Last Tuesday, I scarred myself for life. Aside from the pain of multiple steel needles scoring indelible ink into the lowest layer of my skin, it didn’t even hurt. I got my first tattoo. From this day forward, there will be a new way for loved ones to identify my body at the morgue, along with the diamond-shaped birthmark on my leg and my impressive dental records.
It’s a picture of a drum, sketched in thin, black lines and dots, above the elbow on the back of my left arm. It cost £90 and is meant to represent my love of music, or something like that, but more immediately it represents a decade or so of indecision. I’ve always admired tattoos, or pretty much any extravagant mode of self-expression – shaved or dyed hair; ear, nipple or septum piercings; fancy hats – just not on me. I didn’t get a swallow behind my ear when I was a teenage punk and I didn’t get a line of Whitman’s poetry on my bicep when I was a hopelessly lofty literature student, so why the hell am I doing it now?
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