This Is What Over-Thinking Looks Like

I’m such an over-thinker for someone who often doesn’t think about things at all. For those of you not following me on Twitter, yesterday I got myself a little tattoo. That’s not the important part of the story although right now (24 hours later), it’s stinging like a bitch. Self-inflicted, I’m not expecting sympathy, swiftly moving on before someone tells me how much I’m going to regret my tattoos when I’m 60. As if I’m going to be getting my body out when I’m 60 anyway. I don’t even wear a bikini now.

Anywaaaaaay, let me tell you about the tattooist. Tall, chocolate dark, very smooth and very handsome. A cheeky little nose ring, a very poetic name, a very laid-back approach to life considering the totally shit background he had. 3-4 hours of tattooing turned into 4, then 5, then the shop shut but he carried on working on me (literally) until we reached 6 hours and I bailed. I love a bit of pain but 6 hours of sternum tattooing is pain I’m glad I’m only going to go through once. The time flew by though and neither of us realised how late it was getting. We just chatted and laughed, listened to music, me lying down with my gut exposed and him with an apron and latex gloves on. It could almost have been a date. At times it felt like one.

He’s a pothead and he played me soulful R&B just like BE used to play me. I think R&B is just stoner music. It’s all they seemed to play in the evenings in the cafes in Amsterdam too. I’ve never really liked it before but lying in that tattoo chair, under-boob to pants exposed, I heard every naughty little lyric. At times it was torture, like when his hand lightly rested on the exposed underside of my breast, or when I could feel the vibrations through the tattoo-gun lead as it trailed across my thighs. At a very early point I realised I’d started to develop a whopping crush on Tattoo Guy.

We talked about stuff, real stuff, stuff you just wouldn’t talk about with a random tattoo client who walked through the door. About how much of a bad boy he is and the difficult background he had, and something that really surprised me – how difficult he found it being a ‘black tattoo artist’, especially living around here. Again, in case you don’t follow me on Twitter, I recently shared a leaflet that was shared through my door about how “mosques are notorious are breeding grounds for Islamic extremism”. Those views are NOT my own AT ALL, quite the opposite, but that *seems to be* the mentality of so many people who live around ‘my way’. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusted. Ashamed.

We talked about a lot of serious stuff and three hours in, things started to get a little flirtier. He told me I was the “most intelligent woman he’d met in a long time”, and said things like “I need to mentally fuck someone before I can actually fuck someone. If there’s no mental connection, it just won’t be good.” There were a few more classics – he likes a curvy girl like me, he thinks I worry about what people think of my body too much, he could use a girl like me to help him with some ‘business stuff’, he likes the fact I’m not intimidated by him as so many other people seem to be. The more he said, the more I swooned and then we came to the end of the tattoo. I re-dressed myself in the toilet (bizarrely – he’d been staring at the underside of my boobs for the best part of six hours), and when I paid, he only charged me for four hours instead of six. As I went to leave, he gave me his mobile number. I’ve been racking my brains to remember the EXACT conversation, but I think it went something along the lines of him telling me I could get in touch to sort out the second part of the tattoo rather than through the studio. Ish. Something like that. Maybe? I can’t remember. By the end of my tattoo, I couldn’t wait to get home. I was aware I may have been blushing like a maniac.

I’ve written too many words now. That’s how I know I like him. And last night, as Twitter were peer-pressuring me into just shooting him a text, I was adamant I was going to do just that today. Now today has come around (and I’ve written this), I’ve changed my mind. I’ll text him but I’m not going to text him for a date / drink / the booty call I clearly desperately crave. I’m just going to text him about the tattoo – to book it and get it finished off.

And here’s why:

He’s a typical black guy, super-smooth. Sorry for stereotyping, but he is. He made me feel good because he knows how to make women feel good. He made no attempt to hide that side of him – he’s rarely faithful, he hasn’t found a woman to make him even consider getting married or having anything ‘serious’, he’s not sure he wants kids or marriage at all … I get it, I get it. You’re not looking for love, you’re looking for a booty call. You’ve got more than a few notches on your bedpost. We all know how I get about feeling disposable. I’m crap at being a booty call and we know I already kinda like him. If we start sleeping together and it’s great (which I don’t doubt), I’ll get feelings for him. I’ll start acting like a crazy white bitch and he’ll fuck me off. I know how I work. I can’t do casual for long.

That aside, I get territorial / jealous (whatever you want to call it), and he told me that many of his ex-girls regularly got very jealous about him tattooing other women. If it was a problem for other women, it’ll be a problem for me. That sounds like the kind of thing I would have a problem with.

He’s 25. He’s five years younger than me. I don’t date younger guys. I have done, it’s always ended badly, immaturity is always the biggest problem … Am I seriously meant to go against my gut feeling about his age and do it anyway? And my gut feeling tells me that he’s too young for me. I actually groaned out loud when he told me how old he was.

If we go out on a date and it goes wrong, it’ll be weird when I go for the second stage of my tattoo. That’s going to be two or three hours of hell, maybe even more. If we go out on a date and it goes well … I’ll be judging myself for it going well. He knew all the right words to say, of course he’s going to know exactly how to get me into bed. He basically already has done without even trying. He’s who I was thinking about when I crawled into my bed last night … But if it does go well, he doesn’t want a relationship. He made that very clear to me. And eventually, I will want a relationship. I’m 30, my biological clock is ticking away, you know how it is. I’ve been broody for a while, I don’t think it’s something that’s just going to go away.

I don’t know if he gave me his number in a ‘call me’ kinda way, or if he simply gave me his number so we could screw over his boss together. He has his own studio so he might just want me as a private client of his own, not needing to split his cash. He knows I have a few tats already and that I’m planning many more too. Maybe that’s why gave me his number? What if he gave it to me in a ‘work’ way and I wrongly take it as a ‘date’ way? I would be mortified and then I’d never be able to get the rest of my tattoo finished.

You see … this is what overthinking looks like. A few of the peeps on Twitter have thrown many ‘do-it’ Tweets my way, including one which I feel SHOULD be read by all women:

@notsosexintheci @HornyGeekGirl Doesn’t matter how “crap” you think you are: if he didn’t fancy you, he wouldn’t have given you his number.

— TalesofLondonDating (@TOLDating) 7 July 2016

I get that. He could have just left me to call up and make an appointment via the studio rather than giving me his phone number. He gave me his Instagram name too. I found him. His work one and his personal one. I haven’t followed him though. I’m starting to wonder if my over-thinking of this has turned me into a crazy stalker. He could just have given me his number so I could help him out with ‘business stuff’. I don’t know. He was a cool character and if we ever hooked up, in any sense of the word, I would be permanently second-guessing him, just like I am with the phone number situation. I just don’t have enough confidence to believe a man that hot could be into a girl like me. He saw my fat bits, my stretch marks, even a cheeky accidental nipple at one point … He’s a hot tattooist. I imagine he has the girls lined up.

So, I’m putting him in the box marked as ‘Unicorns’. He’s the one I’ll always dream about, the one I wished I’d kissed … I just think he’s best left alone.

There. I’ve made my decision now.