Why ink-stained wretches shun tattoos

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Why ink-stained wretches shun tattoos
25/09/2010
By: Tom Oleson
Winnipeg Free Press

It is perhaps a sign of your failure as a father figure when all of your children have tattoos and none of them contains your name, as in "Best Dad Ever." Almost all of my children have tattoos -- my youngest daughter, Katie, has so far kept her canvas intact, at least as far as I know, but the rest of the brood is bedecked with various inky designs that most decent people wouldn't contemplate.

Before I was a decent person, I did want a tattoo -- perhaps a skull and crossed bones or something equally macho. Fortunately, the city closed down all its tattoo parlours before I was legally old enough to get one and did not allow them to reopen until I was smart enough not to want one any longer -- although I do occasionally fantasize about all the members of the Free Press editorial board going out together and, perhaps after a few drinks, hitting a tattoo place where we would get identical body inkings.

They would feature a skull and crossed bones, of course, and be accompanied by the words that classically define an editorial writer -- a person who comes down from the hills after the battle is over to kill the wounded.

With all those words, that would be a big tattoo, perhaps, but we all have bellies and backs, whole bodies that can be painted upon with needles and inks in all sorts of bright colours. The world record for tattoos on one body is something over 5,000, so we can certainly accommodate a paragraph or two, as the accompanying picture, with its Christmas greetings and portrayals of Popeye and Olive Oyl, illustrates.

The reason that I don't have a tattoo is, if memory serves, that former long-ago mayor Steve Juba entered a tattoo parlour on Main Street and was thrown out by the operator, who disagreed with his politics. City council then banned tattoo emporiums from the city, which explains why so many people of my generation have really bad tattoos that will never go away. To get a decent tattoo in those years, one had to go to jail, which is a little extreme. The only alternative was to use a pin and a ballpoint pen.

Do not try this at home. The results are usually ugly and always regrettable -- I once knew a woman who had a ballpoint-pen-and-pin tattoo of the word "SEX" indelibly printed on her inner thigh. I used to wonder how she would explain that to her future husband.

Tattoos have more importance than that, however -- unless, of course, you unexpectedly discover it printed on your spouse one night. They are a form of identification, a kind of branding.

Tattoos came up in a Manitoba courtroom this week in just such a way. Daniel Cote was accused of taking part in a riot at the Brandon jail, where he was imprisoned for a crime of which he was later acquitted. The judge, apparently aware of the irony involved here, gave him credit for time served and two months' house arrest.

The Crown, in arguing for a jail term, suggested that Cote was a member of the Native Syndicate gang, and that the tattoos that adorned his body were gang insignia and proof of his continued involvement in criminal activities. He was also wearing the alleged gang colours of black and white in court, even as he denied that he still belongs to the organization-- the irony just doesn't seem to end.

He can, of course, change his clothes. Tattoos are harder to get rid of, a process more painful and expensive than new blue jeans and a grey hoodie. They do brand you pretty well forever.

On a recent episode of the soap opera The Young and the Restless, two lovers foolishly decided to have each other's name tattooed on their bodies. Because of the kind of emergency that can only occur on a soap opera (one hopes), the guy ended up with an incomplete tattoo -- instead of Victoria, he had Victor permanently printed inside a heart on his shoulder. Try explaining that one to the next girlfriend.

If you look up "tattoo" in the Encyclopedia Britannica you will be referred to the entry "Mutilations and Deformations," which is basically how people without tattoos think of them. That entry informs us, however, that it can be an intricate and delicate art form, and tattoo artists, now legally allowed to work in Winnipeg -- you don't have to get drunk or go to jail anymore if you want to be mutilated -- think of themselves as artists, and perhaps justifiably so.

The whole human body is their canvas, although, as Britannica informs us, arms, legs, trunk and face are the most suitable surfaces for decoration. Other possibilities are best left to someone else's imagination.

But it is all branding, a statement of who you are and where you belong and it is a universal phenomenon found in every culture, except, of course, among editorial writers. If your job consists of sneaking down at night after the battle is over to kill the wounded, the fewer identifying marks you have, the better.