Zach’s Big Mistake

Last Monday I made a big mistake. I crowd-sourced terrible tattoo ideas on the internet, and a few hours later I got the lamest tattoo imaginable.

The night before I was having drinks with my friend Megan, and she’s covered in great, beautiful and meaningful tattoos. I was jealous of Megan for one major reason: I don’t really like anything, and therefore could never have that experience.

When I say I don’t like anything, I really mean it. I’m a comedian, but my love of comedy is based entirely on my disinterest in almost everything else in the world. I “like” things on Facebook and I “love” my mom, but I’m not about to get my mom’s most recent status update on my forearm. It just doesn’t make any sense, guys.

I ended up joking with Megan that I would get a tattoo that meant absolutely nothing to me. It should be noted that I make these statement everyday and I never, ever intend on following through. Some examples:

• Man, I’m going to write an epic book about what life’s like for a 27-year-old in New York. Yeah.
• Man, I’m going to make a, epic short film about what life’s like for a 27-year-old in New York. Yeah.
• Man, I’m going to start eating more vegetables. Yeah.

Megan, much to my chagrin, is one of those insufferably supportive people. She believes in a mythical thing called “doing” and it can get pretty annoying at times. But Megan loved the idea of getting me a random tattoo and made a point to schedule time in the next day for us to go and follow through.

NOTE: It’s the scheduling part you should try to avoid if you don’t actually want something to happen. Just never write it in your calendar and you will never do it. It’s a system that really works for me.  

So the next morning I woke up on a mission to get a terrible tattoo, one that I had no connection to at all. As a goof, I created a list of four possible tattoos and asked my friends to vote online for what they liked the most.

The options were:

• The name of a woman I’ve never met inside of a heart.
• A tramp stamp of a dolphin.
• A third nipple.
• A quote from Eat, Pray, Love

I expected my six friends to vote and we’d have a good laugh and that would be the end of it. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I don’t fully grasp the Internet and nearly 400 people voted in less than 8 hours.

You can see the poll’s current standings here:
http://www.widgetbox.com/i/0016ad40-7e44-4c0b-af74-0a7489628646
Yes, people are still voting.

While an Eat, Pray, Love quote won out, my mom voted enthusiastically in favor of the heart. Remember how I said I “love” my mom? In my honest opinion, moms trump friends any day of the week.

So at about 6 p.m. that day I entered Three Kings Tattoo in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to get the mom-approved heart tattooed on my ass. The two ideas at the time were to either get “Woman’s Name” inside of a heart (Jim VanBlaricum owns the copyright to that one) or to just insert a random woman’s name. The debate went like this:

• No, I can’t use Karen. I know a Karen and she sucks.
• I don’t know… is ‘Sasha’ too jokey?
• Deb is the name of the girl on Napoleon Dynamite. I’d rather shoot myself in the face than have someone think I have a Napoleon Dynamite tattoo.

Then, as if the stars aligned, I met Tamara, my tattoo artist. Tamara was wearing a ripped Megadeth shirt, was covered in tattoos, and didn’t find me funny in even the smallest of ways. I sometimes have nightmares about women like this.

I explained my two options to Tamara. She listened, but it was pretty clear she just wanted my $100 and for me to leave as soon as possible.

“Just use my name,” Tamara offered to speed up the process, probably because she was super-confident in the spelling.

I settled the debate swiftly by using my wits, my intuition, and also by flipping a coin. More specifically, I ended up flipping a coin, missing a coin, then finding out from the coin on the floor that I would forever have ‘Tamara’ in a heart on my butt.

I can now never date a woman that doesn’t have a sense of humor, and that’s almost comforting. That’s something I’ve always wanted, but gladly cave-in on if the woman is even remotely attractive. Those dark days are now over thanks to Tamara.

HEAR ME TELL THE STORY ON BREAK THRU RADIO’S RADIO DISPATCH

FOLLOW MY INSUFFERABLY POSITIVE FRIEND MEGAN ON TWITTER

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