The Case of the 439-Month-Old Playing Dress Up: But Add Blood and Make It Itch
Megan Cannella
In September, I got a punny bracelet of anthropomorphic flowers and letters tattooed around my left wrist. Explaining how hilarious “what in carnation” is to people who have never heard the phrase “what in tarnation” proved immediately tedious. Still, those smiling flower faces and the whimsical Alice in Wonderland vibes assured me I had made the right choice.
Until the following July--just last month, when I tried acid for the first time, and, upon washing my hands, determined my flower bracelet was too tight. Left with no way to remedy this situation--because I alone had brought upon myself (relatable)--I pulled on my wrist, hoping the deep pressure would help ease my wrist’s feelings of confinement.
I’m sorry I did this to us.
For my 36th birthday, my boyfriend and I went to get tattoos. Not matching. We are both eldest children from dysfunctional homes. We couldn’t trust anything that much--even ourselves, even still.
We each got a mystery “Get What You Get” tattoo--mine was french fries with a cat face. Cat food. Get it?
Ok.
Maybe we do trust a pun.
Then, there was a little barbed wire flower I got as part of some holiday flash. I got it and I felt better about not spending the holidays with a family I haven't trusted since the 90s.
Along the way, I started filling up my thighs with flash from Friday the 13th. I got two tattoos and then went to get a MRI to see if the increasingly intense numbness, slurred speech, and aphasia that had accompanied a migraine that summer was ok to let slide or if I had to do something about it.
My mother is terrified of MRIs, incredibly claustrophobic. Just can’t even.
When my doctor asked if I wanted something for any anxiety I might experience. I said no. On principle. The tech complimented me on how well I did at being still.
I just laid there doing my pilates breathing and thinking how I hate my thighs a little less when there are cute ghosts on it.
Who knew it could be that easy?
For all that Slimfast my mother used to feed me, I could have just been a sick as fuck 12-year-old (or 9 or 7 or 15 or 36) with thigh tattoos.
From there, I got a kewpie baby and the words “Cry Baby” on my thigh, because if you couldn’t guess based on the fact I’m writing this in the first place, I’ve always been a cry baby.
You remember Cry Baby from such hits as…
Worry wart
Too sensitive
Can’t take a joke
I was just being sarcastic
I can’t talk to you when you’re like this
There were others. Less remarkable. Released straight to the repressed memory.
There were others.
A bird skull with pansies coming out of its eyes. To prove I could.
A lil clump of tarot symbols based on a tarot reading that told me I was on the edge of something big, and I had to step into my power, shake off what’s holding onto me…or what I’m holding on to because I feel like I should. Like it’s mine to hold.
My boyfriend also came along for this. His tarot tattoo suggests he is a feminist or a cult leader. He was there for the vibes. It’s nice that we finally found a way to experience love and permanence. We’re each long overdue.
I got the outline of a fat naked woman on my thigh. I think this finally makes me as cool as I always hoped I would be.
A few weeks later, I got a uterus constructed of flowers beneath the naked woman. If you are a certain type of person, you might assume the naked woman has a prolapsed uterus that has distanced itself from her and begun to bloom.
Last July, before my wrist was too tight, before I started decorating the body a woman in suburban Illinois spent so much energy training me to hate, I got my tubes removed.
Sterility: the most metal of body mods. The nurses talking through consent forms were tickled when I said my boyfriend was getting his vasectomy at the same time my surgery was scheduled. His galvanizing potential as both feminist and cult leader was clear from this moment when the nurses swore they’d tell their husbands and other patients about him.
TL;dr: If I can control how and when I bleed, my body will take it from there.
Megan Cannella (she/they) is a neurodivergent Midwestern transplant currently living in Nevada. Her chapbooks, I Redact You, Too (Alien Buddha Press 2022) and Confrontational Crotch and Other Real Housewives Musings (Daily Drunk Press 2021), are out now and available at https://linktr.ee/mcannella. Her chapbook Eldest Daughter: A Break-up Story is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. You can find Megan on Twitter at @megancannella and on Instagram at @meeeeegancan