real life

I am applying for a job as a "writer" for PRICK Magazine in the next week or so. I wrote this today and will submit it with a resume and etc. I haven't edited it yet, that is why i am posting it. so i can read over it over and over again and find the mistakes, etc etc

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On Paying Someone Lots of Money to Draw on My Skin
- or - Validating My Stupid Tattoos
by Zac Hobbs

I suppose there are those decisions in life that we will ultimately regret. Most tattoo collectors keep this thought in the back of their mind every time an idea for a new piece enters their head. As human beings, we are able (at least in some capacity) to mediate our decisions and ultimately hope that when the grim reaper comes to read our name from his tome that the bulk of our major decisions wont be filed under the “regret” category. “Maybe I shouldn’t have dated her,” “Maybe I shouldn’t have quit that job” and “maybe I shouldn’t have gotten that tattoo” are all phrases that no one wants to utter on their deathbed.

When I was 20 years old, I began a 2 and a half year odyssey of having a rendition of Gotham city, complete with Batsignal and Bat Mobile, permanently drawn onto my upper arm and chest. I have spent well over three days worth of hours of my waking life in a tattoo chair in Valdosta, GA (three and a half hours from my home, mind you) while Craig Beesly jammed insane amounts of colors under my skin. I am significantly poorer because of this experience.

I have a green Blue Whale tattooed under a banner that says “Brodependant” on my left arm. When I was in Chicago I had an apprentice tattoo a red one line drawing of a polar bear onto my badly sun burnt arm, which now looks more like a pink Arby’s Hat. I have a koi fish missing half of its body tattooed on my foot and a star on the back of my arm that I can’t really explain.

I may not be the king of stupid tattoo’s, but it is a fair statement that I have quite a few bad ideas permanently drawn on my skin. But the way I see it, tattoo’s are sort of like an old photo album. They are reminders of where we have been, what we have done, what we have loved and what we are dependant on (in my case, Bro’s).

Tattoo’s are not some manifestation of your inner most being, but they are also something a little bit more than some ink jammed into your skin. If it takes you more than 2 minutes to explain your tattoo, then it probably doesn’t really mean anything to you at all. At the same time, you shouldn’t just jump straight into every single bad idea, either. I suppose if nothing else, tattoo’s are just a rather absurd way of visually explaining the kind of person that you are. I have a religiously confused friend who has a tattoo of a devil with a sword kneeling below a bloody cross. I have another friend whose only tattoo is the initials for the group of friends he grew up with. Every tattoo says something about us, even if they are something as stupid as discolored blue whale.

If tomorrow some revolutionary company invents a cream that will lift tattoo’s from right under the flesh, then the day after tomorrow I would still have a bunch of kind-of-sort-of (probably real bad) ideas forever tattooed on my skin.