The tinny buzz of the tattoo gun was louder than I’d anticipated. I sucked in a deep breath and narrowed my eyes on my shoes as the needle ripped through my skin. Corinne and Christina each held a hand, bookending me on the black leather bench we shared. I hadn’t done much research on where to get my first tattoo; the Internet was still in its nascent stages when I was 19. So I went to the only tattoo parlor I knew of: the one in an old trailer on University Boulevard, the main drag that empties out into the University of Alabama. The kind of place where mistakes are born and, in this case, live in perpetuity.
Weeks prior, from the seat of his dad’s oversized office chair, my friend, Joel, looked small at his dad’s professorly desk, a thick, wide, mass of dark wood with brass knobs. He typed out the word “truth” in Hebrew characters on a Word document. He pulled from one of his dad’s books crowding the shelves. I needed to know my tattoo wouldn’t read “ocean” or “dickhead.”
It was 2006. White people co-opting other people’s cultures had been out of control for...ever, but their getting tribal tattoos and Chinese characters meaning “love” was at an all time high. But I wasn’t like them. My tattoo should mean something. As a 19-year-old college freshman, everything meant something. I hadn’t yet given up on organized religion, still believing that all that time sitting diligently in cold, wooden pews would save me from the fiery inferno those Baptist preachers wailed on about all morning. My still-developing teen brain thought, “Jesus was a Jew! This word, in an ancient, sacred language, would be just the right tattoo for me!”
I was going to have it discreetly inked on my lower back. It would almost be like only I knew it was there. I wouldn’t regret it, like everyone says you will, because when I’d become an old woman, I would have lost the desire to wear revealing low-cut bikinis in public and would most certainly be covering every square inch of my body in Eileen Fisher linens.
A few Friday nights later, Corinne and I were at a frat party, mingling among bowls of electric red “hunch punch” and boys with chunky bangs that swept their foreheads like peaks of meringue. I watched the older girls talk to the boys with confidence, and tried my best to mimic this boldness in a way that felt natural. The junior and senior girls hung effortlessly in doorways, playfully pushing boys away while laughing at their jokes. Corinne and I nudged them with our elbows and winked seductively. We met their jokes with quick and witty responses. To be a southern woman often means being prepared with quick comebacks if you want to strategically tear down the patriarchy hang with the boys.
Then I overheard one of them make a crude joke about what he called “a tramp stamp.” A hush fell over my insides as I went to work piecing together what this meant. The crowd surrounding him chuckled in agreement. My eyes widened, cheeks flushed, and I clutched my drink. I have one of those, I gasped to myself. Then I imagined that I tip-toed backwards out of the room to conceal myself in full-body makeup and never remove my clothes again. If tramps stamps were the punchline, then I was going to be the butt of the joke. Forever.
Mom and dad came up for Parents’ weekend, the annual collegiate event where children hide how much they've been partying and elucidate how much they've learned at classes they haven't attended. Mom shone her radiant smile to everyone she met, charming all with her rich southern drawl. Mostly she beamed with the pride of parenthood and Roll Tide merchandise she over-purchased on in the gift shop. By God, if her daughter was going to cost them out-of-state tuition when she damn well could have gone to Mississippi State or Ole Miss, mom was going to revel in her role as a Crimson Tide Mom. Dad, donning a crimson-colored golf shirt, doled out firm handshakes and cracked jokes about all the “sweet tea” we must have been drinking from those red Solo cups.
I was sitting on the floor of my dorm when, unbeknownst to me, the back of my jeans buckled enough to reveal my new ink. Dad, of all people, took notice. From a seat in my dorm, he silently unraveled at the sight of his only daughter’s first tattoo. I didn’t hear the steam shooting out of his ears, but I was informed about it later from my mom. She’d heard about it from him––for 3 hours and 27 minutes, approximately the length of the drive from Tuscaloosa to Jackson, Mississippi.
When I was 10, mom came to rest in the frame of my bedroom doorway with a frown on her face, her arm extending our beige wall phone, its curly, bouncing cord running the length of the entire house.
“You need to call Missy and apologize.”
“Why?”
“You told her you didn’t like the dress she’s wearing to the dance. That’s rude.”
I racked my brain for the moment I told my best friend that the dress she chose for our middle school dance was flat-out ugly. It didn’t sound like something I’d say. Then I realized that I’d nonchalantly said, “I don’t like shift dresses.” What tween talks so defiantly about fashion silhouettes anyway?
I meant that I, personally, a chubby pre-teen with a penchant for head-to-toe florals, would not have chosen to wear a plain white cotton poplin shift to a school dance. That I, personally, would have picked a dress with more pizazz. An interesting silhouette. Stop being so boring, Missy.
Growing up, I was a faucet with no filter, spilling my thoughts all over anyone who’d listen. It became a running joke in my family, that if you wanted to know if your new haircut was any good at all, or if the dress you were eyeing at Dillards was cute or not, just ask me. I’d tell you the truth. (Politely, of course.) Honestly, I was just a bad liar. I’d tried; it was never convincing enough. I was too sweet, too vulnerable, too genuine. So I opted to tell the truth––until I realized what lying could get me.
