Hey thotlings! What’s good? For me, it’s a box of Cocoa Krispies and binging on some 16 & Pregnant. I’m watching an episode where this chick with two-toned hair named Maddy gets knocked up from a one night slam bam when she was trying to get over her ex. Sucks to suck. I’ve literally watched this show since I was a young teenager myself, and people have always asked why. Well the answer is that it’s a gripping tale of what it’s like to be a Monroe-pierced, Victoria’s Secret PINK hoodie rocking young lass stuck in a zebra print room in the Midwest.

I think my favorite Teen Mom couple is Gary and my girl Amber, who’s off the pills and dating a man in his 40s now. Keep slayin’ bitch. In one exchange on an early episode she was getting upset because she didn’t think Gary was taking her seriously when she was lamenting how she had to take her GED sitting it a picnic table. Gary in his Gary wisdom asked “did you have a picnic, too?” to which Amber replied “I hope you have a picnic life, bitch,” dramatically slamming the door. For real tho, my soul really resonates with the 16 & Preggo gals. I think it’s because we both have a bad reputation for doing the same reckless things as nearly every other young person, the difference is that we’re actually honest about it.

By now you might be wondering why a thotling is held up in bed with the MTV app with the holidays around the corner. Well, basically I’m in the painful throws of a healing tramp stamp. Yes, my friends. It finally happened.

If you read my Housecore Horrorfest article, you know that this piece of art was a long time coming. I had planned on starting my whole sleeve of Eyehategod art in New Orleans, but the boy I wanted to go see was hella booked. But the super bowl of thoting that that weekend ended up being made a tramp stamp seems oddly appropriate, and when I threw the idea at Jimmy Bower he smiled super big, lifted up the back of his shirt, and revealed an EHG TS of his own. So Jimmy, you and I are actually twinning now, bound by the sisterhood of the stamp.

I sadly didn’t have time to get it done in Texas, so I made plans to do it at home before the year was out. The only other tattoo I have is the mermaid I got next to my right tit after too many free beer vouchers at the Carlsberg Brewery in Denmark (stay tuned for the details of this trip in a future article), so I had to do some Googling to find a legit shop here in Bmore. I eventually came across Saints & Sinners down in Fells Point, which is a super gentrified but still pretty rad part of the city right on the bay.

I gots the same kind of nautical-traditional vibe as my shop in Denmark, and where there’s traditional, there’s usually also an abundance of babalicious Ricki Hall-looking dudes, so you best believe I booked the shit out of it. Funny enough, when I called and told them what I wanted homeboy was casually like “oh yeah, we’re friends with one of the dudes from EHG here. Brian.” I got super excited in my soul because I kinda have a huge crush on B-rye tbh. Well shit, I was off to a good start.

I was actually hungover and sick as fucking hell the day that I went (Editors note – It’s never a good idea to get tattooed while either hungover OR sick, so props to this lady). I was wheezing and hacking like fucking Big Ang on the way over and my creepy Uber driver offered me a cough drop. I was so desperate I fucking took that shit. I guess it’s okay to take candy from strangers as long as it’s wrapped? Well, I didn’t pass and wake up in a bathtub with no left kidney, so I assume so. My coughing got under control by the time I got there, but I was nervous as hell and was legit about to piss my pants.

My artist came down to meet me and he was hot af, which only made me more anxious and as per usual I started internally Tina moaning. Why I thought it would be a good idea to go to a babe shop sober I’ll never know. He shook my hand I wondered if he could feel me shaking or hear my gross ass sniffling. Well, there was no shot in dicks I would have the courage to ask where the bathroom was at now. Fuck, I’m such a loser. The cherry on top, though, was when I went into his station and saw he had pics of him and a super cute baby. Do Brian and him, like, get together and do DILF stuff? This was more than I could even handle.

Before I really knew it he had me all stenciled up and ready to go. Much worse than any pain, though, was trying not to fucking piss on this dude in the twenty minutes or so it took to stamp me. I mean maybe he would have been into it but at the same time he seemed pretty nice and normal so, um, probs not. I managed to keep it together, thankfully, and the only body fluid that ended up leaking out was just more green shit out of my nose. Thoting with a sinus infection is a fucking ordeal that I don’t intend on repeating again. Turning around in the mirror and seeing how rad it turned out, though, made it all worth it. Then sexyman dropped this bomb on me: “before I wrap it up I wanna take a picture to send to Brian.”

But srsly, all tramp stamp silliness aside, this tattoo means a lot to me. For one, I just graduated college, so it seemed like an appropriate time to get something to always remember a time in my life when I completed one of my greatest accomplishments. The fact that it’s the EHG symbol only makes the significance even deeper. Not only have I been lucky enough to see them play all over the freakin world this year, but they always inspire me to keep going even when I feel like I’m out of fight. Through all of my many health problems, struggles with an eating disorder, and general life bullshit I can always hear Mike IX in the Vice NOLA doc saying “what are you gonna do, give up? You can’t just give up.”

“Sludge” seems to be a word of controversy and contested meaning, and probably for good reason. I can understand from the perspective of a band like Eyehategod that has such a unique blend of influences that it seems kind of ridiculous to try to put a label on what they’re doing. They were pretty much formed because they wanted to play what they wanted to hear, not to a play a hand in inventing a new genre to be repeatedly replicated. That’s why when I hear the word “sludge,” I don’t really think of its musical connotations, but rather, its sentiment.

To me, sludge means beating on in the face of nothingness and believing in the resilience of whatever troubled city you may find yourself in, from New Orleans to Baltimore. Most importantly, though, sludge has taught me to always believe in my inner army of one, to be the woman I want to be, to go wherever, drink whatever, do whomever, and live every day like it’s my last. And if anyone tries to tell me to “have more respect for myself,” whatever the fuck that means, I just tell ’em, “Go have a picnic life, bitch.”