It's Been Summer Since February

...but that's ok. I had a notion of what I was getting into when I moved to California.

On occasion in the past, people have asked the question that only people who don't have any tattoos ask people who have tattoos: but what if you don't like them twenty years down the road? It's a silly question, because the whole point of getting a tattoo is its permanence. It ties you to a time-period in your life and it's always with you, no matter what else you lose or what else changes. I suspect that a lot of people who collect tattoos are people who have already lost things that mattered to them and/or who are given to anxiety about the future.

I bring this up because days like today remind me of the one thing I do dislike and regret about having a lot of tats: the sun. It's a complete fucking pain in the ass to avoid the sun for six months out of the year. Actually, that's how it went down in Oregon. Here, it'll probably be more like 8 months. I slather on the SPF 45 sunblock and then spend my days inside and/or running from shadow to shadow when I'm outside. I wear uncomfortable amounts of long sleeves when it's 90 out just to protect the colorful investment on my arms. I get really excited when it's cloudy and I can just walk somewhere.

Also, as some of you may have noticed, I am bald. So that's why I'm always wearing one of those Samuel L. Jackson hats. Sunburned scalps are painful and stupid-looking.

In other news, I've got about 200 more pages of Second Sex to go and then I can move on to History of Sexuality. Sex sex sex sex...gender. It's like duck duck goose.