Darlinglilred's Adventures

In 2006 after dating my university sweetheart for more than four years, we came to a turning point. After years of on-again, off-again, seeing each other through major family and health issues, it came down to the question of whether we were ready to commit to each other for the rest of our lives. I thought I was ready, but in the end I wasn’t.

After spending that much of your life with someone, all in the same city, it’s difficult to feel like anyone knows you as just you, and not as a part of a package. I tried to move on, to find a job I liked, to date new people, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would always be half of something else and never me again as long as I stayed there.

A couple of months later I packed my life in my car and set out across the country. I had no job, no place to live, and limited funds. I discovered family I had never met, slept at their house for a month before finding my own place and, a couple of months later, a job in my field. I enjoyed my new freedom, of figuring out who I was without someone else to define me. Of being far enough away that my parents did know my every move, and of exploring a new city, meeting new friends and dating again.

Since the beginning I have had a love/hate relationship with the city. Hate the conservative outlook, love the job opportunities it offered when I first started out. Love the proximity to the mountains and the lack of humidity, hate the cold winters and not being close to water.  Hate the huge expense of flying home to see family, love the ability to not have to answer to my family for every decision I make.

Even being raised in a small town, the lack of cultural diversity in the city has always been astonishing to me. Where in Ottawa and Toronto it was a cornucopia of races and languages, in Calgary finding someone who spoke French or was of African descent seemed like searching for a needle in a haystack. It’s a city with an identity issue in many ways, trying to be a big city that attracts big business, but holding on to so many small town values. The trend towards conservative viewpoints has been troubling to me since day one, but the older I get the more I realize that my strong liberal upbringing and values will never be welcomed here.

On the job front, Calgary is all about oil and gas and non-profits. If those aren’t the industries you’re interested in, you may get great experience, but you will never really be happy. So was the case with me, after six years of working in the non-profit sector not only was I making half of what my colleagues were in other industries, but I was also bored. In non-profits, especially in conservative Calgary, there isn’t a lot of room for innovation. Run by boards, every new idea takes months, and sometimes years, of push and pull with the board to get the approval to try something new. In the media and social media realm, that’s far too often a deal breaker when trends and technologies are changing so quickly.

If you asked me in December if I saw myself moving back to Ontario in 2012 the answer would have been no. Even when I returned to Calgary after being at home for Christmas I had no thoughts of moving, then an important friendship and relationship ended. Suddenly it was all in question, did I really want to be in a city where I wasn’t finding jobs that made me passionate, where I wasn’t meeting people who made me feel like I belonged here?  The answer was no.

So after nearly six year, I am returning back to Ontario, to start a new job in my field in Toronto. To be close enough to my parents that I can visit on weekends, but far enough away that they can’t show up unannounced. To reconnect with old friends and to make new ones. To remember why no matter how long I stay away I always feel like I belong and fit in, and no mountain range can ever compare to the breathtaking beauty of the Thousand Islands.

With less than two months to go before the move, every day seems to drag on far too long. I will miss some of the people I have met, I will miss not having to pay PST. I won’t miss the dry skin and nosebleeds, not being able to plan an outfit for the day because the weather may change 20 degrees between when I leave the house and when I get home. Most importantly, I will not miss the city that tries to force a square peg into a round hole.

If you’ve looked at my Tumblr before, or know me personally, you will know that I love my tattoo. In any photo shoot I do, I love to show it off. In the type of modelling I do, mostly fetish related, the tattoo is my uniqueness. What most people don’t know is what it means or why I have it.

My tattoo is what is called a Triquetra, a celtic knot used to represent the sacred idea of three, in specific the stages of the divine female: maiden, wife, crone. For some, me included, it is a nod to the idea of the Fates, that there is an endless circle of meaning and that behind everything there is a reason.

I got the tattoo on my 23rd birthday, three months after moving to Calgary. Before moving here I had undergone a lot of hospital time trying to figure out the huge pains I was having in my abdomen. There was a cancer scare before they finally figured out that it was benign cysts on my ovaries. As a result I could no longer take any hormonal form of birth control. The tattoo, on the inside of my left hip just above my bikini line, was a reminder of that time and that things will work out, it just takes time.

Getting the tattoo was one of the best experiences I have ever had. I was lucky enough to get Scott Ford at Smiling Buddha Tattoo to do my knot work, he took the simple sketch I gave him and turned it into a masterpiece! With simple touches of shading he made it pop out, it was everything I hoped for and more.

Fast-forward five years. In November, after much research, my roommate and I decided to buy a group deal from Buytopia for unlimited laser hair removal on three body parts at Merle Norman Salon. I chose to use my three combined to do a brazillian. My reasoning was that I hated shaving there, and with the modeling and fetish shows I was doing, it just made sense.

I went in for my first consultation, and the girl who was going to be my technician walked through the process with me and asked me if I had any concerns. I showed her my tattoo and told her how I wanted to make sure that we stayed away from that area as I had read how bad lasers were for my tattoo. She agreed and put all the test patches on the right side of my bikini area to avoid the tattoo.

