Excerpted from
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If I’d gotten a tattoo as a husky ten year old, it would have been of a hushpuppy and a can of Coke. If I’d waited until fifteen, it would have been a picture of either Malcolm X, Abbie Hoffman or Kurt Vonnegut. At eighteen I would have had to choose between Peter Falk as Columbo and Joey Ramone. The point I’m trying to make is, life changes so quickly and so much, it’s difficult to commit yourself. That is what I thought about people with tattoos, until I got one. I thought they were stupid for tying themselves to a specific point in history, one which would undoubtedly change drastically.
When I got old enough to think seriously about getting a tattoo, it was during a less optimistic and much darker time in my life, when I wasn’t dreaming of hushpuppies. I was thinking that people might be out to get me. Because of this, I thought of getting the word “conspiracy” tattooed very small, somewhere like in my armpit, where no one would know it was there but me. I can’t quite see the logic in it now, but at the time I thought it was very clever. I think it had something to do with my paranoid fears of brainwashing and body snatching. With this tattoo, you see, I’d be able to check all of the time and see if I was really myself or if I’d been replaced. (Like I’ve said before, I wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.)
