Tuesday 9 October 2012

Skin Deep

I rarely like new fashions when they first appear. Only
after they've been around for a while do I finally get my eye in and decide that actually they're really not too bad. I think this demonstrates my lack of originality and flair, or possibly my unique blend of conservatism and slavish conformity.

But slavishly conformist though I may be, there is one fashion that, no matter how much I am exposed to it, I am unable to embrace. I think this may be partly because it is something I associate from childhood with slightly menacing sailors, images of ribbon-entwined anchors and a faint odour of booze, fags and machinery oil.

For tattoos - which, of course, are the fashion item I'm referring to - were until recently pretty much restricted to the arms of burly men - at least, in the Western world. The images those men usually chose to adorn their biceps with were either pictures of their women - or possibly their dream women; declarations of love; or things somehow related to the seafaring life.

In the years since I was small, however, the range of tattoo-'appropriate' images has broadened enormously, and nowadays the temptation to decorate oneself painfully and indelibly seems to be something quite widely felt. Indeed, the last time I was in Europe, it seemed to me that, whereas once tattoos were a sign that you were a bit of a maverick or on the edge of polite society, currently being without a tattoo is the thing that sets you apart. During a few hours spent in Luton airport at its most crowded, (thanks Wizzair, I really, really enjoyed that), I saw virtually no-one who had not submitted to the inking process - and their arms were by no means the only places they had chosen as a canvas for their permanent displays.

On every visible part of their anatomy, (and who knows which hidden ones), all kinds of people had invested in their own artistic statements. Leaves and flowers twined round the hairy calves of a man in shorts and flip-flops in the row of seats opposite mine; snakes writhed across the shoulders of the woman he was travelling with. Tiny butterflies had alighted permanently on countless shoulders and ankles, while on numerous necks I spotted mysterious hieroglyphs. Did they say something profound about life or explain the wearer's complicated allergies? I don't suppose I'll ever know, (or actually care much). I wonder if the people who will carry these things on their skin forever are always absolutely certain what they say themselves.

Sadly, try as I might, I could not bring myself to admire any of these expensive doodles. This was largely, I decided, because skin is a really unattractive background for pictures. It does not lend colours any added radiance or vibrancy. Furthermore, it rapidly starts to show its age. As it grows dull and loses its elasticity, the images printed on it also lose whatever glow they might originally have had.

All the same I couldn't help wondering whether, if tattoos had been the fashion in my youth, I wouldn't have just conformed and had one pencilled in somewhere. I thought about what I was like in the summer after I finished school. In those days, I was awfully inclined to join in with almost anything.

Despite not actually having been invited, I spent that December, January and February staying in Bondi with a friend from boarding school. I managed to find a job as a motorbike courier and, once I'd mastered the map of Sydney, I abandoned myself to an existence that involved very little thinking and hours and hours in the not particular fresh but at least usually sunny Sydney air.

Each evening after work I'd go down and splash in the sea for a bit, amazed to live in a city where that was possible at the end of the day. On the weekend, I'd visit my brother in Coogee, who had the very civilised habit of cooking a steak and a tin of mushrooms for Saturday late breakfast or early lunch. Generous soul that he is, he never seemed to mind sharing this meal with me. In the evening I'd go out with my friend - or with some rather racy medical students I'd met somewhere or other. Our most memorable outing was to hear the new phenomenon called Skyhooks at the Rocks on Australia Day.

I was relaxed and easygoing, perhaps for the only time in my life. I'd probably have done anything anyone suggested. For instance, I happily trotted off with my new friends to Luna Park one Sunday afternoon. I'd never do that these days (possibly because I still remember the feeling of terror as one of the rides turned me very abruptly upside down and the speed with which that feeling was replaced by a sense of outrage when I noticed that all the change that fell out of everyone's pockets at the moment of being turned over was being rapidly collected up by funfair employees, already waiting in a mesh-covered pit beneath.)

I was utterly feckless and had no thought whatsoever for the future. I lived entirely in the moment, more or less purely hedonistically, and for a brief period I think I almost understood that mysterious thing called fun.

But tattoos, I wonder. For there's one other thing that I've also just remembered. There was a milk bar on the corner of Bondi Road, just near where I was staying - it was the one that famously bore the following unappetising slogan, visible on its side wall if you were approaching from Bondi Junction and heading towards the beach:

Fish
Milkshakes

Sometimes in the evening, after I'd eaten whatever disgusting mess that passed for my attempt at cooking, I'd decide that what I needed - to take the nasty taste away usually - was something vanilla-y and sweet. That milkbar sold pieces of fudge that came from Poland, wrapped in shiny striped paper emblazoned with a picture of a cow. The moment when I would decide that I wanted a piece of that fudge was usually about two minutes before the milkbar was due to close, and so I would make a dash for it, belting as fast as I could down Boonara Avenue through the balmy evening air.

