Tattoo undo

I am a pretty manly dude. I mean – not to brag – but I split a log once. So I’m set. I really don’t need to surround myself with heavy machinery and dirty toilets and eau de ball sweat to continue fueling my masculinity.

And I think it’s because of all my virility that I thrive with so few male compatriots in my life. In fact, I could count my meaningful bromances on one hand, if a hand had six fingers and if dogs counted as friends.

Yet these old friendships have been on my mind lately – one old friend in particular. Let’s call him the Mick to my Keith.

Mick and I tore it up in college. So much of what we did together is unprintable, in large part because no one wants to read about two dudes quoting Seinfeld. We also had this long-running joke where we would decide to get matching tattoos of a certain rock-band logo. Alas, we were always foiled by the fact that it was 4 in the morning, and/or that we were too spirited for any reputable parlor to accept us.

Until one of us made the joke in the afternoon, as sober as nuns fresh out of communion juice. Real men don’t back down from a challenge. And that, dear readers, is how we both ended up with an extra tongue on our bodies.

Over a decade later, another impulse cropped up. Some people get wild hairs to clean the house or to write a book or to reproduce the Eiffel Tower with bottlecaps. Me? I got the wild hair to remove this tattoo. Hell, I inked it spontaneously. Why not ditch it the same way?

I popped into a consultation at one of the local tattoo removal centers. The tattoo remover lady very professionally and directly explained how she would shoot my skin with lasers to break up the ink of the tattoo. For a tattoo this size, the process should take only about five minutes, she said – five minutes, that is, once a month, for an it-depends number of months.

It’s almost like spontaneous decisions made earlier in life can’t be hastily erased by money, technology or the sheer desire to make them go away. Undoing is its own process. And, at least in the case of tattoos, undoing hurts SO MUCH MORE than doing. The removal laser is like a hot thumbtack poked through a taut rubber band, thwakking your skin four times a second. Just like elementary school all over again! Only more expensive.

It’s a rough process. The tattoo’s black outlines blister up each month like a Dantean velvet coloring poster. I keep it wrapped for about a week and moist for four, until I go in again to dissolve the picture a little further.

At first, I was shocked how many sessions this process might take. Now, I’m stunned to watch the tattoo dissolve bit by bit each month.

I assume Mick still has his tattoo. He – or the “he” I knew – was more the type to laugh over spilled blood than to avoid cuts in the first place. But the last time I talked with Mick was the day after his first kid was born, four years ago. Last week, one of those “Your friend of a friend’s friend liked this photo” moments showed me that Mick and his wife now have a second child, complete with matching knit sweaters and a professional photographer.

As far as I can tell, we live all of three hours apart. But when we lived two continents apart during study abroad terms, we mailed each other Dr. Pepper and Shiner Bock and other contraband. Now, I couldn’t send him a Christmas card if I wanted to.

At least, not through the regular ol’ USPS. Let’s consider this column a Christmas card, licked and mailed through the ether.

So, hey, Mick: Not everything persists as long as the Glimmer Twins. Even so, our friendship is part of who I am. That’s what distinguishes “friendships” from “acquaintances.” But the tattoo is not a part of me. It never has been. It’s always been someone else’s logo slapped on my skin. A good laugh, a conversation starter, and in the end, an emblem for so much that I am now finally ready to shed.

Real men can say they miss another man. I missed you, Mick. But I don’t anymore. Instead, I’m just glad we had the friendship we did, when we did. It will help me be a better man when it finally comes time to tally up another deep and dudely friendship.

And whatever else happens in this life, don’t worry about me. I’ve got voluntarily being-shot-by-lasers to keep my man cred going strong.

– Zach Hively