By Zach Brokenrope
Aurora High School

"Not really," she said and grinned, "at least not compared to giving birth."

For a second, I considered leaving, just forgetting about my deposit and heading straight out the door. Instead, I sat there with my feet glued to the floor and my fingers twisting in my lap.

"You're gonna be fine," Darcy said, even though I wasn't sure if I could believe her.

"You ready?" Joey, the tattoo artist, said as he approached the couch I was sitting on.

I got up, smiled and shook his hand.

"It's now or never," I said and followed him behind the counter.

Getting the tattoo on my back was a decision partially inspired by every school counselor I've ever had. "You don't want it to get in the way of interviews," they would warn, as if having a tattoo would be the single thing that prevented me from landing my future job as president of the United States.

Stripping my shirt off was a hard thing to do, and it was the first time since P.E. in 10th grade that I did it publicly. I did, however, take solace in the fact that this time no one would be flinging plastic balls at me.

When the needle hit my skin for the first time, I bit my lip so hard that I could taste blood, but that was mostly out of anxiety and the expectation of pain instead of the real feel.

Getting a tattoo wasn't something I had decided last minute or did to spite my parents. In fact, they were supportive.

"Don't get something stupid," my dad had warned, "like a big dragon or something like that."

My mother, however, was slightly more apprehensive.

"I just worry about disease," she warned. "You never can be too careful with needles." She said it as if I was planning on getting my tattoo in a back alley somewhere, where it would be done with an old syringe scraping against my skin.

For the 45 minutes that I lay across the chair, I kept my mind on other things. I named and spelled all 50 states in alphabetical order mentally. I considered who I wanted to invite to my graduation reception. I wondered if I was in fact cool enough to have a tattoo.

"Done, man," Joey said and wiped my back off with a cloth. I took a second and looked over my shoulder into the mirror and liked what I saw, the dark ink contrasting against my increasingly pale skin.

I never had a normal teenage rebellion, where I disobeyed my parents and stayed out late. In a way, I guess I kind of always wished I could have been more "bad" but in a good kind of way.

I figure my tattoo is the closest I'm going to get.