Redemption in the Tattoo Parlor
He didn’t flinch when I lowered the drape. I steeled myself for some reaction, even though I had warned him that he would be working with a two-time deconstructed chest rather than the smooth, newly reconstructed breasts he was used to. But he didn’t even blink.
Vinnie the tattoo artist was a true professional in his button-down shirt, narrow tie, and trademark pork pie straw hat. He simply examined the uneven and scarred human canvas in front of him and proceeded to place the two pink latex discs where he thought my new nipples should go.
“How’s that?” he asked, as a tailor might ask before drawing the temporary chalk lines on a piece of cloth to mark the necessary adjustments. I responded tentatively, “Maybe move the right one a little more toward the center, and can you make them both a little smaller and a little lighter?” He tilted his head slightly while looking over my shoulder into the mirror and gently adjusted them according to my suggestions. “Better?” he asked. I shook my head yes.
I was nervous as I settled into the dentist-like chair in Vinnie’s private treatment room, the only one in the place with an actual door. The containers holding the various shades of pink and brown paints reminded me of my childhood paint-by-numbers kits and had an oddly calming effect on me. I still felt myself tense up, though, as the motor on his hand-held tattoo machine began to whir.
I was somewhat surprised at the ease with which I bared my chest to a perfect stranger. I have been self-conscious about my breasts for a very long time. As it so often does with middle-school girls, the shame and embarrassment started through an innocuous comment I overheard a family friend make to my father. “You better find some kind of harness for her,” he said, referring to my newly developed chest that no longer matched the rest of my skinny little body.
I was twelve or thirteen at a Sunday afternoon high school graduation party for a friend’s older brother on whom I had a slight crush. I walked into the party feeling beautiful in my new, bright yellow flower-patterned sundress with its gathered bodice and spaghetti straps, secretly hoping the graduate might notice me as something more than his baby sister’s friend. Now, I just wanted to slink out of the party, stuff the dress in a corner of my closet, and crawl into my bed. I was mortified.
One of the few positive thoughts I can conjure up about my breasts is more my mother’s memory than my own. “You were around three or four,” she told me, “and you didn’t want to wear a shirt out to play since your brother didn’t have to wear one.” She went on, “I finally gave up insisting that you put one on before leaving the house after you returned home shirtless and empty-handed for the fourth time in a row.” Her story always served to remind me that there was a time when I actually felt good about my body.
Teasing from my male classmates— “Do you have any extra tissues I could borrow?”— and other more innocently delivered comments like the time I was called “husky” and handed a size 12 pattern for my cheerleading uniform when I barely tipped the scale at 100 pounds, compounded the problem. My Irish (read: we don’t talk about these things) - Catholic (read: sex is a sin) identity destroyed any glimmer of hope for a positive body image, especially toward my boobs, that still existed.
So, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago at the age of fifty-seven and decided on a bilateral mastectomy as the best option for preventing recurrence, I wasn’t all that upset about the idea of replacing my droopy, bulbous 34DDs with what I imagined would be a perky little set of 34Bs. I looked forward to having the option of going braless and not worrying about whether my “nips” were poking through my t-shirts.
I heard about the Vinnie Myers Team from a neighbor I barely knew, who had recognized the assortment of brightly patterned head scarves I had begun wearing for what they were. “Welcome to the “C” club,” she said, an introduction that had become somewhat ubiquitous from the many breast cancer survivors who—thanks to my bald head and missing eyebrows—now recognized me as one of their own.
After the usual cancer banter, “Her-2 positive or negative? Any lymph node involvement? Who did your reconstruction?” my neighbor leaned in and almost whispered, “Did you keep your nipples?” When I said no, she continued in her conspiratorial voice, “I just got my nipple tattoos. If you’re going to get them, you have to go to Vinnie Myers. He’s absolutely amaaaaazing!” she gushed, “I can’t believe how real they look.”
I went home and immediately checked out Vinnie’s work on his website and called that day to put down a deposit. I didn’t care whether insurance would cover it. I needed something to look forward to as I worked to regain my strength and waited for my hair to grow back. I was so ready for this whole thing to be over with—I wanted to get on Vinnie’s schedule as soon as possible.
Six weeks of radiation, five months of chemo, four surgeries, three maintenance drugs, two infections, and one year later, I—and my deconstructed and deformed (think granny apple head doll) flat chest—were carrying quite a bit of mental and physical baggage as I approached the tattoo parlor in the non-descript red-brick strip mall. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. All my self-righteous pontifications on the many reasons I believed people, especially my two children, should not get tattoos, swirled around in my head as I waited to see if Vinnie could even attempt to help me redeem a small sense of my femininity.
Over the next thirty minutes, we talked about our kids, how Vinnie got started in the nipple tattoo business and even our shared proclivity to road rage. The conversation helped keep my mind off the physical discomfort that waxed and waned, depending on whether he was working on an area of my chest that was still numb from the severed nerves of my mastectomy.
I anticipated some swelling and bruising and was sure it would take at least a few days before I’d be able to tell whether he had lived up to his website’s claim of “the most realistic representation of lifelike nipples and areolas available.” Imagine my surprise, then, when he turned off the machine and swiveled me around to look in the mirror.
I raised my eyes slowly, holding my breath, and couldn’t believe what I saw. The soft pink areolas with their 3-D nipples and even a few tubercle markings were truly a work of art.
“They’re beautiful,” I stammered. “I like them better than the originals.”
“That’s my hope,” he replied.
At that moment, I realized that the sanding and puncturing of the needles as they delivered different shades of pigment into my skin might just be able to help puncture and sand away the negative feelings that had accumulated in my psyche over the past fifty years.
It turns out that Vinnie’s work of art is also a work of love—and in my case, redemption. In addition to being a talented and creative tattoo artist, he is a healer. For the first time in a very long time—perhaps since I was that little shirtless girl scrambling up the hill after her brother—I felt whole and beautiful in my own body.