At this late stage of my existence, tattoos have unexpectedly become a significant part of my life. It’s like I have woken up as a character inside the Sunday comics. Tattoos are everywhere and I don’t understand how this trend has occurred. I grew up in an era when tattoos were a major league sin and only convicts and sailors had them. Now I can’t open the door, a magazine or web page without seeing inked skin. It’s enough to make me wish for Taliban fashion police.
Tattoos have been around for a long time. Exhibit A is Otzi the Iceman. He has tattoos and was buried in a glacier 5,000 years ago. While he is not the only tattooed human we have ever found, historically, tattoos are not a common phenomenon. Most human remains we find are ink free. I see a lot of tattoos in my work at a prison. In fact, most of my students have tattoos. Some of their ink is well done and some is awful. Some of it looks like it was done by a professional in a studio. Some could have been done by a blind kindergartner in a swing set.
I often ask about their ink. I am very curious about why one would adopt such a permanent fashion statement. I look at my high school year book and am appalled at what we considered “cool.” I can’t imagine being stuck with the epidermal equivalent of a Nehru jacket until I die.
I haven’t found anyone who can explain the desire for tattoos very well. Except for maybe those with sadomasochist urges. Some people tell me about some person or event they want to memorialize. Some are just obsessed with a meme like dogs, butterflies, or a comic book character. Many tattoos are gang related. It’s a uniform the authorities can’t strip away during incarceration. And I include sports-related ink in this category. After all, fan is short for fanatic. The difference in the behavior of many sports fans and that of MS-13 is hard to distinguish at times. Especially after a victory in a championship game.
The whole gang thing is something I do actually understand. I was always the new kid in class and the smallest kid. I got picked on a lot. Joining a gang would have prevented a lot of fights and humiliation for me. But even gang tattoos can be over-the-top and therefore inexplicable. The offender with “kill cops” tattooed on his eyelids expressed regret to me over his stupidity. So did the one who had a Boondock Saints thing going on with “fuck cops” on his knuckles. Law enforcement officials tend to be a tad prejudiced against people who use their bodies as billboards attacking police.
Facial tattoos mystify me as well. Mike Tyson and Charles Manson are famous examples of permanent makeup. I have guys with all kinds of stuff inked on their face. Devil horns, swastikas, anarchy symbols, I’ve seen it all. Such people seem to have given up on life and want the world to know it. Truth in advertising I call it. It’s the blue equivalent of a skunk’s stripes or a viper’s rattle. Most facial tattoos warn the rest of us to stay away from an obviously disturbed individual who feels they have nothing left to lose.
Recently I spent a few days in Glenwood Springs. As always, there was a lot of ink on display. However, I noticed a new trend I hadn’t seen before. There were dozens of grandmothers . . . women in the fifties and sixties with tramp stamps. Worse they were new, in fact, one was so new you could still see the needle marks. You can tell old ink. Like loose skin and fat cells, old tattoo ink succumbs to gravity. What was once an elaborate Scottish clan symbol is now, thirty years later, a blue blob. Before he died, my brother-in-law’s tattoo resembled the skid mark of an Oompa Loompa.
All of this makes me wonder: what is up with the grannies and the tramp stamps? I couldn’t muster up the courage to ask one. Back ink on most women has a sexual context. I also know that Viagra is extending people’s sex lives far past retirement. But why would a sixty-year-old woman, with no other tattoos, choose to get a bull’s eye branded on her backside? Maybe I don’t want to know.
As my two faithful readers know, my oldest son died in February, 2018. Since then, I have pondered whether a tattoo would be a good way to honor him. Certainly, if I were to ever get a tattoo, this would be the occasion. But I can’t think of any ink that could capture how incredible he was. And if the constant pain in my heart from having him ripped away ever fades, the scars will be more permanent than any body art. I guess I really am doomed to never understand tattooing.
