29 aug 06
"do you have any tattoos?"
when i was very young, i loved to draw on myself, enjoying it in a naughty sort of way -- i seem to remember my mother telling me that i'd get blood poisoning from the ink, and forbidding it. i think the real reason might have been that it was socially unacceptable to have your kid running around with self-administered ballpoint tattoos all over his body.
i think if i were to get one now, i'd get a solid ring around my neck, about an inch wide, just where it'd barely poke out of a shirt collar. i think that'd be cool. i'm too hairy to get a tattoo anywhere else, except on the underside of my forearm, forehead, or corneas.
i might like to tattoo a number on my neck, at about 45 degrees facing out, right where the jugular vein is. something like 009378, except it'd have to be carefully chosen with some kind of numerological nonsense. it'd be like some kind of futuristic identification number, except that'd make it really easy to identify me if i ever rob a bank. i mean when i rob a bank. the obvious association with the holocaust would really raise some eyebrows, but this is all fantasy -- of course i'd never get either of these tattoos. but if i was forced to get one, i'd get one of those two.
i believe "barcode tattoos" are a cultural product, actually. i'm not original, as usual.
the problem with tattoos is that they fade. when you're 80, that intricate design of a skull-headed, winged scorpion will have transformed into a fuzzy-edged blob (i actually saw this tattoo on a fifty-year-old, and, sure enough, the edges were deteriorating).
this consistent property of tattoos is going to be especially troubling to the women who are now getting them in greater numbers -- very much analagous to sagging skin. a sagging tattoo, if you will. i've seen hoary old men with ancient tattoos, and they look like skin disease; certainly not something anyone would voluntarily apply. i tell people this, but they don't seem to care, and go and get tattoos anyway. i'm not sure what they're thinking. maybe the technology has changed.
i'll make a tattoo on myself right now, with a sharpie.
the photo is a little blurry, since the light in here isn't optimal and i had to keep two arms from shaking instead of just one, but you get the idea. BLOOD.
i'm not such a fan of body modification. one of the low-points in the history of my "selling out" was when i got an eyebrow ring at my "girlfriend" marisa's behest. i still can't believe i did that, in ocean city, when i was perhaps 20. it never really healed, and after that "relationship" ended, i took it out. i still remember swabbing it with alcohol, and rotating the thing around in my poor stinging eyebrow, which didn't understand why its owner would subject it to such abuse.
i still have a tiny scar to remind me of this girl, with whom i probably had the least in common of any girl i dated. "girl i dated". certainly this is better than calling them "girlfriends". "some chick i was seeing", maybe. i used to number them as ex-girlfriends when i talked about them (this one would be xgf#4), but i realized that this was making a value-judgement that isn't accurate. it's sort of similar to the way i talk about people i know as "acquaintances", to avoid using "friend", which is something of a loaded word.
i hope this impromptu tattoo comes off at some point in the not-too-distant future -- i see now that it says "permanent marker" on this sharpie. do you see what i go through in the name of art? someone will ask me to pierce my nose with a paper-clip next. maybe i'd better get to work on washing it off now. or not -- let's just hope i don't have any short-sleeved job interviews in the next few weeks (perhaps unlikely).
my mom is going to see it, and i'm going to get in trouble. it's already starting to look stupid, and i swear the marker dye is starting to sting just a little bit -- i think i'll go see what happens if i scrub at it for a few minutes. i blame you.