Courage just below the surface

I made her go first.

She wanted a tattoo and she's fascinated by genetics. When the idea for it came to me, I couldn't back out. It concerns both of us, so it has to be on both of us.

You know how adenine only pairs with thymine in DNA? I asked. Her puzzlement cleared.

It's our initials – A-T. And, genetically, we're identical.

Once he finished hers, I took her place. I lay on my right side, my shirt pulled up, making the skin covering my rib cage into canvas. The needle buzzes wildly like frenzied bees – and it feels like them, too.

It hurts less if you breathe, he said.

I asked God a lot of questions that summer after my first year of college. All the coasting invisibly through high school had halted. The harmless striving for an identity in the years between tree forts and dorm rooms had proven unfruitful.

Ink poured into flesh. "Por diseño," it says. By design. Two timid 19-year-olds tried to claim a piece of self. Maybe if we're stripped to our genome, we will find out what we're made of.

Three years before the tattoo, I stood in front of a class of creative writers. I trembled. I couldn't pick a word to describe myself, so I cut an I out of paper. I should have chosen C for Cautious or A for Afraid to Ask Too Much.

I is for indecisive. Still searching. Still sifting through the dreams whose edges I'd glimpsed. Various pieces unfolded in different notebooks in different years, but nothing held together.

In seventh grade I wrote poetry on book covers. When they asked me what I wanted to be, I said a marine biologist. I hadn't excelled in science class, but it sounded adventurous and profitable and important. And maybe I would meet a dolphin that would follow me home. Maybe saltwater could tame my hair.

At 19, it was just a tattoo – marks now so common they're shared in some form by 1 in 5 Americans. But it came at a time I needed a new start. When I asked myself if I had what it took ...

It hurts less if you breathe, he said.

The needle broke skin, and courage lived just below the surface.