I have been thinking very seriously lately about getting another tattoo. A couple years ago I went through a phase of wanting to get a Firefly tattoo. And now I’m really glad I didn’t, though I think I would have justified the hell out of it by being as uppity as humanly possible about having been a fan pre-movie, pre-dvd, pre-p2p. I mean, even more uppity than I am now.

So I’ve been thinking a bit and wondering what sort of design I could get. I’ve been looking at arcane, early-Christian symbols, but many of them are so widely misunderstood that it would be a difficult thing to bear. And I found myself drawn more and more to alchemical symbols, meditating on whether or not they are necessarily occult in the anti-Christian sense.

I did a really wide-ranging search awhile back in the interest of creating some Neal Stephenson fangirl graphics and also some art of the guild website. There isn’t much simple symbology out there. Most alchemical illustrations on the web are baroque and heavily detailed– something you’d read in a book, not get inked into your skin. Eventually I found something I thought I’d like and started really, really considering it. Staring at the patch of skin where it’d be and wondering what it would look like with some art on there. Forever.

And then, continuing my Michael Chabon reading, I found this:

“What is it with this tattoo shit, Marty? Can you explain this phenomenon?”

“Well,” Green said. He could feel the weak grin guttering on his lips. He knew what Freud had said about tattooing, of course, and he had his own private theory that people who tattooed themselves, particularly the young men and women one saw doing it today, were practicing a kind of desperate act of self-assertion through legerdemain, holding a candle to a phrase written in invisible ink, raising letters and lines where before there had been only the blankest sheet of paper. Don’t throw me away, they were saying. I bear a hidden message.

And at first read, it actually changed my mind. I read it as if I was not a person with a tattoo, one who was considering this bit of radical self-assertion for the first time. I thought that I might ameliorate the desperation of “don’t throw me away” by simply avoiding a course of action. Then it occurred to me that that course has come, gone and is heading around again. Legerdemain enacted. Literally, as the extant message is actually hidden.

Now I’m wondering if I want another tattoo and whether or not I’m too easily influenced. The entire story is really about self-assertion, and accepting one’s own personality, especially in private, where it can be hardest. In private, I think I would really like a new tattoo. In public, I don’t know what to think.

It took me about four years to decide I wanted and then to decide not to get the Firefly tattoo. We’ll see how long I mutter about this one.

I know we all need vacations. We all need hot loving. Hell, I needed a car with air conditioning until one day it gave out and I was too lazy and poor to do about it and now I just live with it. Turns out it’s not a need after all.

But lately I very much have to think about my needs, because I’ve (in the course of going back to once-a-week therapy) realized that I am obsessive about denying my needs, like it will somehow make me a good, whole person. Like if I forego this little bit of required sustenance (be it water, food, or human contact) I will be a little less awful and reprehensible. There is part of me, my superego, I guess, who’s snarking on the whole situation, going “The only thing reprehsible about this action is you thinking it is somehow better to strive toward this ascetic Puritan nonsense than to be yourself and be part of the world.” I am starting to be very careful about my media intake, because I am far too drawn to the honorable, spartan, eremetic character who spends time working rather than living as a form of penance for the effrontery of existing and my imagination is too efficient at converting that from story to gospel.

My therapist is making me talk to myself. Like, out loud. I haven’t quite got there yet, though I have been very firm with my internal monologue about it being such a bitch all the time, with the impossible standards and melodramatic wailing. She asks me to fill in the blanks and asked me one question in particular that I could barely answer. It made me choke. I had to take many deep breaths before I could even whisper the answer.

With the understanding that these needs are those founded by human instinct without perversion:

You fill in the blank: If I got everything I needed, __________.

On a day to day basis, I don’t wear much makeup, usually just mascara and something on my lips, be it lipstick or lip gloss. As I understand it, this is quite a bit less than many women wear. No concealer, foundation or powder. Definitely no blush as I spend most of the time flushed two shades too pink anyway. And no eyeshadow or liner, though I will put that on if it’s a special occasion or I’m going out for the evening and want to feel fancy. Mostly, I wear makeup for myself: I like the way I look with black mascara on. And I like the way I look with red lips.

I fancy myself a member of the small sorority of women who wear red lipstick. True red. Not brick red, or vivid pink, or an orangey-brown-clay color. Red. Fire engine siren fucking RED. And preferably of a matte finish, so that there’s no shine to interfere with how red my lips are. I’ve been wearing lipstick like this since I was 13 years old and insofar as it is possible to have a personal trademark, this is mine.

Red lips don’t always go over too well– they’re too vivid, too out there, too much; all woman all the time. When you think of cosmetics in literal terms, those potions that allow women to appear semi-aroused, and hence, more attractive, it’s really kind of over the top. Sure, we enjoy our lovers most when they’re flushed with arousal: lips red and swollen from kissing, cheeks flushed, eyes dark with desire. In this way, a woman wearing vivid, true-red lipstick seems to be saying one thing: Come. And get it.

It took me a while to work out the specifics, and to work up the guts, to wear red. I don’t wear vivid red exclusively, but I do tend to favor very bright colors. My lips are best feature, so I like to show them off. Since that time, I’ve tested out quite a few reds. Earlier this summer, Elizabeth wanted to take a picture of my lipstick, the actual cosmetic product; I don’t remember why– perhaps to see it divorced from my face, an artifact without cultural context.

I discovered Ruby Woo on chance. I was shopping with Rachael (Julia’s mom) and Mary (Josh’s wife) one day, at Parisian. Mary went to look at socks and I was drawn to the MAC counter, inexorably, as if it were fate. And turns out, it was. I looked longingly at the lipstick display, and a very friendly woman wearing about three acres of purple eyeliner asked me if I’d like to try anything. I explained that I liked vivid lipsticks, especially with a matte finish. She reached down, picked up Ruby Woo. My life changed. It was the Ultimate Red. The end-all, be-all lip color. No more wearing thick, thick layers of lip liner to mimic the look. No more dusting cornstarch through a thin layer of tissue to mattify a crème lipstick. And after a slight learning-curve on the application (the finish makes it dry and it applies like a crayon), I have never looked back. I’m genuinely, truly, madly in love with Ruby Woo and always will be.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a piece on the side. Red lipstick is, after all, just another way of saying, “Hi there. Yes, I am sex on a stick.” And a couple weeks ago, I found Cruella, by Nars. It’s also matte formulated, but in a pencil and full of silicon, so it swipes on super-smooth. It doesn’t last as long as Ruby Woo (which will say on 24 hours if you don’t eat anything oily or rub your face on anything), but it’s a bit darker, a bit stricter if you will. Ruby Woo makes me moan and gasp with pleasure while Cruella makes me think and remember to say “yes, master” before I make any other noise. Ruby Woo is a pair of saddle shoes and cuffed jeans and Whole Lotta Shakin; Cruella is black on black, with a chain around the neck and something by Leonard Cohen. Ruby Woo is Marilyn Monroe; Cruella is Bettie Page. And nothing can hurt me when I’m wearing either of them, except in a good way.

And both put together are Sarah et Cetera: “There was a general impression of imminent catastrophe and red lipstick.”(Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay)