Some advice: don't get your elbow tattooed or reading things that bother you

Portrait of an ongoing Negotiation Post Nutrition Label Content Type: Text & Photos Read Time: 10 min Topics: Pain, Tattoos, Writing about anything in public I'm having an ongoing conversation with a needle and an artist. The latter I found through a recommendation so many friends-of-friends-of-friends removed that it stopped being a chain and became something closer to causality; it's the universe conspiring to introduce me to the person who'd spend the next decade putting holes in me on purpose. The former has been wielded by the latter going on ten years now. This guy has been privy to a lot of pain. This guy has inflicted a lot of pain. I asked him to. He and that needle know something about the elbow joint underneath that I don't, like some old grudge being settled on behalf of every nerve ending unlucky enough to live this close to the surface. Tattoo artists have to be sadists and therapists and gentle parents all at once, sometimes within the same ninety seconds. All…