Here's an old story about when I worked in the NYU weight room. Yes, I worked in a weight room. Times were tough.
When you sport any amount of tattoos, no matter what they are, people will show you theirs, tell you about their ideas or ask you how much their ideas will cost. At this time, I think my skin was graced with a Darth Vader, my two swim team mascots (I was team captain, by the way) and a relatively obscure comic book character named Deadpool–which now has been chopped in half by my neck surgery and slightly covered up.
One of my employees, Mart, inked up a lot of his body with punk rock sayings and maybe some skulls and maybe some other stuff. I don't know. I didn't really care.
As I picked up some dumbbells (I used that NYU degree pretty brilliantly back then) Mart flashed his man-boobs at me. If he was a girl, my hands would always be busy. However, Mart was a dude and probably is wearing a brassiere by now to stymy his sagging hooters.
"Check that out, man. That's my mom's name and my grandmom's name. Tattooed on my chest," Mart proudly proclaimed. Even though "chest" was using the word pretty loosely.
"Wow, man. That's cool. Nothing says devotion like permanently tattooing your family's name. That's pretty awesome."
"Next week, my bro is going to tattoo my girl's name ‘Shae-La' right under my mom's name. I'm asking you as a friend and as a fellow inked-up guy, that's cool right?"
"Yeah man. Are you sure you want to do that? I mean, your mom is always going to be your mom. And your grandma is always going to be your grandma. But is your girlfriend…"
"Get real man! I love this girl. We're in love. You just don't understand."
"Okay dude."
After the next weekend, again I saw some male breasticles, but this time, there were three names. "Check that out, man. Cool right?"
"Like I said, pretty permanent."
"Whatever man. You just don't understand love."
Then a few days later, "Yo man. You know of any good cover-up artists?"
Think before you ink, kids.
