Following my recent preoccupation with tattoos, it was inevitable that this paragraph in
the vaguely disturbing - but beautifully written - article about Internet dating by Emily Witt in the latest London Review of Books (an article I actually came across thanks to the invaluable site The Essayist) would catch my attention:
"I went on a date with a man who turned out to be a hairstylist...On either side of his neck he had tattoos of crossed scimitars. I asked him what the tattoos meant. He said they meant nothing. They were mistakes. He pushed up his sleeves and revealed more mistakes. As a teenager in Dallas he had let his friends use him as a training canvas. To call the tattoos mistakes seemed to be different from regretting them. He didn't regret them. He said it was just that his 16-year-old self was giving him the finger. 'You think you've changed,' the 16-year-old version of him was saying through the tattoos: 'Fuck you, I'm still here.'"
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