It almost always centered around boys and it started with omitting the truth. Gathering a fan base of gentlemen who didn’t know about each other. Mostly they were little white lies. You think that’s a hickey? Nooo, that’s from the church paintball game. (It’s a hickey.) I didn’t lie often, but as I grew older, the fibs I told gained weight. Once I broke up with my boyfriend so that I could go see another boy––an ex––and technically not cheat. Then I lied about where I went and for how long. I justified each lie the way one might justify stealing a pack of gum or a keychain. Tiny little offenses that didn’t seem like they were worth much, but added up over time. After years of living with a squeaky-clean reputation, of being a painfully wholesome teen, I was itching to get my hands dirty.
Maybe it was partially a response to the Fear of God my mother put in me around playing Spin the Bottle at middle school parties. The way she spoke of it, I’d walk away pregnant––or worse––dead on contact from syphilis should I dare think of participating in the spit-swapping sport. Maybe deep down, I was just tired of knowing there was no space for me to make mistakes. At school, I was called a goody two-shoes. “Say a cuss word,” kids would prod me during class. “Just one.” And it was clear to me that everyone was waiting for me to fuck up. (There, I said it.) At one time or another, rebellion always looks good to the obedient. It’s only human.
Then, in college, I fell in love. A deep, wretched, nauseating kind of love that makes you crazy, sick, and buoyant at once. It engulfed me, but also made me want to run away. This love spanned my Senior year and into my first couple of years in New York City, and it was one of the messiest, most beautiful relationships of my life. Then he cheated on me. And lied about it for four months. Or should I say, he omitted the truth.
He was the first person I ever slept with (though I was not his) and he knew that a girl like me took these things to heart; that cheating was a deal breaker. So after I found out (through a MySpace message), and after he ran 23 Manhattan blocks (from his apartment to mine), I beat his chest with my fists while screaming tear-soaked expletives and smearing mascara on his soft, gray t-shirt like a Rorschach. I ached because I knew it was over. But most of all, I ached because I felt like an idiot. An idiot that returned to bed each night for months with him and his secret. I’d never been the victim of such an intimate lie, and I swore I’d never tell a lie like that. Except I wasn’t ready to relinquish everything that lying gave me. I didn’t just want to have my cake and it, too; I wanted the whole damn bakery.
A few years later, I started sleeping with a friend-and-former-boss. It was decidedly casual, though. I knew that he was actively seeing other people not only by our agreement, but also by the long black hairs scattered around his apartment, on the bathroom counter, or clinging to his duvet.
I started seeing someone else, too. Except it was one of his best friends. Such a tryst was not premeditated. But I was an active part of a months-long secret; bad behavior I continued to justify because, well, it’s casual. Perhaps I was acting out because I was still hurt from being cheated on a few years prior. (Hurt people hurt people, right?) I wanted to be in control now. Or maybe the teenager within me, who never grew up, was still rebelling against her girl-next-door persona. Either way, my love triangle did not end well.
“You’re a coward,” my friend-lover said, and he wasn’t wrong. I could have been seeing any one of New York City’s 8.4 million people, but I chose to sleep with one of his best friends. Then the two of us chose to hide it from him, naturally. The night we came clean, my friend-lover punched a stranger in a bar and went to jail for the night. In my apartment, I stood alone in the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror, nauseated by an unfamiliar reflection.
After that, I began declining social invitations, instead ushering myself straight home after work to dine alone in my Lower East Side apartment. I stopped looking for the small delights in my every day––a drop-in at my favorite coffee shop, a museum date for two––committed to the idea that I was undeserving of joy and should repent for being a liar. I’d done what someone had done to me. How predictable. Then, after several months of sitting with my poor decision, I emerged ready to return to the truth.
When I started dating again, I went on a truth-tear. Driven mad by men who said they’d call and never did, and sick of being told, “We should do that again,” only to never hear from them again, I vowed to have the spine they all seemed to lack. To just be honest. A friend of a friend called one afternoon, not long after I’d made this declaration.
“Wanna go out sometime?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think it would work out.”
He guffawed. “How do you know if you won’t give me a chance?”
“I just have a feeling. I don’t want to waste your time.”
I felt I was doing him a favor with my honesty. I’m not interested and I won’t pretend to be. You deserve better, after all. I took this straightforward approach with all my subsequent romances: the geeky marketing executive who I desperately wanted to like more than I did (it’s not you, it’s me. Really); the handsome bartender who never took me on an actual date; even the man who would eventually become my husband.
“Look,” I told my future husband above the din of a noisy bar one night. “I’d love your company if you want to stick around. But don’t expect anything from me.” He didn’t immediately bristle, so I continued. “I don’t want to have to text you before bed. Or call you when my plane lands. I’m going to keep seeing other people. If you’re OK with that, then great. If not, I understand.” Now we’ve been together 12 years and I’ve only offended him with my truth-telling a handful of times. (I think.)
As a child, I told the truth because I was a bad liar. As an adult, I understand it as the highest level of respect one person can give another. It’s the least we can do for each other. The reason I went to a second-rate tattoo trailer to get a culturally inappropriate tattoo all those years ago is because, even at 19, I wanted to be forever reminded of the importance of telling the truth. Even when the truth hurts, it will, as they say, set you free. And if I ever forget, all I need to do is look at my back in the mirror. Truth will be there forever.