An Illustrated Generation

Not too long ago I made a remark on Facebook that caused all kinds of problems - no, not one of those comments where my moderate-liberal political views cause the Far Right to roll their eyes and mutter about socialism and class warfare. In a political climate that has seen the sudden rise of the Tea Party, anything left of Traditional Fiscal Conservatism mixed with Social Liberalism is seen as firebrand.

Nope - this time I made what I thought was an amusing remark on something I saw while motorcycling down Buena Vista (Bwayna Vista). There are deer on this in-town road - several years ago Liz hit one late at night that sounded like a bus full of nuns smashing into a walrus - so I keep a sharp peripheral eye peeled. There are deer and there are humans who will do what humans do from time to time, to wit: wander into the road for no reason. But the periphery is the dreamy edge of your vision and it creates its own realities sometimes.

That day, as I rumbled smoothly around the curve I caught up my handbrake sharply as my peripheral radar caught sight of two men standing in the yard - one fairly normal and the other covered in ghastly burns. But not, those weren't tragic burn scars at all, they were grotesque patches of hair growing in green-black fungoid patches on his body. An ape with the mange? Dressed in wife-beater and long shorts? Isn't there an ordinance against this sort of thing?

I craned my head around and got a better, more direct look: it was a man covered in tattoos. Ah, that explained it.

I've never seen the point in most tattoos - especially not the ones that are pieces of larger tapestry. If that's the correct description. On second thought, it's not - rarely do people put together a mosaic of pictures that complements the shape of their bodies, adding shading and nuance the way well-applied makeup does. If you have an awkward body it's not improved by five or six random splotches of green-black.

I'm especially baffled by the girls who get what I can only describe as a bib tattooed to their chest. I can't look at those without leaping to the conclusion that this woman has more chest hair than I have. The second glance does not reassure me, as I've already been ruined by my first impression. I'm forever ruined by the whispered suggestion of wooly chest hair on a girl.

I suppose a lot of my misgivings re: tattoos comes down to a generational thing. My entire "formative years", to use the term I hear Television Psychologists utter when they slide their glasses down the bridge of their noses to look blandly at their patients, were built around the premise that only certain kinds of people get tattoos. Mainly trashy ones - the kind that grow up in hovels, reheating casseroles and looking forward to a good night of bowling and then, perhaps, a boozy rutting in the back of a car somewhere. The type of people who can't read - proudly.

I think it was my generation, actually, who - in their college years - broke the class trend. Suddenly college kids in the upper middle classes were stepping through the doorways of tattoo parlors. The scions of middle management accountants were getting discreet designs here and there, always wary to put them somewhere that they could be hidden if necessary. Later, of course, there would be no need for discretion - once the cap was off this particular brand of narcissism you could expect young pre-lawyers to get neck tats, Russian gangster style. Future mothers of America were sporting barbed wire patterns around their biceps that suggested that they were dangerous animals that needed to be caged, or POWs who had escaped from a camp somewhere. Frankly, I'm not sure what those suggested, but it was anything but Clean Wholesome Mom.

What must it be like to look at Mom and Pop with their full sleeves and their neck tats and god-only-knows what's climbing around on their body beneath their clothes . . .

I'm baffled. Things change, of course. Time is fluid on its crash course towards . . . well, where-ever time rushes. In future generations, who knows what will be du jour and passe'?

I'm in the minority on this issue, as in so many others - so many, as a matter of fact that I've started to pretend that I'm a visitor on this planet from another dimension . . . but more on that later - when I made my statement on FB that I found tattoo culture to be, well, grotesque, many were angry and felt judged. Those the phrase one of my detractors used. He felt judged. Which I guess is true. If your body is covered in poor feng shui illustrations the color of mold or bruises I suppose people might judge you. It's self-inflicted unlike a hare-lip or glass eye. Anything you do to yourself and your demeanor that's not natural will provoke judgement, or commentary at the very least.

Oh well - time is fluid, but it loops back and forth in a serpentine manner not unlike old rivers so that it's possible to stand at the top of one loop and look simultaneously forwards and backwards. The faster time moves, the more of us find ourselves at that loop . . .