Fred Aiken Writing

I’ve been into a number of tattoo parlors. I’ve gone into one over 746 times, thereabouts. But I have no ink on my body. I could never commit.

Each time I went into the tattoo shop with more than enough conviction to get a tattoo. I had an idea of what I wanted. I had done the proper research about the artists at the various shops I frequented. I even had a few backup plans just in case my original idea for a tattoo was too complicated…or dumb, or both.

But the formula of how my interaction with the fine men and women that worked at the tattoo parlors I stepped through the threshold of went as such, without fail:

“Hello, my name is…” I couldn’t honestly tell you why I told them my name. It doesn’t seem like all that important of a detail, especially considering the amount of times I backed out of the ordeal. “I would like a tattoo.”

“Fantastic. Let’s get you set up. Do you know what design you’d like?”

“I have an idea.”

“A drawing of an idea or just the concept?”

“All conceptual right now. I’m a horrible artist and would butcher it myself.”

“No problem. We’d be happy to help get something going for you. Lemme know what it is that you’re wanting and I’ll find the best artist for you.”

I gave the most recent design obsession I had been contemplating for the past ten or so days. That tends to be how long I think about a particular tattoo design. 

“Great! I know just the artist for you. Me.”

I get the feeling they were going to recommend themselves no matter what. But I know she’ll soon regret trying to take me on as a client.

“I should confess, I’ve never gotten a tattoo before.”

“That’s fine. I specialize in tattoo virgins. I’ll make sure to be extra gentle.” I’m assuming she thought she was being comforting, but I couldn’t help but assume she was mocking me somehow.

“I should also let you know that I’ve been into quite a few other tattoo shops…”

“Oh yeah? Shopping around? I understand. The first one is always the most special. You’ll remember it for the rest of your life…especially since it’ll be stuck on you forever. Might as well make sure you’re getting the best artist.”

“No, I mean, I’ve been into a couple hundred places and never really had the gumption to go through with it.”

Gumption? Was I some sort of Andy Griffith Show character?

I think she understood the remainder of our transaction and her demeanor quickly soured. She no longer felt compelled to hold a professional countenance of the friendly tattoo artist and hepatitis provider.

“Were you about to waste my time?”

“Not on purpose, I swear. I have the utmost respect for your profession. And I truly do want to get a tattoo.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“It’s permanent.”

“No shit. But what’s the real problem?”

I gave her a sob story about my childhood. I told her I used to be bullied all throughout my scholastic years. Never picked for any sports teams. Didn’t have the brains to hang out with the chess club. No artistic ability. No desire to smoke weed behind the school where the cameras couldn’t see kids doing delinquent after-school activities. I was an average kid with little to no potential and a general lack of ingenuity to make it anywhere in life, but I always held out hope that I was unique and different, though I never knew how. And so I grew up as an adult, boring, predictable, and lacking any passion, with the same sense that I was special with nothing to back it up. But in the back of my head, for whatever reason, perhaps too much reality television, perhaps too many trash movies, perhaps because I eavesdropped heavily on coworkers that swore by the liberation they felt after getting one tattoo after another, I felt all I needed to do was get a tattoo and I’d fulfill some sort of prophecy that had yet to be written.

Too bad it was a lie.

Too bad I could never actually go through with it.

“Do you think you’re going to get a tattoo today?” 

I assumed she was wondering how much of her time I was going to waste. Her eyes glistened like turquoise pottery right out of the urn. I wanted to tell her ‘yes’. I wanted to be the type of person that committed for the first time in my life.

Maybe just a small tattoo, I tried convincing myself. It won’t hurt. The pain was never an issue, though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a tough person by any stretch of the imagination. But I’ve had my fair share of injuries.

Just last week a tough-looking teenager ran over my foot a block away from my apartment with his skateboard. I think it was an accident, or at least I assume it was. Otherwise I would feel dumber than the person standing in front of a tattoo artist for the umpteenth time, wanting a tattoo, willing to pay for a tattoo, and yet still probably not going to go through with the procedure.

Still me. Both people, the tattoo virgin and the guy that had his foot mangled by a scary teenager’s skateboard, are the anima/animus staring back at me in the mirror.

The skateboarding teenager looked like the type of kid that would already have a tattoo. Maybe he did. I spent a weird amount of time thinking about that teenager’s life the proceeding days afterward. Not just what his life was like at the moment, but what sort of person he might become. 

What’s always held me back from getting a tattoo, I feel, is that I don’t have a weird and crazy story to go along with the tattoo. Instead, if I got it, then I might be at a party with a group of friends that I might meet later in life, hopefully soon, but I’m not going to push myself too hard, and everyone would be sitting around asking personal questions about each other’s life. Then the topic of each friends’ tattoo(s) would come up, and we’d all sit around some bonfire while slow-roasting marshmallows to achieve perfect Maillard or some crap like that, discussing our tattoo stories.

