LOVE IS SKIN DEEP . . . OR JUST BELOW IT

Last night was Halloween .. yay! We love Halloween. Dress up, be silly, watch religious people have a coronary. Collette and I have always loved this holiday ... which is why it is our anniversary. Anniversary of what, exactly? I'll get to that.


We decided to make a night of it. This was anniversary number 25 ... that's a little less than half my life. That's significant. So downtown we go, first to have dinner, then up the Panasonic (Utptown) Theatre to see We Will Rock You, the Queen musical. Collette and I saw this once before, at the Canon (Pantages) Theatre and really loved it. The Panasonic is a more intimate space and this performance featured musical powerhouse Camilla Scott .. in a role traditionally played by a male. And we got a good price, so it seemed a good night out.


The restaurant was several blocks away from the theatre but we had a beautiful, even balmy evening on hand so we walked up Yonge Street, dodging sexy nurses, naughty school girls, many Asian kitty cats and a spectacularly drunken Spiderman. As we walked along we passed a tattoo shop where I have had some work done in the past. I mused about getting another tattoo, Collette said we should get an anniversary tattoo, I thought maybe a simple black kanji for the number 25, we had some time to kill, and we were in the place ...


Seems there are no kanji for the number 25, so we started flipping through symbols. We wanted the same piece, of course, so it had to be something that represented both of us and this anniversary. Husband & wife .. um, no. Love .. no. Marriage ... er, no.


You see, we are not married. We are one of the most "married" couples you have ever met, but we are not married. We live in sin. This has been pointed out to us for a long, long time. Stand up comedian Charlie Fleischer pointed me out once in his act "Commit damnit! Commit!" Collette's mother once gave us a set of pots and pans. She was quick to point out "You didn't get the really good set, because you're not married." That's right, we live in sin. And there it was, the kanji for sin. An attractive graphic symbol. I was looking at a simple black piece but Collette likes colour .. and you see, this was to be her first tattoo and she wanted colour. So she found a Sin kanji in colour. So we made an appointment and went off to see the show.


So, skipping a review of a really, really good musical .. two hours later we were back in the tattoo shop. Getting inked. Collette decided to incorporate the number 25 into the piece ... 25 years of sin. Yeh, I was so down with that. We did a little customizing with colour and shadows but we got the exact same tattoo.

And I have to say: My girl is tough. She walked 60K over two days with no adverse result and when I asked her how the tattoo felt she replied "I really just wanted to take a nap, except for when it tickled"


Here are close ups of the tatts (still healing, of course). I got mine on the inside of my right forearm, Collette got hers on her right calf.


So here is mine ...

And here is Collette's ...

So an impulse? Sure. But an impulse 25 years in the making.