I want another tattoo.

Which, combined with my first two tattoos, my (formerly) pierced nipples, my seven skydives, my (former) fascination with Chess King, my shaved forearms and my long history of voting against Republicans, is totally going to make my family go back and make sure I wasn’t accidentally switched at birth with the demon spawn of gypsies, tramps and/or thieves.

My first tattoo was a cute little portrait of Mickey Mouse on my ankle:
I got it almost 15 years ago to celebrate my love for all things Mickey. It was applied by a very large man who was packin’ heat the whole time he defiled my flesh with his filthy needles. Which made the whole Mickey Mouse thing seem really, really gay.

I got my second tattoo last spring to commemorate my first marathon, which I’d completed six months earlier:
I designed it myself, with a bit of help from a friend who knew Photoshop better than I did. It was supposed to go on the instep of my right foot because my right leg had given me the most trouble during the marathon and it needed to be punished. But the tattoo guy said you slough off skin cells on your feet so fast that the tattoo would disappear in a matter of months. So I put it on my lower back. Because the Clone Council mandates that all gay men eventually get tattoos on their lower backs.

My third (hypothetical) tattoo is a little bigger in scope. And I want it in a place I can’t show people so easily. And I want it for no bigger reason than the fact that I just want it. ’Cause I think it would be hot.

And thanks to a quick Google search and my burgeoning Photoshop skills, I designed a pretty good representation of how I hope it will look:

For those of you who can’t squint that hard, it’s a tiger (but just black ink on pink skin; I don’t have the Photoshop skills—or the patience—to strip all that white out from between all those tiger stripes) that looks like he’s clawing his way up from my swimsuit area. I know: Tram-PEE. But loaded with street cred. (“Hey! Don’t mess with Jake! He has a tiger tattoo. And tigers can really mess you up with their sharp claws and their biting sarcasm.”) Besides, I’ve always thought tats peeking out from waistbands are cool, and as I’ve started barreling toward my Big 4-0, I’ve replaced sheet cake with water-packed tuna as my dominant meal plan. So my abs still look tigerrific (I just made that word up!) in certain light.

Anyway, the whole tiger tat thing is still in the I-wonder-if-I’ll-actually-go-through-with-it stage. Which means it wouldn’t happen until I thought about it for at least another six months. Then again, I’ve already been thinking about it for years, so maybe I’ll just squeeze it in between bank and grocery errands tomorrow.

Either way, the hospital birth records department will be hearing from my family soon.