have him join for the remainder of my life, curious about what we’ll get up to next.
