Tattoo You

My first call is to Charlotte. I am Holy-shit-J.-is-dead-ing for ten whole minutes and alternately answering her questions.

I tell her the whole story eventually. And then she asks, "So....what do we do?"

"And by that question, if you are asking do we go to the funeral, I can say with 100% certainty that I will not be going." For the following reasons:

I will not be welcome.

I will be publicly blamed and loudly and dramatically shamed for "doing this to J." and ruining his life by leaving him. As if staying wouldn't have ruined mine.

My cousin's funeral home is certain to handle the funeral. And when Endorra pitches her little hissy fit, it will be my own family asking me to leave out of respect for the grieving members of the deceased's family. I think I can spare us all the embarassment.

All of said hoopla will do nothing but further upset J.'s daughters who really don't need to be handed any more woes.

I will send a card to the girls and Sandy. The end.

I busy myself informing various and sundry friends who might be interested in the news. One of them, looking on the bright side, says, "Well there must be some part of you that is happy to know that full-sized, four-color tattoo of your face on his thigh will be going into the ground with him!"

True. There is some part of me that sees the silver lining in never having to worry about THAT resurfacing again unexpectedly. Like when I am on a date and J. gets a wild hair and ambushes us and drops trou to show me and my (soon-to-be-ex) boyfriend his devotion to me.

OMG. The tattoo.

I may spare my funeral home family the humiliation of having to eject me from the service, but I can not spare them the tattoo. Imagine. They unzip the body bag and begin to prep for burial, and there it is. "Hhhmmmm. What's this? She looks familiar. Why it almost looks like...yes, I believe it may be...yes, it is Liza!"

And there would be no Funeral Director Code of Ethics confidentiality applied here. No. This juicy little tidbit will spread like a brush fire in California.

They may as well just lay him out in his high school gym shorts.