I forget sometimes, what it’s like to be young. I get a hoot out of hearing all tattooing described as an extreme alternate lifestyle. You have to be pretty extreme, before you really get that kind of a judgment call from my generation.

I’m your average soccer mom. I’m on the tail end of “40 something.” My son, Jason is in college. My daughter, Rosie is high school. I work full-time and run a home based business and I have to look good for my husband. After all, he’s at the age where they’re trading up wives. You know? Taller, blonder, younger, dumber, bigger boobs. (Just kidding honey, I know you wouldn’t.)

But that 40 something means that I was in my twenties in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Pre-the-aids-crisis, when looking for Mr. Goodbar, wasn’t an old movie, it was a way of life. When my friends and I exchange old memories, our last comments are always that we are surprised to be alive. Orgy rooms were the beginning of our night lives and safe words were unknown. Fools go where angels fear to tread. Just call us the little morons. None of us even thought of settling down until people starting dying of HIV related diseases. We were smart enough to realize that one partner meant staying alive, maybe.

It wasn’t like we weren’t giving up anything. It wasn’t like we hadn’t fucked like rabid weasels. We had. We had the opportunity and we took it.

But, we’re all respectable now. And, as I look at the world through eyes so falsely innocent, behind my reading glasses, I snicker.

Just looking at me you know: I never grew up in the city, snorted coke, fucked strangers, did a three way, got spanked in public, drag raced down Fifth Avenue, did more drugs and had giggle fits at diners at five in the morning as the sun came up. By virtue of getting older, my past, indeed my entire generation’s past has died a very quiet death.

But, every once and a while, you do get reminders.

I needed a tattoo touch up. It was left over from my wilder days, and hey even though it's covered up, you do start to sag a little.

As I walk in the tattoo studio in my business suit, I don’t even get a chance to say why I’m there. They think I’m with the Department of Health. Yes, I do want to know what your spore count is, but that’s not why.

I have a twenty year old tattoo, that needs a little touching up. It’s a perfect imprint of a pair of lips, kissing my ass. Do you charge extra for that?