The Tattoo Lady

MORNING OF MAY 31, 2009

The first of two dreams this night. The second one is posted above:

All prior details are lost on me, but apparently I was going to be in some sort of play or other type performance situation in which I needed to have a lot of tattoos. I was sent to a tattoo artist who could make realistic-looking fake tattoos that would last for a short amount of time. (For what it's worth, I don't actually have any tattoos and am not the type who would get one.)

The tattoo lady was an attractive blonde woman, albeit covered in a bit too much body art for my tastes. She had a very sexy, filirtateous, yet approachable demeanor. She explained to me that since my "character" was nerdy (really, just my "character"?), all the tattoos I had would be nerdy, and therefore be funny.

After I made her assure me these tattoos would all be completely removable, we began. Using a hand-held device that worked more or less like a laser printer against the skin, she quickly scanned a full-color tattoo of Optimus Prime from the 80's Transformers cartoon on my left thigh. I laughed and asked if she was going to put Megatron on my right one. She said she was, but the character that came out of the scanning device looked more like Soundwave to me.

She then explained to me that I would have to come up with all the other nerdy tattoo ideas on my own, and bring her art reference for them. So I left her tattoo parlor, exiting into what looked like the hallways of my workplace, then going into the master control room where I spend most of my time there.

On a yellow legal pad I began writing and sketching ideas. I made a column for "nerdy" thigns I genuinely like, and a column for tattoos I just thought would be funny. The "real" list had things like Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Kermit the Frog, Back to the Fture, and other various characters/properties I've always loved. The silly column basically featured references to in-jokes between friends and I that would be pointless to recount in detail here.

I took my list back back down the hall to the sexy tattoo lady, and walked in on her with a girl who, if she wasn't her girlfriend, was someone she obviously felt very comfortable with. They assured me I wasn't interrupting anything, but this, naturally, is where the dream ended.