Other than not being Jewish, I still have a chance of being buried in a Jewish cemetary. One of the prerequisites is no tattoos. Piercings, I don't know. I have a few scars from whittling, stage combat, and blood donations - never at the same time - but other than that, I'm clean of markings that don't wash off. I always wanted a tattoo. Somehow, I can't embrace the permanence of it. What I like in the morning I hate by nightfall; putting any one piece of art on my body means I have to stare at it when I get out of the shower, every single damn day, or at least the days I bathe. I have thought about drawing something. Speaking less charitably than usual, most tattoos are skin cartoons. Artists draw lines then fill them in with color (sometimes). I can draw cartoons. I have a friend who draws them professionally - and, yes, I can see the logical fallacy in this as, said the allergic-to-seafood man, "I have a friend who ate thirty pounds of shrimp; anything he can do, I can do better..." I've worked as a graphic designer and I have the talent of a Schulz but the temper of a Dali. I can't let my skin will mock me.
I can stand tattoos on other people, even the wrong tattoos for the right reason. For instance, everybody gets Asian symbols. I think it's a rule for anyone who has ever gone skydiving. What makes kanji so much better than our alphabet? Do Japanese kids get the word "yeah!" tattooed on their shoulder blades? On second thought, probably yes. I mean, "Yeah!" My friend Fred has two Japanese symbols inked into his skin, one for either shoulder, and, no, I don't remember what they stand for and don't know enough Japanese to guess just by looking. I like Fred's tattoos. He got them at a time when his life was descending into / recovering from chaos and I think they centered him. But even though I don't know the other people with Asian-style tattoos, I sure can judge them.
<sidebar> I heard an interesting story about an Asian tattoo artist so tired of inscribing the same words - "bravery" and "lover" and "soulful" - into the skins of people who could not read the characters or even, perhaps, really understand the meaning of the words in their native tongues - that he started writing swears instead. I wonder how long he thought he could get away with it. I mean, it's not as if he was gently raking the characters into a Buddhist sand garden. Tattoos stay with you forever. Even frat boys visit China, sometimes.
Now what if you had a guy who just kept on going back, for different symbols? If I were that tattoo artist, I'd pull out my DVD of Memento and bookmark AltaVista's Babelfish and just go to town. Then if the victim ever went swimming in Beijing, everyone would know who raped and killed HIS wife*. <end sidebar>
There are other ways to mess with your body, though, and I'm not just talking about breast implants. I read a disturbing article with even more disturbing illustrations about subcutaneous implants made from silicone. Imagine breast implants, but not shaped like a jellyfish and not stuck in under the soft bits. One guy had weird proto-horns growing out of his forehead. A girl had brass knuckles clearly visible as an imprint above the soft bits, just below the collar bone. In the picture, she wore a look like she was going to reach in under her own skin, yank out the implant and beat you to death with them. Just like the porcupine quills, sometimes Nature very clearly says, "Stay away."
Then come the piercings. I can understand piercing ears. Brandi got her ears pierced when she was a little girl, because her grandfather loved girls with pierced ears and he promised her diamond earrings. I grew up just as it became fashionable for boys to get earrings. Left ear meant you were straight. Right ear meant not. Both ears meant you were Will Smith, who is neither because Jada Pinkett-Smith is a robot. Ever seen her in the same room as a strong magnet? I rest my case.
So, once the fashionistas opened up the floodgates of men's earrings, that was when I think all hell broke loose. I blame one-upsmanship. Suddenly, your boyfriend has more jewelry than you. What to do? Get double-pierced. Now you've got four holes in the soft tissue on either side of your cranium, how fashionable! How your girlfriends envy you, for a time, or at least until they can find an ice cube and a safety pin to settle the score. Then it's time to pierce something else. How about your tongue? Navel? Eyebrow, nose, cheek, naughty bits...
Pretty soon, you find you have to leave four hours early to make your flight, because you can't make it through airport security without first removing six pounds of surgical steel and high-grade silver from your body. You and Jada Pinkett-Smith have the same nightmares: you're all alone in a darkened room when suddenly someone throws a switch. A faint humming echoes and you find yourself rising, pulled from above by... an enormous junkyard magnet! Oh, the humanity (robotity)!
I mean, it's an interesting look, but does anyone else out there think a nose ring looks like a shiny booger? I work with a woman who wears one and it's all I can do to keep my own hands away from my face, for fear of sympathetic wiping. Some of the kids who work at the Alley don't even bother with the stud and get the pull-down kind, as popularized by the beef industry and bull fights. Others get the metal spikes that stick out of lower lips like a really vicious soul patch. Newsflash: it looks like you got stabbed by a leprechaun. Eyebrow rings look like stitches, or the Band-Aids you put on in lieu of stitches during a boxing match.
Yet, in direct defiance of my reservations, people keep their face hardware firmly planted in their face. Why? Why did I have to clean out Brandi's upper ear piercing, repeatedly, swabbing with alcohol and Q-tips and pulling out the occasional stray hair wrapped around the shaft of the earring? Why do people not necessarily all that well suited to public speaking build even more walls in the form of mush mouthed speaking, the direct result of a tongue stud that will not stay clean or out of the way when they try to form words? "If I pull it out the hole will close up..."
Well, duh. What's that tapping? Nature, at the window again, gently reminding you that, orthotrycyclene and aspartame and antibiotics to the contrary, she does not like to be trifled with. She always gets the last word, because we're all going to the same place: a Jewish cemetary. Well, some of us.
It reminds me of a quote I saw on the back of a sk8-er t-shirt a few years ago. On the front, it read, "He who dies with the most toys..."
And on the back...
"...still dies. NO FEAR!"
Yeah! No fear!
* John G.
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