Hi all! Be aware this story isn't super exciting or raunchy, just an empowering experience for me.
So I recently got my third tattoo, which is by far my largest. It's on my upper back, so I knew going in that my shirt would have to be off for the process. I had the same artist for my other tattoos and knew that she was open minded, and the whole parlor was clearly a progressive environment (the front window was decorated with anti-homophobia, anti-racism etc. remarks) so I thought why not let my underwear peep out a little?
Mind you, I'm currently in an exclusive relationship and am no cheater (I mentioned my gf in passing early in the session), and I also happen to know that the artist is happily married with kids. When I do this I often consider it a social experiment where I'm just curious to see people's reactions. An occasional whaletail seems harmless enough, right? So while I pulled it out intentionally, I tried to keep it subtle, so that you could just barely see the sliver of skin between my thong and shorts such that it could easily have been an accident.
By the time I took my shirt off, there weren't any other customers around, just my artist and 2-3 of her co-workers scattered around the parlor. At this point I could feel my legs trembling a bit- I wasn't sure if I was more nervous about getting the tatt or people seeing my thong
At first I was standing up so that she could put the stencil on my back and I could check its positioning. While we were talking I think I saw her glance at my hip a couple of times as if she had possibly noticed and wanted to confirm. When I laid down to begin the actual tattoo, she seemed to look down towards my butt again just for a split second. None of this affected her cheerful attitude or smiley demeanor at all; the whole time we were chatting and laughing about work, music, geeky stuff, things to do in the area etc.Towards the end I'm taking a bathroom break while thinking over the finishing touches of the tatt and notice that with all the moving around (was sitting up for part of the process and switched sides of the table after that) my thong at some point worked its way back into my shorts. So I went ahead and pulled it back out! I sat back down and we talked about the details some more. She got up to talk to her next client while I was comparing the photos of our progress-so-far with the original drawing, so I took the opportunity to feel my back and make sure it was still showing. She came back and added the finishing touches to my back while I was still sitting in the same position, so there's almost no way she didn't notice at some point LOL. I have no idea if any of her colleagues or the next clients in the waiting area noticed though!
Again, as we finished up, nothing seemed weird about the interaction. We didn't talk about anything sexual, and I didn't shove my whaletail right in her face. I was really happy with the way the tattoo turned out, she talked about possibly coming to one of the open mics I frequent, we floated the idea of getting a D&D group together, and after I sat down to recover she even made a point to give me a hug on the way out.
And that's it! Even though I was expressing my sexuality in a somewhat chaotic way, it felt not only freeing but actually kind of wholesome to be me and do my own weird thing without anyone else paying it any mind.
