Chic Rebellion

I’m glad I never got a tattoo. When tattoos were meaningfully defiant, my arms were so scrawny I didn’t want to draw attention to them. My skinny arms saved me, because tattoos are no longer cool.

Tattoos were once significant. WWII and Korean War vets came home with tattoos bearing the symbols of their infantry divisions. Serial psychopaths bore tattoos telling the world what they were born to do. Now, doctors’ wives have dainty little flowers and butterflies strategically positioned for flaunting at the gardener, yet they are undetectable in evening wear. Doctor Warbucks doesn’t want his trophy tarnished by a tattoo when he’s sportin’ her around the Pink Ball.

Since the veterans are dead and the psychopaths are now cultivated predominately from among middle-class, middle-aged family men who work two jobs and usher at church, tattoos now adorn the insignificant masses who are all in a tizzy to be different together. Tattoos have faded into the realm of fashion bric-a-brac, acquired to accessorize capped teeth, sunless suntans and fake titties. They are no longer unique, fearsome or representative of any experience other than a visit to a licensed, air-conditioned, hygienically pristine tattoo establishment located in the strip mall between Chi-Chi’s and OfficeMax. Tattoos have lost their luster via the principle of saturation.

Fortunately we still have the body art that has withstood the test of time and timidity. We still have the symbols that represent more than a trip to the mall with giggly friends.

Missing digits and scars. You can’t pick them out of a catalog, and you can’t get them by appointment. You can’t buy ‘em; you gotta earn ‘em.

A word of warning: our modern culture is in danger of losing the lure of the missing digit and the scar. OSHA has taken the adventure out of industrial employment, what with their machine guards and safety switches and all. It takes a concerted effort to shut the line down for a while by donating a thumb. Might as well get an office job. Medical science has overstepped its bounds by developing procedures for reattaching severed digits, or forming new digits from body parts that never aspired to be digits. Gone are the days when a guy lopped off his thumb in the lathe because he was bone tired and careless at the end of his twelve-hour shift. Nobody bothered fishing the thumb out of the bin, wrapping it in ice and bringing it to the emergency room. The thumb stayed in the scrap bin, and brought an extra nickel when the scrap was sold by weight. The medical fix for an old-fashioned thumb-lopping was to file off the bone shards and graft a hunk of ass-skin over it. That left a nice, dirty-brown stump. A badge of honor. Hell of a conversation piece.

The curse of dermabrasion is doing its utmost to rob us of the mystical miracle of scars as well. When scars were railroad tracks - those big ol’ zippers that looked like a sloppy weld - they told a story. Plastic surgery is snuffing the life right out of storytelling.

Case in point. Archie was the colorful neighbor from my childhood. He was the neighbor that twenty-first century, overprotective yuppie parents sell their houses to escape. He was a mailman by day and an Indian fighter by night. I’m not talking about Native American casino developers, mind you; these were savages, pillaging and plundering the backyards of urbania. Archie lost a thumb in mortal hand-to-hand combat with these marauders. He even had their heads hanging in his basement. We peered at them from the stairwell and, in the dim light, they could have been mistaken for coconuts hanging on a coat tree. Archie assured us they were heads, though, and that was all the confirmation we needed. We had a butt-skinned-stump-thumbed Indian fighter, right there in our own suburban enclave. Try milking a story like that out of your Nike Swoop tattoo.

The gang showers at the gym are a potpourri of body art. Most of what’s on display there is unimpressive, including the logo tattoos of the dentists, lawyers and computer programmers. It’s hard to understand why any of them would want to draw attention to their bodies, because the tattoos add nothing to the spectacle. My personal gold standard for body art was set in a gang shower environment over two decades ago, and that standard remains unchallenged. I had never seen the guy at the gym before this particular day, and his imposing, weather-beaten-barn-like physical appearance disinvited idle chit-chat from anyone in the locker room. He hit the showers right behind me and, dunking his head under the stream of hot water, he expelled a loud sigh of relief and initiated a conversation I can’t forget.

"Man, that felt good. First time I’ve been to the gym in six months."

I decided to engage the small talk for fear that any lack of interest on my part may be construed as impolite and I’d be left for dead.

"Too busy at work to get down here?" was my benign offering.

"Coma."

This was already better than I had expected.

"Car accident?"

"Nah. I was working on my car one night and somebody smashed me on the head with my own crowbar. He got the five bucks in my pocket."

That explained the corn-row of a divot on the crown of his head. It didn’t look like hair would be growing there anytime soon. He continued:

"I was in a coma for three months, and they gave me the last rites and all that shit. When I woke up, I wished I hadn’t. The headaches have been so bad for the last three months that I wanted to die. Man, it hurt worse than when I got fuckin’ stabbed."

I noted a crusty white scar on his abdomen, just below his rib cage, and asked "is that where you got stabbed?"

He turned his back to me and blindly tapped his finger on another scaly string of pearls on his lower back.

"Nope, this is where I got stabbed." He turned back to face me and pointed at the scar I had first noticed. "This is where I got shot."

Now, it was noteworthy that this guy didn’t have a tattoo. Probably too busy to get one. After all, he seemed to have a full plate juggling stabbings, shootings and comas. My point, however, is the fact that my recollection of those scars from 25 years ago is fresher in my memory than that of any tattoo I may have seen yesterday. My new friend didn’t have any missing digits at the time, but he was young and clearly far from finished. He’s probably come through by now.

So, pardon my yawn when you show me your tattoo. Tattooed cellulite doesn’t make a splash at the country club pool anymore. A barbed wire ankle inking doesn’t reek with rebellion when complemented with a pedicure. Show some mental toughness with a little self-mutilation. Give ‘em less to work with at the next manicure. Show up at the gala with one arm of your tux sewn shut. Tell me a story worth listening to.

I’m working on the real thing. I trashed the protective guards on my bench grinder, and I don’t disconnect the spark plug wire when I remove my lawnmower blade. It won’t be Indian fighting or turf wars that give me my decorations, but you won’t know that from the story I’ll tell. It’ll beat hell out of your yellow butterfly saga.