Post Title.

Tatoo You

   I'm going to talk about tatoos.
   My uncles had tatoos when they came back from the service after WWII. My Uncle Matt, who owned a bar, had a couple of good ones. One was a big old American Eagle, wrapped in a flag. Another was some kind of gun. Nothing special, I guess, but they were well done. A lot of ex-servicemen had tatoos. It seemed kind of natural. You fight in a war, you get a tatoo.

   Nowadays, I see a lot of tatoos, but they don't seem as natural to me. Mostly when I see them on women. A tatoo is a kind of 'branding' or 'marking'. Why would a girl or a woman want to get branded? Or, a guy either, unless maybe you were in the service (or jail)?

   There's a woman in my neighborhood; she owns a coffeshop. The first time I went in there, she was working behind the counter. She's on the thin side, long dark hair, and intense. Kind of reminded me of my second wife. Her coffeshop is a bohemian grunge sort of joint. But they make good coffee and have fresh bagels and muffins, and breakfast is hard to come by in my neighborhood, so I'm there. So I order my bagel from her: the coffee is 'fix-it-yourself'. When I look at her, I'm mostly focusing on her face, which is pretty, but stressed out. She has a kind of build I like, too. But then I notice something else. She's got tatoos. Let me describe the main tatoo, it's all on her arm, I mean shoulder to forearm. It's a concentration camp. There's a tatoo of an ugly barbed wire fence, all around the arm, and behind that there's some kind of 'barracks', and looming over all of it is a guard tower, with a water tank on top. This is all one one rather skinny arm. I'm stunned. I stare at it, but she's busy fussing, doing this and that, so she doesn't notice me.

   When she fixes my bagel, I go to pay her. But I gotta ask. I say, 'Miss, can I ask you a question?' 'Sure' she says. 'Why do you have a concentration camp tatooed on your arm?' 'Whadda you mean' she says. 'Your arm. Why do you have a tatoo of a concentration camp on your arm?' She laughs nervously and looks at her arm. 'Oh, that! that's not a concentration camp. That's just a picture of an old factory that I saw when I lived in Kansas.' 'Oh, well, it had me fooled, what with the barbed-wire and the guard tower and all. I was just curious.' 'Oh, I don't even think about it.' 'Well, it certainly stands out!' She strarts to get fidgety, so I pay her for the bagel and coffee and go sit down and eat. A pretty woman running her own business with a concentration camp tatooed on her arm.

   Now, this coffeshop, they get a lot of the neighborhood 'alternative' crowd in there. Actually, our neighborhood has a tradition of having a lot of communal living and even squatters back in the day. So I started going in there on a semi-regular basis, just because it's hard to get a decent breakfast sandwich and coffee in the neighborhood. And I start looking at the girls who go in there. Women, actually, since a lot are at least 25-30 years of age. And all these women have tatoos. Not just a little butterfly or something like that. But big snakes tatooed on their backs, or their arms. A lot of different occult symbols. Pyramids. Wicca stuff. Some of the tatoos are well done. But they are ugly. They do nothing to enhance the woman's natural beauty. In fact, they are the most non-feminine markings I have ever seen. Tatoos all over their legs, too. And these women have all kinds of piercings, too. Pierced noses, multiple piercings on their ears, pierced lips. I haven't seen their genitals. Also, a lot of them don't like to shave their underarms. And some of them have body odor. Not all. Some wear natural oils and appear to take a bath.

   Now the men. Almost uniformly skinny, like preying mantises. Bald heads, or real short hair. I guess it's called the 'metrosexual look' where then men seem to want to look like fags. And they have tatoos, too. The same ugly occult shit, but mostly just on their arms and legs. The girls seem to go for the big tatoos on the back. They have piercings, too.

   The people I've been talking about here are white, primarily. There are a few black lesbians who come in who are tatooed. To see the tatooed blacks, you just have to walk down the street. Seems that every homeboy and home girl has a tatoo, but the tatoos the blacks have are generally less elaborate, and look more like jail tatoos. Just black lines with some simple image or simple message on black skin. Nothing artistic here, just some self-mutilation with a personal message. And not just the young blacks. The older home-girls (in their 20's) have them, too, and if you can read them, a lot of time ther's a 'sexy' message inscribed. Like 'Booty-licious' or some other nonesense. Some of the black guys go for martila arts or 'kung-fu' type tatoos. One guy I saw today had a very elaborate one on his whole bicept. It looked like three curved blades or swords intelocking.Have you ever seen the logo of the famous Rockefeller led Trilateral Commission? It looked something like that. Most revolting, and you will see it a lot in the hot weather, is to see a fat 'sister' with her stomach hanging out, her tits popping out, and her ass hanging out, with a mess of 'jail tatoos' on her arm. Baby, what's up with that shit?!!!

   I wrote about the retardation problem in America in my last essay. This is really just a continuation. Why do Americans want make themselves so ugly? What is the reasoning here? Everyone has a mirror. Maybe some of these people own faulty mirrors, that don't reflect. They certainly don't reflect on themselves. My neighborhood is also home to a lot of African immigrants. I have never seen one with a tatoo, certainly never on the women, and they would be horrified to degrade their bodies this way. But what is the mental sate of Americans, when we feel the need for this gross display of bad taste and self-mutilation? Well, as the song says, 'I guess I just don't know.' I am 'tatoo-free', FYI.