But I don’t have a tattoo story. I suppose I could tell my supposed future friends about how many times it took for me to feel comfortable going in and out of one tattoo shop after another before finally deciding on some picture-perfect, hepatitis-c-free shop the world had ever seen. I had the perfect piece of unique artwork. the best artist this side of theMississippi, and never once during the entire procedure of having a needle stab me a few thousand times did I reconsider my life decisions.

In short, it would be a perfect, guilt-free, shame-free story that I could tell everyone, maybe even theoretical grandkids. I guess I just wanted to be able to tell my mom I got a tattoo and not have the feeling like she was disappointed in me.

The tattoo artist went into the back of the tattoo parlor. I presume she had more important issues to take care of than babysit me as I waffled between wanting and regretting the possibility of a tattoo.

I don’t blame her. I felt exhausted listening to myself half the time. 

I called it a day, and went back to the drawing boards. I wasn’t ready to give up on the idea of getting a tattoo.

My college roommate used to tell me on nights we got really drunk after finals week and evangelized our grandiose plans for the future in a world too foreign through our lenses that if I was serious about my tattoo idea, like really, truly, beyond a doubt and there was nothing that could convince me it wasn’t worth it, even when I was ninety, skin-wrinkled, weathered and sun-beaten skin with moles everywhere—moles with hair sticking out, moles with mold forming, fermented pieces of cabbage dangling for hours of a time between my teeth—everyone had left me because of my tattoo but I didn’t care, if I could see myself in that sort of condition and not regret it, then and only then should I go ahead and pull the trigger on getting the tattoo.

“Or you could get really drunk, have someone drive you up to the tattoo shop, and have them tattoo you before you come to your sober senses.”

I gave it another week. then two. Then seventeen weeks went by. I drew up forty more ideas of tattoos that I might like.

I subscribed to a tattoo magazine to get ideas. I followed a whole bunch of tattoo artists’ blogs to get some insight from insiders of the world of tattooing.

I contemplated asking a tattoo artist out on a date…not to get a free tattoo or anything, but mostly to pick their brain, see what some of their thoughts might be on my own personal, circuitous route to getting a tattoo. at the very least, live slightly vicariously through their tattooing.

Maybe we’d have a kid together. Develop a loving relationship. buy a suburban house in a safe neighborhood. Hopefully not in that order.

Both of us would become respectable members of our community. She would be one of those soccer moms that dotes over our theoretical kid(s) by getting them ice cream after each game and yelling at the referee whenever they called a foul on our child. 

I might sell insurance, or be a park ranger…depending on who would hire a previous liberal arts major that studied too much history and not enough finance. Either way, I have a feeling i wouldn’t be making all that much money…especially because I often find myself referring to money as ‘mernies’, and so we’d primarily rely on her tattooing as the bulk of income. But that’s fine. Even if I never get a tattoo, I’m completely fine with having my theoretical wife’s tattoo job’s income bring home most of the jamón. 

Then, when our kid grows up and started asking questions about their mom’s tattoos, we’d have to sit them down, discuss what their mom does for a living.

“Why does mommy have a naked lady on her arm?” they might ask, referring to some American traditional tattoo that she got when her dad, a former Navy lieutenant, passed.

And my wife would thoughtfully and seamlessly answer our child’s every question with poise and tact that most, if not all, diplomats would envy.

But there would be tattoos our child would never see. Tattoos hidden from their prying eyes. Tattoos that even I would occasionally forget she had.

Maybe by accident, maybe subconsciously on purpose, my beloved wife would forget about her more sordid, explicit tattoos—the type of tattoos that feel inappropriate to even mention, much less actually describe outloud. And I could imagine a scenario where we took a family outing to the beach, despite neither her nor I enjoying the beach, but our kid had never been and said they wanted to go because a classmate of theirs had gone the previous summer and made it sound a lot more magical than it was and so of course we couldn’t say no, how could we even fathom the thought, perish the idea of not providing the experience of our child’s first trip to the beach. While at the beach, my tattoo artist wife slips into her swimwear, and lo and behold some of her more shameful tattoos are put on display. Tattoos she thought no one safe her, occasionally me, and God would see. Alas, our child’s innocence is torn asunder and we spend the rest of the vacation, nay, the rest of the car ride home, nay the rest of the summer vacation, in dumbfounded silence contemplating life, our collective internet search history, what book to read next, and most importantly my wife’s horrid, explicit tattoos. 

For the first time in her life she would turn to me with sad, tear-stricken eyes, and say, “I regret these tattoos.”

I wouldn’t tell her this. I wouldn’t tell anyone this. But I’d finally feel vindicated. I would go over to her, place my hand on her shoulder, maybe hug her, gently kiss her cheek, and let her know it would be okay…while in the back of my head, I would be contemplating how great it was that I never subjected myself to getting a tattoo.

Or who knows, maybe I could just get a small dinosaur tattoo so I don’t think I missed out on anything.