Freak Show

By Tom Poland

 

The Carnival Sideshow Goes Mainstream

It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s dead now. Suicide most likely. I just saw him once but that was enough. It was a nice spring morning, and I was having coffee in front of Jittery Joe’s on East Broad in Athens, Georgia. A shirtless bald man covered in tattoos walked by. Ink covered every square inch of his torso. You could not see his eyes. Ink covered his bald pate. He looked reptilian, an evolutionary blunder doomed to extinction.

What kind of work does he do I wondered. Who’d hire a guy that looks like a monster. Others like him prowl the streets. Welcome to the freak show, once the province of cheesy sideshows in carnivals and circuses. Remember those? Some huckster calls out “Want to see some freaks? Pony up $2 and have a seat.” In a haze of smoke in front of a small stage they come through flimsy, stained curtains. Deformed people. Dwarfs. Lobster boys with claws for hands. Conjoined twins. Hairy women who look like monkeys, and last but not least the Amazing Tattooed Woman.

Welcome to the Age of Abandonment. We throw away marriages. We quit jobs. We abandon careers. We tell banks “Go ahead. Take our homes and cars.” We discard friends and family. We don’t like things that are permanent, but that doesn’t apply to the carnival crowd. What irony—they get something they can’t throw away. Ugly tattoos. Ugly because time, aging, sunlight, gravity, color distortion, changing skin elasticity, weight gain, and weight loss will turn the unbelievably creative iguana on a 21-year-old woman’s firm arm into a saltwater croc by her late 50s. Try explaining that to the granddaughter down the road.

“Nanna, is that a birth defect?”

“No, honey. It was a … an accident.”

Accident is right. Poor self-esteem hit a “me too” trend head on. People are such suckers for trends. In the late 1950s the hula hoop swept the country. Remember the Duncan yo-yo fad? How about the 1970’s leisure suit fad? Well, none of these permanently changed or disfigured your body. What’s with this epidemic of ink—this plague? Why willingly give yourself something destined to become ugly or a scar? Because right now you want to make a statement. You want to be somebody special right now.

Well, if you were among the first to get some ink, congratulations. You are an American original. The sheeple (a great word that says tons) who followed you, however, are walking clichés, escapees from the freak show. “No,” you explain,” you’re expressing your inner creativity.” Really? If you want to feel special, if you really want to express your inner creativity, pursue art, take up photography. Try writing. Paint. Pursue ceramics … but wait. These things require effort and lots of time. Sitting on your ass getting a tattoo is a lot easier isn’t it. You don’t have to do anything. Just sit there and let a “body artist” work you over.

And what about these tattoo artists? What do you know about them? At least South Carolina licenses them and enforces health standards. That wasn’t always the case.

You can praise art and praise individuality all you want to but you don’t fool me. You’re insecure. You’re unsure of who and what you are, and besides your good friend just loves his tattoo. So, here comes the truly hard part. What kind of tattoo do you want and where do you put it? I am sure people agonize mightily over just what to get and how many, because for many, just like potato chips, one ain’t gonna do.

It astounds me just how many “reasonable” people ink up these days. The freak show’s gone mainstream and the more people who do it, the more regret you see. Were it possible, now would be a good time to invest in tattoo removal services.

 

Nothing is sacred. A beech defaced by the creative hand of man.

 

 

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

A Harris poll determined that one in seven people regret getting tattoos. Their reasons include “being too young when they got it.” Feeling that they are “marked for life.” And “I just don’t like it anymore.”

Tattoo Remorse aka The Regret Business is booming. Google “tattoo removal.” You’ll be surprised at what you see. Want to get that iguana off your arm. Your best bet is laser removal but be forewarned that lasers are ineffective on tattoos with bright colors. Other methods include dermabrasion, sanding away the ink, acid—chemically boiling away the skin, scrubbing the skin with salt, cryosurgery—industrial-grade frostbite via -320 degrees Fahrenheit liquid nitrogen, and excision—surgical removal. Sounds fun!

Things change. Young women become mothers, careers change, and some folks actually make it over fool’s hill with a few pushes from negative comments, social stigma, embarrassment, and changes in relationships and careers.

If you’re going to cover yourself with ink in toto like the freak I saw in Athens, you better have a lot of money or own a great business. That sleeve you love so much will make it harder to put food on the table. More and more police departments, governmental agencies, hospitals, banks, restaurants, and the military enforce a “no-visible-tattoos” policy for all personnel. And getting all inked up puts you in a select group. The next time you watch one of those Discovery Investigates murder documentaries, more often than not the murderer(s) sport ink. To be a gang member is to be tattooed. Charles Manson put a swastika between his beady eyes. (Good company you’re keeping their tattsters.)

 

“I bent over and my two-year-old son, said, ‘What’s that?’ I’m having it removed.”

I have a friend whose dad was a Marine fighter pilot. When asked why he didn’t have a tattoo, his answer was immediate: “Only low-class people get tattoos.” She knew a woman ho had a “vine” tattooed around her ankle. That tat mortified her parents who paid her to have it removed by laser. The laser removal process was so painful she could only endure it for seconds and had to make many trips to the dermatologist. The laser, by the way, feels like an extremely hot rubberband snapping the skin repeatedly. She had the tattoo removed but its ghostly presence never went away. The vine was still there, an ashen ghost.

Tattoos provide insight into people. Talked to a kid the other day who got a sleeve of black ink only. No colors. Took seven hours. Seemed very out of character for him and is, perhaps, a disturbing peek into his future. Here’s an observation you can check out for yourself. The larger the woman the more likely you are to see tattoos. Check the ankles. I suppose it makes them feel beautiful … for a while. And serial inkers just can’t stop with a few. They must have many tattoos.

 

“Getting my now-ex-wife’s name tattooed on my arm was just dumb.”

None of this is new. People have marked their bodies for thousands of years. If it is a bona fide part of your heritage, fine. If you’re a rock star making eight figures a year I get it. If you’re just another person who feels a tattoo will make you special, I don’t get it. Yeah, it’s your body and you can do whatever you want to it. Go ahead. Make your fashion statement. Align yourself with pirates, pagans, tribes, and the criminal element. And the term “tramp stamp,” ladies, doses out severe condemnation for any woman who likes the idea of ink in the small of her back. What’s a guy to think when he sees one? You and I know and it isn’t nice.

You can debate the merits of tattoos all you want but three forces will do a tat in every time: sunlight, gravity, and aging. They will turn your beloved peacock feather into a blue fuzzy blob, something you’re stuck with for life. Regret will come, in part, from the end-of-history illusion, a psychological delusion. Even though your tastes have changed over the years, you at last know who you are and your days of change are over. Well guess what. You will continue to grow and what appeals to you today will not be appealing in the future. In plain English it’s hard to know what you will like forever, so, here’s a bit of advice. If you’re considering getting some ink, get a henna tattoo first but don’t let a so-called body artist put black henna on you. No such thing. They’ll probably use a chemical that’s harmful to the skin. Look at the tat for a few weeks and then see how you feel about it. If you go ahead and get a real one, it’s there to stay and you can only blame yourself.

 

 

Photo by Tom Poland

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

 

Tom Poland is the author of eleven books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press has released his and Robert Clark’s book, Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II. The History Press of Charleston just released his book, Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.

 

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