I'm Having a Half-Sleeve Done

**Of course, Sweet Nuts, I am referring to the kind of tattoo that wraps the length of skin below or above the elbow with punctured ink. 

She made my characters pop. Love it.

I'm having a half-sleeve done, and I will not write about it in length yet. However, allow me to share the details you could be interested in. My new artist is the awesome Rakel Natividad. She lives in Sta. Cruz, Laguna with her husband Markus, and she has been tattooing for about thirteen years now. My former artist was great, however he sort of turned into some degree of a mean prick during the last few months of our artist-client relationship. He kind of went off with a ten thousand peso deposit. 

It's a trust thing, you see. He has been my tattooist for a few years now, and if I can trust him enough to embellish my skin, then I sure as hell can trust him a full deposit. That asshole quit answering my phone calls a week after he did a four by three outline on my right arm. That is in inches. Four inches by three fucking inches. It was done in an hour. This outline was barely three thousand pesos. His shop closed September of last year and he is still not answering my phone calls on both of his numbers.

This outline of my wrap took about five hours to complete. 

For what it's worth, he was nice to me for the first few years. Gene was usually accommodating and brotherly and all that bromance-ly shit. He was nice to my friends and he was nice to my partners and he was wicked with the needles. I will probably charge it to experience, all ten thousand pesos of it, and I'll hope for the best as far as he goes. I hope he's  dead now or something like that.  

Anyway, Sta Cruz, Laguna is a good three hours away from where I live. I waited three months for the first of three sessions, and I sat in some bus for three hours just to have her masterful hands work their magic on my upper right sleeve. 

I need to share this, Sweet Nuts, for I think there is some freaky universal karma at work here. See, I wouldn't have met the awesome Rakel Natividad if I didn't leave Gene A-Hole. I hope the same idea translates with the failed two-year relationship I had with this noisy little stick of a square-faced boy. A better tattooist has taken me in as a client. In the same vein, I could be meeting a better partner sometime soon. I certainly hope so. That would be a bitchin' turn of events. 

Line work. Arm pit. Capital pain.

It will take Mam Rakel three sessions to finish my first half sleeve. Her craft is a steal at P1,500/hour, and she requires a P1,000 deposit for each session. This deposit is inclusive of that session's total number of hours. My first session was in March 9, 2014, and it was five hours of line work. The first two hours were spent on direct-to-skin drawing, and then I took a fifteen minute cigarette break. She tattooed the line-work for the next three hours. It was a lovely kind of pain if it wasn't such a terrible murder to that area above the armpits. I totally lost my bad-ass vibe the moment she got to lining that area. 

Her billable hours start once the needle sinks in. She did not charge me for the first two hours of direct-to-skin drawing. She's an angel with a gun, a tattoo gun, and her disposition is the apex of humility. I know. I don't really say exceedingly homosexual things like "apex of humility," but she really is, so I did and that's that. 

The Awesome Rakel Natividad is the one with the white gloves. This photo was taken from her Facebook Page.

Meanwhile, my next session will be on Monday, March 24th. I could be going alone, I said "could be" if You are reading this, but that's the least of my big girl problems now.