She had been thinking of getting a coverup for the
back of her right shoulder for some time. When she was a teenager, she left
home and wound up riding bitch on the back of a Harley. Somewhere along the
way, she isn't sure exactly how it happened, but when she woke up from being
drugged, she had two tattoos. One on her ass of a harley bar and shield
with wings and a butterfly tat on her upper right shoulder.
Times change. She outgrew her teenage rebellion
and settled into a 20 year marriage. Even though she always loved tattoos,
those two tattoo represented a very painful memory in her youthful life.
She had been violated and non-consensually forced to wear ink not of her
choosing.
Twenty-five years later, she had the one on her ass
covered up with a purple rose, but decided to have the one on her shoulder
lazered off in 1998. She believes the decision to laser the one on
her shoulder off was in large part a last ditch effort to save a failing
marriage to an abusive husband who had gone right wing religious
whacko. It took 3 visits to the doctor, and hundreds of
dollars later she ended up with an ugly scar that was worse that the tattoo.
It didn't help the marriage either. She decided to reclaim her life
and her body. So she divorced the hubby when his abuse turned physical.
She moved to South Florida.
In August 1999, Deva visited her first ever tattoo
convention in Ft Lauderdale, Florida. There her eyes would be opened.
Never before had she seen such amazing art. I mean real art.
Not tattoos looking like little postage stamps, but amazing art flowing
all over beautiful bodies. She discovered that a whole new generation
of tattoo artists had come on the scene. Many of them highly trained
graduates of art schools. It was then she started asking questions
of the tattoo artists. One artist she ran into in the aisle of the
convention was Nina Rose. She looked at the ugly scar on Deva's right
shoulder and told her she would have to wait at least 12 months before it
could be tattooed over. Her last treatment had been in January 1999. She
knew that she wanted the ugly scar covered, so that gave her at least 5 months
to be thinking about a coverup.
She also saw another beautiful expression of body art
at that convention. Body piercing. Her mind was moving in that direction
as well. It scared, but intrigued her at the same time. Everywhere
she looked people were adorned with a powerful primitive expression of there
sensuality.
