August 28, 2018

August 28, 2018

Everyone in prison has tattoos. There are guys with their whole faces tattooed and you don’t even look twice, just part of the landscape. I use to wonder why everyone gets slung down when they get locked up. I told myself I wasn’t going to get any tattoos. Things change, though. I get it now, why tattoos are so big in here.

Think about it: When you’re sentenced to prison you’re stripped of your identity; your family, your job, your girlfriend, your dog, everything that made you who you were is taken from you. You’re literally stripped naked and handed a uniform. The uniform is identical to everyone else’s around you. You’re assigned a number. You’re told to shave your beard, tuck in your shirt, and stay in 704 compliance. Everything that made you unique or special is gone, and there’s an existential void inside of you. Who am I, you ask yourself, and as you look around at the cookie cutter world you live in you crave individuality, something to set yourself apart, to prove to the world, and to yourself that, yes, I am still a person. I matter. So how can you do that in an environment that is regulated down to the boxers you wear? You decide to mutilate your body, the last thing you can identify with, the one thing that is still yours (though the state would argue that in court), in the only way that will make a lasting statement, permanent. You decide to tattoo your body to set yourself apart, to show who you are. And it hurts, but you come to like the pain because it pierces through the numbness, the apathy, and reassures you that you’re still capable of feeling and that you are still alive. And who’s to say that it’s not an unconscious desire to punish yourself, and in that punishment transform into someone else? Someone who is unique, significant, not one of the faceless crowd but a person. The irony, of course, is that in your quest to be a unique individual, you have become one of the faceless tattooed crowd. It’s poetic, really. Because isn’t our desire to stand out just a perverse way to fit in, to be noticed and therefore accepted? Still, I don’t regret any of my tattoos because they’re a part of me, and they tell a story. I’m all about a good story. My uniqueness, then, comes from telling my story as just another one of the faceless crowd.