Tat attack

Whenever I see Mike Tyson, I feel this strange motherly urge to spit into a handkerchief and wipe that gray muck from the side of his face.

 

It always takes me a minute to realize that the weird muck is actually a tattoo. I remember watching him box back in the day, before he went off the rails and started telling his opponents that he would eat their families, and he looked more or less like any regular dude. Assuming any regular dude has a gap in his teeth and pectoral muscles that could be used as sandbags during a Biblical flood.

 

Then he just appeared one day, without warning, with this trippy design etched onto his mug. Extending down the left side of his face from his brow to his chin, it looks like some skeletal dragon that’s trying to gobble his eye. It’s the kind of thing that would be fun as a temporary tattoo – maybe as part of a Halloween costume depicting the head-shrinking tribesmen of the Amazon rainforest – but as a permanent marking, it makes it hard to take Mike Tyson seriously. The man can punch a hole through a car door, yet it looks like he just had his face painted at the circus.

 

I may never understand face tattoos.

 

On other areas of the body, they’re fine. Depending on taste, execution, and location, they can be downright cool. Sometime during the past couple generations, there’s been a shift in peoples’ thinking about body art; back in olden times, before a pill could cause a four-hour erection, tattoos were considered the province of criminals and ne’er-do-wells, a sign meant to convey a person’s hard-edged toughness. They were often acquired in prison, where getting one’s ink was a nice way to break up the monotony of lifting weights and spooning with men named Shirley.

 

Now, so many people in my age group have tattoos that when I get together with friends of mine, there’s a fairly high likelihood that I’ll be the only one at the gathering without some kind of body art. And they’re not ruffians, these people. They don’t use spittoons or smell like motorcycle leather. They wear T-shirts with video game characters on them and watch “Dr. Who.” At some point, people like that became the patrons of tattoo parlors, which must have been confusing to the needle-wielding artists, so accustomed were they to inking up pool sharks and big-bicepted sailors.

 

Even I came close to having a tat of my own. I was in college (of course I was), and was strongly considering getting an emblem permanently grafted onto my upper arm. The design was a four-sided star that’s become a logo of sorts for the metal group Metallica; it was perfect, I thought, because it would be located in an easily-concealable spot, and represent a genuine passion of mine without resorting to off-putting imagery, like a skull with a mullet dripping blood from its eye sockets, or Satan flipping the bird to a basket of puppies. 

 

In the end, though, I decided against it, for the simple realization that I’d just never have the chance to show it off. My lumpy, oddly-constructed body is like a solar eclipse, in that you probably don’t want to look at it directly without the aid of protective goggles. I’d have to make a special point of bringing the tattoo up in conversation, at which point I’d roll up my sleeve to display it, and realize that I just dropped eighty bucks to see people politely nod their heads. 

 

Also, I do have to admit that I was influenced by the whole it’s-going-to-look-terrible-when-you’re-80 argument. You’ve heard (or even spoken) this line of reasoning: “Sure, your tattoo may look nice now, but gravity always wins, and when you’re old it’ll look distorted and weird.” That made sense to me ten years ago, but over time I find it less and less persuasive. Yes, at 80 years old, any tattoo’s you’ve got will probably look bad, but then again, so will the rest of you. At that point, what does it matter? When you reach that age, it’s not like you’re still trying to pick up women on spring break by sucking in your gut and preening like a peacock. At 80, relax. You’re done. Mission accomplished. If you find yourself single and looking for a companion, I don’t think a mere lumpy tattoo will be that great a hindrance. Chances are your potential honey-bunny has plenty of interesting topography themselves, whether they had ink done or not.

 

So I guess a tattoo is still on the table, potentially – less a compulsion now than a wistful bucket-list item. But if Mike Tyson has taught me anything, it’s that the face is a bad, bad place to put one.

 

As mainstream as they’ve become, I think there’ll always be a stigma about placing them there. And there should be. Tatted-up or not, people don’t identify us by our upper arms or lower backs or calves or ankles; it’s our mugs that get us in the door. They send a message to the world. Sullied by an artist’s needle, that message is: “I will eat your family.”

 

My dad’s got a tattoo on his forearm. He’s had it for over 50 years, and had it done during an era when the technology wasn’t on par with today’s standards; you can tell that it’s seen better days. It’s either an anchor, or two seals making love on a gondola. I’m not positive. But as rough as it looks, it’s still preferable to anything that would rouse the spit-and-wipe instincts of hygiene-oriented parents. 

 

Personally speaking, the only above-the-neck ink I’d consider would be a scalp tattoo of a full head of hair. Really turn peoples’ heads. What do you think, should I stick with the natural brown, or change it up, be audacious? I’d better choose wisely. Once there, it’s there forever.