It’s no secret that I love hearts, and pink and red things, and the whole lovecore aesthetic. I mean, I just wrote a whole blog post last week about pink-and-red outfits I devised to match a pink-and-red dildo… Suffice it to say, I’m a fan of these colors!

I think what draws me to the lovecore look even more than its pretty colors, though, is its emphasis on love and romance. They are really important themes in my life – I mean, I have a whole blog category dedicated to them! Love and romance have guided me toward many of my greatest joys and my happiest days – and not just because romance itself is fun and uplifting, but because crushes encourage growth!

If you are a person who experiences attraction (sexual, romantic, or otherwise), you can probably remember a time when you wanted to impress someone you were attracted to, or even just wanted to understand them more deeply – and in this effort, you researched a topic that was new to you, or consumed media you would’ve never stumbled across otherwise, or discovered a whole new side of your personality that you never knew existed. Whether or not our attractions ever “pan out” into “anything more” (which we can’t always control, anyway), they still pull us in the direction of who we want to become, and I think that’s fucking magical.

As we get older, every heartbreak and rejection can make it harder to keep pursuing love and connection. It seems scarier and scarier to go out into the world and take big, foolhardy risks with your heart – and gosh, wouldn’t it be so much easier to stay home on your sofa, numbing out with Netflix and living vicariously through other people’s loves? (If you feel called out, trust me, I’m calling myself out even more!)

It takes a concerted effort to push back against that impulse to self-isolate. Risk-aversion may be a prudent approach in finance or business, but it’s rarely the right impulse when it comes to human relationships, which inherently require some degree of risk. The ‘finding people to date’ part is risky and scary, the ‘actually going on dates’ part is risky and scary, and the ‘opening yourself up emotionally and physically to a new person’ part is definitely risky and scary… but when those risks pay off, it’s like winning the emotional jackpot.

Anyway, all of this has been on my mind for a long time, but especially since the pandemic kicked off. It’s never been easier to self-isolate. It’s never been easier to avoid relational risk. But I don’t want to do that. So I got a new tattoo to remind me: it’ll always be worth it to roll the dice on love.

My friend Addison Finch is an artist extraordinaire; you might know him as the creator of the current Dildorks album art, or the Making Magic album art, or his illustrations on the Funkit Toys Random Encounters sex dice, or any of the numerous other projects he’s done in the sex-positive sphere. He’s also a tattoo artist, so when he mentioned to me that he was going to be visiting my city and doing a guest spot at a local tattoo shop, I knew right away that I wanted some of his art on my skin!

I considered a few different possibilities, but kept coming back to an idea I had seen represented by various different illustrators over the years (including RubyRoller-Art, xPixelPerfect and Eidalfina): pink dice decorated with red hearts. To me, it was the perfect encapsulation of my current goals vis-à-vis love and romance: Roll the dice. Take a risk. See what happens.

After some discussions of layout and placement, Addison drew up a design in his own style for me to look at, and I loved it. He set to work tattooing it on me, while we chatted about life, love, kink, and art for a couple of hours. When I saw the completed ink on my arm, it felt right immediately – almost like it had always been there.

I’m not the bravest person in the world when it comes to love (or anything else). But I hope this tattoo will give me a kick in the pants when I need it, reminding me that love might hurt, and it might surprise me, and it might even blow up in my face – but it’s always, always worth rolling the dice on.