Come On In & Smell The Peonies
On The Need For Beauty For Beauty's Sake
This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter focused on the late blooming queer experience, the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.
Happy Pride, and welcome to everyone who is reading this after I invited you into this part of my true self on June 1. I’m glad you’re here.
Today, I’m going to tell you about my tattoo.
“It takes six million grains of pollen to seed one peony, and salmon need a lifetime of swimming to find their way home, so we mustn’t be alarmed or discouraged when it takes us years to find love or years to understand our calling in life.”
— Mark Nepo
My earliest memory of a flower is of the peonies next to the driveway of my first childhood home.
This was the family farmstead, the same place where my father’s mother was raised by her aunt and uncle. We lived in the original farmhouse for the first 5 or so years of my life until our new house, the one designed by my mother and paid for by my father’s lucrative career in development, was built next door while the farmhouse was demolished.
By the end of grade school, this new house was reclaimed by the bank. I remember watching our things being moved out from one of the windows of my empty bedroom.
I can be more specific about the peonies: the actual memory is of seeing ants crawling all over the still-developing buds. I was certain they were harming them, sucking out the juices or eating the leaves or petals or whatever.
Later I learned that they are drawn by nectar seeping from the buds and don’t harm the plant. In fact, their presence may help drive off harmful insects.
I was raised to think of tattoos as a waste of money. A useless indulgence. A vain disfigurement.
After we lost the house and moved into an ugly rental, my father became obsessed with making the impatiens he planted in the bed out front the brightest and the largest in the neighborhood. Cocoa bean mulch, frequent MiracleGro applications. Neighbors frequently commented on them, saying how impressed they were at their size, their color.
Come fall and the first frost, they were gone. Leaves and blooms withered, the pale green stalks all that remained, only to brown and fall over a few days later.
My father was so proud of them, regardless.
More peony facts:
Like most flowers, peony blooms are bisexual, meaning they have male and female components. Botanists also refer to bisexual flowers as “perfect” flowers.
Peonies are fussy and can take time to get established after being transplanted. However, they can bloom for decades after being moved and when cared for properly.
I first began thinking about how much I wanted a tattoo in college. Of course, I never acted on it. It was a daydream, a fantasy, an indulgence I wasn’t allowed to have. And what would I even get? And where on my body? I was crippled by indecision, which didn’t matter because it was never going to happen anyway.
So I continued to admire tattoos on the bodies of others from afar.
Some peony lore:
In the language of flowers of Western culture, peonies symbolize bashfulness or shame, as nymphs are believed to hide among their petals. But in Eastern culture, they are a masculine symbol, signifying a devil-may-care attitude.
Guilt and shame have been perennial topics in my sessions with my therapist, even before I came out to her as queer. But it was in the months after that she began directing my attention toward something she’d noticed: I don’t do things for myself, I do them for others.
“What would it look like for you to do something for yourself?”1
Shortly after, I saw a peony tattoo design I really liked while surfing online.
So, in July, after attending Portland’s pride festivities, I stopped into Evertrue Tattoo and met with Dayton Skuse. Told him this would be my first tattoo experience. Showed him the design I saw and that I’d like him to design something in his style. He got me on his books for Aug. 12, the day after I was planning to attend a concert with one of my best friends.
A bit more about peonies:
Beyond their beautiful blooms, peonies are also often praised for their fragrance, which has been described as being akin to roses, water lily or citrus.
However, the strength of that fragrance can change depending on multiple factors such as humidity, temperature or even how long the flower or plant as a whole has been blooming. And then, in a situation akin to how some individuals can’t stand the taste of cilantro, there are individuals who say peonies smell of garbage or rotting meat, no matter how beautiful they look. They rip them out of flower beds of newly purchased but existing homes, remove them from flower arrangements.
A lot happened in the weeks before I finally laid down on Dayton’s bench.
I experienced multiple episodes of suicidal ideation as my anxiety and depression continued to reel from my sudden demotion at work at the beginning of the year.
Just days before driving to Portland, I told my job I was taking an extended leave of absence to address my mental health concerns brought out and exacerbated by my demotion.
The night before my tattoo appointment, after the concert, I came out to the best friend I attended with. He was supportive and accompanied me to my tattoo appointment in the morning (and took several of the photos shared here).
When I arrived Dayton showed me what he had worked up for a design and asked if I approved. I loved it and he applied the tracing to my thigh, just above my knee, and then got to work. It was a two-and-a-half hour sitting.
“For a first tattoo, you took it like a champ.”
I’ve often had buyer’s remorse after a big purchase. But not for my tattoo. I look at it every day and love it. Whether I’m in the shower or working out or just walking around in warm weather with it popping out just below my shorts.
I know now it’s ok to have beautiful things for the sake of beauty in my life.
Coming in next week’s newsletter…
How my job gave me the opportunity to revel in queer culture by sending me to cover my community’s Pride celebration 10 years ago.
This is an approximation/distillation of what she said.
As a fellow peony lover, I adore so much about this post, especially the part about you doing things for yourself.
I've been looking at getting a tattoo since coming out. While I have found cool and pretty artwork to adorn myself, I haven't pulled the trigger. I want the artwork to be as amazing as the story behind it. Real personal meaning for me. Your column renews my search... which I will dig below the surface to find the one that resonates only for me. Thanks for the inspiration Ty. Your tattoo is incredible.