The Craziest Thing I’ve Ever Done

     Getting my scalp tattoed was one of the craziest things I’ve ever done.  I didn’t even go to a real tattoo artist.  I went to a twenty something aesthetician named Brittany who worked in a strip mall in Columbus, Ohio.  It was a two hour drive from home, and I was too embarassed to tell anyone else, besides the “artist” what I was planning to do and why.

     It was June of 2004 and I had been slowly losing my hair since my early thirties.  My fortieth birthday was looming ahead in early 2005.  Girls weren’t supposed to be bald.  I had always been overweight and now I was going bald too.  It wasn’t fair. I yelled at God a lot about this.  “Bald and fat?! Couldn’t You just pick one or the other!” My doctor had assured me it was just a cosmetic problem.  He checked my blood and sent me to a dermatologist and an endocrinologist who concurred that they thought I had androgenic alopecia more commonly known as female pattern baldness.  

     A couple years prior to the traumatic scalp tattoo incident, I discovered that there were a variety of concealing agents available on the market which could be used to dye the scalp temporarily, thus minimizing the “show through” of my pasty white scalp through the sparse crop of reddish brown hair.  To make matters worse my hair was thinning on top and the individual hairs themselves were thin and baby fine.  The problem with the concealers was that they got all over everything.  They would run down my face when it got too hot.  I needed to figure out a way to permanently dye my scalp to a darker shade. 

       I got the idea for the scalp tattoo when my friend at work came in with permanent eyeliner makeup.  She explained that she had gone to an “aesthetician” at her local beauty salon and for a few hundred dollars had gotten black eyeliner tattooed around the perimeter of her eyes just where regular eyeliner would go.  She boasted how she could cry and swim and sweat and sleep and her eyeliner didn’t run.  It didn’t run.   Hmmm.  I contacted her eyeliner tattoo lady, told her my idea, and she promptly turned me away.  What I was proposing, she said, was not only unsafe, it was probably illegal.  

     I called multiple spas and salons in my town to no avail, so I expanded my search.  Brittany in Columbus was game, but she wanted to be paid in cash.  She had never used the permanent makeup technology on a scalp but she was willing to try it.  She worked out a tiny salon with four chairs, but no one else was there that morning.  There was no signage outside. At the time I had never had any tattoos so I had no basis for comparison.  In retrospect, I can say unequivocally that this procedure was one of the most painful I’d endured up to that point, and I had given birth to two children and undergone a  dry socket following a wisdom tooth extraction.  

     I arrived early with my four hundred dollars cash in hand.  Brittany showed up late and apologized that she had to get her Mt. Dew and drop her daughter at the sitters.  I could tell she didn’t like it that I asked her to wash her hands first, but once I flashed the cash I was forgiven.  I settled into a beige vinyl chair that reminded me of my wisdom tooth extraction experience-except that there was Novocain with that one.  

     I didn’t look to see what type of needle she was using or if it was even a clean, sterile needle.  Why I made a big deal about her washing her hands eludes me now.  I was a junkie trying to get a fix.   She drilled on the top of my scalp for about two hours.  The plan was to conceal the entire thinning 

area of hair which covered about two by three inches.  It hurt so bad that I cried silently with a steady stream of tears running down the side of my face.  She offered to stop, but I insisted she finish the job. 

      Initially the results were impressive.  The scalp tattoo filled in all the spaces.  On the drive home my scalp began throbbing.  I had to pull over and buy some ibuprofen and recline the car seat in a truck stop parking lot until it kicked in.  

      I recount this experience in disbelief at my former self.  What the hell was I thinking?  I’m a registered nurse for God’s sake.  I was a registered nurse when I paid this person who probably wasn’t even licensed maybe didn’t even have a high school diploma to mutilate my scalp.  I could have gotten a blood borne disease, a scalp infection or worse.  The kicker is that it didn’t even take.  The tattoo or whatever she used peeled off as it healed.  

      Now 14 years later I am fully bald on top.  In 2015 I ended up shaving off what was left of the wispy hairs on the sides and back of my head for two reasons.  First, of all I thought I looked better totally bald than like a confused Dr. Phil wannabe, and second, it made it easier for me to wear wigs when I chose.  But three tiny stray tattoo markings remain on the top of my scalp to this day.  They are reminder to me of what I was willing to go through all so I could feel normal.  When I hear crazy stories on the news like the one about a woman inseminating herself using a turkey blaster or some such thing I now have to suspend judgment.  We are all so flawed and crazy and desperate in our need to be accepted and our need to fit in.  I remind myself that with the right trigger I can be and have been just as stupid and crazy as the rest of us.