Usually I was lucky and the place would still be open. Once inside, I'd go straight up to the counter. The jar with the fudge pieces stood by the till. I'd take one out and open my purse. The dark haired, rather taciturn woman who stood behind the counter would look at me unsmilingly as she put out her hand for my cash. Glancing down, I would catch sight of her arm for a moment, emerging from the sleeve of her nylon dustcoat. Hedonism vanished. The light hearted pleasure of the beach, the frivolity of Sydney in the summer, it all just evaporated. For an instant, nothing existed but that row of dark numbers tattooed just above her wrist.

18 comments:

  1. Beautiful post. It captures the atmosphere perfectly from start to finish, and a what a stunner of an ending.

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    1. Thank you, Denis. I enjoyed your latest too.

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  2. A brilliant post - like going for a pleasant walk along a country lane, only to be mugged at the end. I mean that as a compliment - the visceral shock of the last line was completely unexpected.

    Re: tattoos, I hate them with a passion and make all sorts of assumptions about people who wear them. Perhaps it's because my religious upbringing taught me to regard the body as something to be covered rather than flaunted, but there's an aesthetic objection too. Only this afternoon, I was treated to the sight of a faded tattoo of a butterly wobbling on the arms of an obese woman - not a good look. Nor is the fashion for names at the bottom of the spine or nape of the neck.

    Once, a tattoo simply meant that someone was 'common', but these days it's harder to classify people who have them. Maybe it's just sour grapes on my part towards people who feel comfortable in their own skins.

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    1. Thanks, Steerforth - now I'm intrigued about what your religious upbringing was.

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    2. Nothing terribly interesting - just a 'low church' zeal for temperance and self-denial. I also had an aunt who was a missionary in Africa, but came and stayed for months at a time.

      I thought I'd left it all behind years ago, but the priggish, Victorian in me still creeps out when I least expect it. I'll never forget the atmosphere at a business meeting when I said "Yes, but what is the morallyright thing to do?"

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    3. Oh yes, I remember, don't I, a v interesting post about that aunt?

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  3. good read, v. good read. And I say that as a tattooed oik

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    1. If I were invited to invest in a painless, speedy and effective tattoo removal device, I'd do it like a shot - I reckon there will be heaps of money to be made in coming years as all those who have recklessly tattooed themselves come to regret it.

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  4. The NY Times had an article recently about descendants of Holocaust survivors who choose to honor them with replica tattoos. It strikes me as strange--why not a case of typhus and malnutrition to go with it?

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    1. Someone just sent me a link to that article - I've been thinking about it a lot since then. I can't decide what I think about the gesture.

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  5. Yes, a very good read. I once had a dance teacher on whose arm I glimpsed those dreaded tattooed numbers - I don't think I've ever felt such a shiver down my spine before or since.

    I also hate tats (though those 'arse antlers' that women have sprouting up their backs from their bum cleavages are quite amusing). And, guys and girls, sorry, it DOESN'T MAKE YOU A MORE INTERESTING PERSON. Just my opinion.

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    1. Ugh, I hadn't heard that phrase you've put in in inverted commas before. Have young Romanians succumbed to the tattoo craze much?

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    2. According to a young man I spoke to recently, they're also known as 'tramp stamps' or 'slag tags'.

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  6. (I went off on a bit of a rant there, sorry. I seem to be getting more intolerant as I get older, though, in my defence, this intolerance is mostly confined to places such as your blog!) Yes. And as in the West, some of them bare them like war scars and some keep them mostly hidden until such poignant moments such as bending over.

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  7. was the dance teacher preparing you for strictly come dancing or was this in romania?

    Steerforth I think our Prime Minister and her Praetorian guard would be on your case for 'misogyny' for broaching such terminology

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    1. I certainly don't endorse those unpleasant expressions, but perhaps even reporting them would be enough for Ms Gillard to lambast me with her dulcet tones.

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    2. That dulcet quality is entirely thanks to her Welsh origins - they're very musical, the Welsh, you know. You can really hear it when she speaks, I reckon.

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  8. She was in fact an elderly lady preparing me for Strictly Come Central-European Expressionist Dancing - I suppose that should have been a givaway regarding her background, but she was called Helen and had a Belfast accent (presumably the place to which she was relocated after they rescued her from the camp).

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