“He’s willing to surgically remove the finger!” I yelled to The Suitor from my desk.  He’s in the kitchen pounding our chicken between sheets of plastic wrap.  Tonight I’m making a mock-lasagna with thin layers of chicken (marinated in basil, red pepper flakes, and Oliviers & Co. basil olive oil) nestled into a lasagna pan filled with tomato sauce and part-skim ricotta, doused with a sloppy layer of part-skim mozzarella.   Others might call this chicken parm.  Others aren’t trying to avoid carbs.  Mock-lasagna, thank you very much.

“Well good for him,” The Suitor replied weakly.
“His finger!” I continued to shout.  “FINGERRR.”  I was met with no response.  Some guy from San Antonio emailed me today, asking for my help in getting him noticed.  “He says he’s going to tattoo one of his fingers with a permanent advertisement,” I repeated earlier.
“Yeah, people do that these days, are willing to tattoo some company’s logo on their forehead for coin.”  He didn’t say “coin,” at all.  He just pointed to his forehead, the lines of it wrinkling as he looked up at me from his desk.  Coin is a good word, but if you stare at it too long, you wonder if you spelled it correctly. 

Well, it can’t just be any old finger, I thought.  I mean, for starters, he had better keep his hands moisturized, his cuticles pushed back, his nails buffed to a man-shine.  If you’re going to advertise on someone’s body, and all they’re offering up is one finger, it better be something in the middle.  A pointer finger would be good, too, but the middle finger has the most real estate.  People all but ignore your thumbs.   Then I thought back to the people who advertise on their foreheads.  I wondered if you’d notice their eyebrows more.  And certainly, there would have to be some proprietary agreement, a non-competition clause, prohibiting any additional tattoos on the face.  You wouldn’t want your audience to give that face a partial skim and miss your banner. 

So Mr. Finger, I have learned, is not just offering up a finger upon which one may advertise via tattoo, but after thirty days of wearing the tattoo, he claims he will have said finger surgically removed and given to the highest bidder.  Man, what happened to the good ol’ days when people were auctioning off grilled cheese sandwiches?