I was quite pleased with the shop. It was enormously different from the creepy, horror movie place I’d visited with my friend a couple of years earlier. It smelled like a hospital, but the decorating scheme was a lot more appealing. The tiny waiting room featured a couple of tall glass display cases filled with all sorts of body jewelry, beside which sat two funky, fluffy chairs. Behind a curtain we could hear the buzzing of the tattoo machine over some amazing music, and in no time at all a pierced, tattooed guy with spiked hair (the stereotype holds up in tattoo shops all over the world, it seems) walked out and greeted us. We went behind the curtain, where I expected a scary room – I guess I was still a bit traumatized from my previous tattoo shop experience. The place was quite pleasant, though. The walls were covered with great posters and artwork, and there were a couple of shelves filled with books on tattoos. The artist’s laptop sat on a table in the corner, where we got to see some of his previous work – all absolutely amazing.

As we looked around the room, the artist worked on a fairy on a girl’s back (she was a completely unpleasant person and didn’t even say thank you when we complimented her on the tattoo, but we were too enchanted by the place to really care. Besides, the friendly staff more than made up for it). Still a bit paranoid, I went through the checklist in my head: the entire place was spotless, plastic covered the work surface, the artist was wearing gloves, he used single-use needles that were opened in front of the costumer…it was perfect. And I was even more thrilled when, during my own tattoo, he went through the entire safety procedure himself, instead of assuming that I already knew all about it.

After the stencil was on my back, the nervousness kicked in. I sat on the work table, leaning over a chair and smiling at the camera as my tension mounted. I could hear the buzzing of the machine as he adjusted the needle, and I thought I would go crazy waiting for him to begin. Finally, he did. I suppose the anxiety build-up helped, because the first stroke didn’t hurt nearly as much as I had expected. Still, the new and unfamiliar experience had my legs shaking during the first half of the procedure. During the second half the pain really started to kick in as he filled in the outlines, and I turned my focus from my shaking legs to gripping the chair in front of me and breathing deeply, in order to keep the whimpers that were threatening to escape my throat under control.