A week later I had my first session. The laser hair removal hurt! It felt like have a bunch of needles jabbed into you all at once. It was a quick hurt though, and by the time I left it felt like I just had a minor sunburn. Three weeks later when the hair came out, I was very pleased with the results and booked my next appointment for my next day off, January 24, my birthday.

The appointment started off the same as my others, I lay down, she started zapping and I did my usual try not to flinch routine. Then she said she was going to make sure she got every hair, and the spots she went back over hurt more than usual. So much so that when she touched the laser to a spot on my upper left bikini line I actually told her it hurt more than usual, She said it was nothing different, I was probably just sensitive. I was more red then usual, but as it was my second treatment and my tech had said that it was fine, I trusted her.

It continued to hurt the rest of the week, but as they had told me at the salon, that was normal, treat it like a sunburn. By Friday the situation was worse. There was a blister on the bottom part of my tattoo. I panicked, showed my roommate and carefully tried to clean. By Saturday afternoon it was clear that the bottom inch of my tattoo was severely faded in some spots, completely gone in others. And there was an angry looking scab forming where the blister had broke. I immediately called the salon. No one answered so I left a detailed message and my phone number. No one called me back. I was supposed to do a photo shoot that night, but do to the angry red and pain of my bikini area and the tattoo, I had to cancel.

By Monday afternoon I still had not heard from the salon so I took to Twitter. Tweeting a picture of the angry red and scabbed tattoo and sending it to Merle Norman Inc. They followed up with me via email and promised to call the salon. 30 minutes later they emailed me back to say the salon would call me right away. It was more than three hours before they actually did. When they did I found the salon’s owner less than helpful. She said she wanted to hear my tech’s story before she talked any further and advised me to put Polysporin on my tattoo. That’s when I started to worry, the first rule of tattoo maintenance is never to put Polysporin on a tattoo. When I mentioned that I had a hair appointment at the salon on Wednesday, she said she would speak with me then.

Between Monday and Wednesday the pain got worse and the red started to spread away from the tattoo. I was worried. Before heading to the salon for my hair cut and to meet with the tech and the owner, I stopped by the walk in clinic where the doctor took one look at my tattoo and declared it infected, prescribed strong antibiotics four times a day for the next week and warned me that they would most likely make my stomach upset. My next stop was the Smiling Buddha Tattoo to see if there was any hope for fixing it. Scott was crazy nice about the situation, sympathizing and telling me what the options were. He also cautioned that it would be a minimum of two months before it would heal enough to even attempt a fix.

By the time I got to Merle Norman I was furious. The owner wasn’t yet there to meet me, and they had decided that my hair stylist should start the colour on my hair and then they would talk to me. So my hair was coloured and then I followed the tech to the back room where they had me stand in my underwear while they looked at the burn and made denials. No she never would have put the laser directly on the tattoo, she didn’t even know I had a tattoo. It must have been scatter, from an improper seal of the laser wand to the skin. It wasn’t a big deal, small burns happen.

This just made me angrier. When the salon owner asked what I wanted from them I detailed the antibiotics, the repair of my tattoo, the loss of a photo shoot and the fact that not only was I in physical pain, but emotionally I was scarred as well. I told her that I needed them to make it right for me. Her response? “Let’s see how it heals.” If that wasn’t insult enough, they suggested I keep my next appointment for over a month later and they could check in then, but maybe we wouldn’t do laser hair removal that day. They sent me back to the hairstylist and left.

That was yesterday, as it stands I have heard no more from them, but I am no longer waiting to hear. I was prepared to be reasonable, accidents do happen, but every time I think about the fact that 120 people bought that group deal, and how unapologetic they were about the situation, I get mad again. Four times a day when I choke down a big orange antibiotic and deal with the upset stomach it causes, I get angry. Everytime I feel the twinge of pain from my abdomen or see my damaged tattoo, I feel like crying. This is not how good customer service is supposed to make you feel.

The blindfold covers her eyes,
But not the eyes of those who watch her.
Her wrists are trapped,
Bound to the unforgiving wood of the cross.

Nipples red and sensitive,
Clamped tight, they rub against the wood.
A tiny scrap of material,
All that covers her aside from the pair of heels.

Soft cries escape,
As he wields the flogger with precision.
Steady rhythm,
An ebb and flow of pleasure and pain.

A brief reprieve,
The faint clink of metal against metal.
A soft kiss,
Soothing against the heated and bruised skin.

Silence,
Her body is taut waiting.
Legs tremble,
Wondering what will happen next.

A brush of teeth,
A tease of a bite against tend flesh.
Cool air against the skin,
Her body tightens with need.

A sharp crack,
A little gasp escapes her lips.
Rosy red cheeks,
As the whip makes contact and again and again.

Moans turn to cries,
A single tear rolls down her cheek.
Hand on throat,
the sharp smack of flesh on flesh.

Then it stops, silence,
And she begins to tremble again with anticipation.