Now, you see, I know what it’s like inside a pornographer’s trousers. I enjoy the conversations around and with the ‘patient.’ I am very, very, overly protective of those that I love (not, never, horrors, ‘possessive!’). Willing to take the bullet, ya know. Making sure that the colors don’t run.

I know what I want on my right forearm, I’ve seen photos of other tats of same, but I don’t know how to say ‘this!’ when I’ve no photo or illustration. I want a delicate tat of barely open labia/vulva. I don’t do porn but maybe there’s a website specializing in genital pornography? I’d like it to be so realistic that no one would have to ask, ya know?

I am old! I don’t have the crepey skin, yet. No fat or hanging/sagging parts. I’m guessing that I’ll be dead long before that! Perky tits/nipples! Funny thing, that. As I grew older my partners were younger - at forty I was with a 19-year-old - but, at 58, with my primary partner having just turned 59, I find her slender body even more interesting now than I did at 16! We parted - I left her behind - but we stayed in touch with one another. Last night I found a letter from her, “Sunday nite, 1978”. One of the few surviving. She kept all of my letters (I went to college armed with an Underwood and Selectric but I purchased a sleek Olivetti upon arrival so I have no letters-by-hand at all) but won’t allow me to see them. She is, rightly, afraid of my purple editing pen. She teases me - Nancy is an eternal tease! - reading me paragraphs over the phone.

Um, christ, O can’t stay on-topic. Oh, yes, tats and aging. Mmm, no, that doesn’t worry me.

And the old-folks-home? Been there, on the mental ward. Nurses, aides, etc., helped me take care of my ear and nips. They thought it so cool. Gosh, same for three years in real-life mental hospital.

The older I get, the more mentally stable I become, the steadier my sense of well-being, the fewer regrets I have.

Mmm, Kentucky. I have two ex-girlfriends in Kentucky. The freckled redhead followed me to London but tired of the scene and moved back to KY and married and adopted her husband’s three children. I lost touch with the other. I wonder, though, if, in their dotage, they would disapprove of tats? Neither complained of my piercings.

Tattoos/Piercings/Sex. Is there anything sexual about a wolf howling at the moon? Anything sexual about the coast of my beloved homeland? Er, maybe. I don’t know. I’m no Freud and this is no Fellini filming a train entering a tunnel.

So, vulva on my right arm and do I simply pose with pride for the inking on the left? Hmm. I’m gonna do the nostril... that’s easy, something that I’ve thought of for years. And my queer-pride symbol is a go.

But other tats? Where in the world does one shop for nice vulva???

Ooo... gotta have a snack, now!