This year was the year I got interested in getting a tattoo. Perhaps what I’m saying is that this year was the year I got interested in permanence. Last year ended with me holed up inside a room in a frozen ghost town, writing what would become a book that people have said kind things to me about at the end of this year. Reading this really helped me through a bad time, says a woman who holds my hand between hers, and we both nod slowly in the same time signature. This helped me mourn my dead friends, says a twentysomething guy with beautiful and haphazardly dyed red hair, before showing me a tattoo on his arm that is a memorial to one of those dearly departed, while I nod slowly, again, a metronome of understanding. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to hold the sadness of strangers. It’s something I imagine my work asks of people who don’t know me, and so I am compelled to do the same for others. Obligation isn’t necessarily the word I’m looking for, but perhaps whatever happens when obligation meets a small type of mercy.
A lot of my pals have tattoos. Some of them are regrettable scrawlings from a past season of life; some are full-blown, carefully constructed art pieces. One pal has birds bursting from a spot above her shoulder and rushing down her arm. Another pal has a small “x” or two along his hand, a relic from his straight-edge days on our punk scene. He hides them now, especially when flicking a small flame from a lighter to light his…
