skin&ink
A few disclaimers up front: this may not shock you, nor is it particular original, but I secretly wish I had a tattoo. Nothing lame like a Celtic pretzel on the small of my back ( did I just lose 90% of my readership?), but something delicate and feminine and wonderfully specific. On the pale white skin of my forearm. Right there, for people to see as they look over the wall of my cubicle as I aggressively delete abused apostrophes.
I may not want a lame tattoo, but I’ve come to realise that I have lame reasons for wanting a tattoo. Reasons that should (and do, and will continue to) technically bar my entry into the demographic of the tatted.
The biggest reason is I want to look as hard core and alternative as I feel inside. Sure I work in a cubicle, but I’m vegan! Sure I wear a lot of navy blue, but I write angry letters to corporations about the exploitation of the female body in advertising! Sure you might have seen me at Woolworths, but I mostly forage for herbs in the park next door. With my bare teeth.
I guess I sometimes feel like I need to help people pigeon hole me, so I’m easier to understand. If I had a few more piercings and a couple of tattoos, they wouldn’t screw up their eyes and frown when I share my more private (and less external) ideosyncracies. They’d be able to classify me immediately, and there would be less chance of me offending any sensibilities, because I’d just be one of those people. See what I mean? Lame!
And fortuitously, to keep me from making a dumb decision is this thought: although I don’t doubt for a second that the biker demographic earned their rattlesnakes, eagles and pole-dancers through a lifetime of hard knocks out on the open road, (or more specifically, Blaauberg Road in Tableview at 3am in the morning), it would be easy enough for the most unlikely of unlikelies to walk in to the parlour, page through the catalogue, pick the meanest lookin’ scorpion they can find, part with the cash and walk out looking at least 5 times fiercer than they probably are. And frankly, that’s cheating. Have I gone through life respecting people who look way more hardcore than they are? Absolutely.
My husband who loves my forearm the way it is, reminds me when this comes up (and it comes up surprisingly regularly – Friday afternoon, after work, when I’m feeling a little like I’ve sold out to The Man), that you can’t fake alternative. Alternative is as alternative does.
Stern, but true.
