I had just been saying last week I could never be on Top Chef because I don't have the right tattoo. (The not-being-a-chef part might also hold me up, but I think my ability to work a mood still might give me an edge.)
In fact, I don't have any tattoos. I developed an aversion to them several years ago when all the middle-aged Cash Flow Barbies I knew started getting tramp-stamps in Sanskrit. (Walt is the friend who came up with that term to describe a woman I knew and that he had just met who was, I had always thought, Hot-Above-Reproach. I was admittedly a little jealous of the way men fell so unearned at her feet. It's a little out of character for me, and I really didn't like that feeling and what it said about me. But what Walt said when he met her was, "I've never seen a woman dress like that before without a trace of irony.")
It is one of the many reasons I love Walt, who was for many years my email-husband, first from Santa Fe and now from Austin -- in a very pure and literary sense -- his delightful wife would've been most welcome to read every word we ever wrote to each other. This was in the days before Facebook and Twitter... if you can imagine.
He arrived in the blogosphere long, long before I did, and it's a great thing to be able to just wake up one day and open the dashboard of blogs I follow and see his new birthday tattoo. In the old days, he might've had to mail me that picture. Like an Animal.
We have known each other more than a decade but have never met. Like most good and interesting relationships ours has been built out of words over time (and over the Internet). And irony. I have friends whose marriages would be much better off if they would follow our example. I'll bet you do too.
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