La Pistola: I like shooting guns. It's enjoyable! I am however not a gun advocate, even though I'm always packing. It just tells the boys not to fuck with me haha! And yes, I DO have my carry & conceal permit in the state of Utah, which is valid in 36 states (not including California where I live tragically). This is an old western-style 6 shooter Colt .45 revolver. My partner's name is Colt and so that was the main incentive of this tattoo. All of the tattoos grouped here on my right hip represent important people, as I will divulge in time with future posts.
This tattoo was done by a friend of mine, a sort of big brother figure. He was a part of our local punk rock scene in my hometown and also happened to be a damn good tattoo artist. This was done when I was 20, and I think it cost me 350? dollars?
The Creepy Happy Teddy Bear: This tattoo was inspired by my grandma. She is the most beautiful person I know. She has the best smile, and only sees the good in people. She is very different from me, but I admire her. When she was in her 60s? she got this tattoo on her chest to cover a scar that she hated. I thought that was so cool that she, as a normal old lady, would get this body modification to make her body more pleasing for herself. In her tattoo (bottom) you can see that she also had "DS" in one of the balloons. These are my grandparents' initials <3 Her tattoo is very small, and so I altered it a little bit with the tattoo artist to enlarge it, added a bit more color to the balloons, and I decided to leave the initials out because I felt like they got lost in the balloons because they are so tiny. I got this tattoo before I moved to Japan because I thought I wouldn't see my grandma again probably. But I was wonderfully wrong, and she is still alive and cracking jokes. She probably forgot that I have this tattoo in her honor, but that's okay because I told her before I left and so she knew at one point.
My grandma's original tattoo:
Bunny: "Bunny" was the nickname of one of my friends. She had this same tattoo on her arm. While I was living in Japan she was hit by a drunk driver around 2am in my hometown while she was walking on the sidewalk. My other friend was with her at the time and helped chase the guy down and file the police report. She rolled under the car and seemed to have died relatively quickly. She was 20 years old.
In my last few conversations with Bunny on Facebook, she had talked about how she was saving up money to come visit me in Japan. She was an alcoholic, and we had on several occasions drank and drove together so it was a little ironic that she was killed by a drunk driver. But she was more than that, she was a very thoughtful person, she was a chatterbox, she was a great storyteller, she was funny and morbid and wild, and she was strange. She was crazy. She was always restless and hopping around between her groups of friends. She always had headphones on and walked everywhere, listening to eccentric music.
Our mutual friend, who is an aspiring tattoo artist, had done the tattoo on her originally. It was a sort of symbol of their friendship that Bunny had allowed her to practice on her. So after her passing, I asked the artist if she would do the tattoos on Bunny's friends if they desired it. She was more than happy to oblige, so I, along with a handful of other friends, have matching Bunny tattoos. The artist only charged for supplies, since it was sort of healing for her to perform these tattoos on those who loved Bunny.
I think about Bunny all the time. The driver who hit her still hasn't been convicted, almost 2 years later. There is a hole in my heart, an emptiness that cannot be filled by what's been lost. But I know that at least as long as her friends are alive she will be remembered and loved. You deserved better girl, and I'm sorry people are so selfish and thoughtless.