A strange email to wake up to...

I’m putting this in a separate post because it has my head spinning and it’s not connected to last night. I woke up to this email from my husband:

“So, I know you want another tattoo, but I was thinking about a slight variation.  How do you feel about a brand?

Oh, and good morning :)”

Wow whoa holy crap. I have to admit this caught me totally and completely by surprise. I got my first tattoo as soon as I got out of high school, and since that night I’ve been talking to him about getting a tattoo about him. A mark of his. While he has said he likes my tattoo, a tribal dragon on my right calf –points to icon- he was never very interested in further tattooing and though he told me on several occasions he’d think about something like that, he never did and after pestering him for a few years on it I pretty much gave up.

So this came entirely out of the blue for me.

My initial reaction is – as everything else seems to be, can’t I ever just have one response to something? – entirely mixed.

I have long known he holds my heart and that if the worst is to happen and he leaves or something happens to him, there is no other for me. I am 27 and have known that for over half of my life – since the moment I met him (which he claims happened two years later than it actually did, hmph!) he has left an invisible but indelible mark on me. My heart is his and thus everything else is. Having a physical mark of his on me feels both comforting and erotic and I have zero compunction about irreversibly altering my body to display that.

Of course, I had always imagined it to be a TATTOO.

I’ve had a tattoo. It hurt, but I dealt with it and I lived. The tattoo I have is an expression of who I am, how I identify my spirit and my spiritual protection. It was a crucial part of my identity that when I turned 18 I was finally able to physically express me.

Cosmetically, I think tattoos can be very pretty. I think mine is very pretty.

Branding is something I had never considered. It was a small part of the copy of the Story of O I read. And that was it until I came across it in a blog last night after my husband went to bed. Honestly, I sort of skipped right past it as not relevant. And I’m positive he didn’t see the blog I was reading.

Branding has implications that are much more raw.

After reading that tidbit dropped in my inbox, we exchanged a flurry of emails. Yes, he was aware it could take up to a year to fully heal. He wants it on my right upper butt cheek. Something small, his initials. Yes, he knows it’s not something we can and follow up immediately with sex. He likes the idea because he wants to be the one to mark me. And yes, he is serious.

I’ve spent the day looking into it when I have a free minute at the computer. Some of my more trivial concerns have been assuaged. Scarring can be beautiful. It’s not actually done with a cattle prod or the course thing they used (from what I remember from reading it 14 years ago) in the Story of O.

Most people, I learned, recommend going to a tattoo parlor that will also brand or “scarification” as it is sometimes called.

The burns are so hot when done right that you don’t feel it in the injured area because the nerves in the skin are killed.

You can do it at a home with a cautery pen.

People who talk say to go to a professional, but people do it at home more often than most of the people who recommend parlors will admit.

A brand seems so much baser than a tattoo. Slaves are branded. Property is branded. Does he understand that implication, the difference between a tattoo and a brand?

…I think he does, and that has my mind whirling.

A tattoo is permanent. But it’s almost passé in today’s world, fashionable – it doesn’t have the primal significance it used to. I had never thought of branding.

But I am thinking of it now.