The ungainly spider crab out on our tidal flats decorates its carapace with bits of seaweed, the better to camouflage itself and enhance its role as an ambush predator. Several species of marine tube worms, called “decorator worms,” do the same thing (with tiny shells, sand, and algae), for the same reason.
There are other organisms that adorn themselves for survival purposes, but humans are the only species that purposely change their appearance for reasons that have no practical purpose. I am not talking about a new hairdo, or a new outfit — I am talking about tattoos. Permanent ones.
The permanent alteration of the body is widespread in cultures throughout the world and throughout history. The 5,000-year-old man found in the Austrian Alps had a tattoo; tattoos adorned the bodies of Egyptians, Africans, Polynesians, Samoans, Japanese, Incas, and Native Americans, among many others. Joseph Banks, the botanist on Captain Cook’s expedition, was probably the first European to get a tattoo (the word itself is Polynesian), and the British Navy is responsible for spreading the practice to the “civilized world.”
Still, this kind of adornment was limited in this country for quite some time, when the only people with tattoos were drunken sailors, convicts, and circus performers. This changed abruptly sometime in the 1960s, and since then the practice has grown exponentially until tattooed flesh is today a common sight.
A recent survey revealed that roughly a third of Americans now have at least one tattoo; I am sure the Outer Cape population can beat that percentage. In fact, while I originally wondered why people got tattoos, perhaps the better question is why not?
My friend Richard, who is of a certain age, replied that he did not have “a tattoo disposition.” He speaks for me (also of a certain age): I have zero motivation to go for one. My resistance chiefly stems from a lack of imagination. Every Halloween finds me clueless in coming up with a clever costume; how, then, could I select some decoration that would stay with me every day of the year for all the years left to me?
What if I did come up with something and then changed my mind? And would I be defined forever by whatever skin insignia I was wearing? I will leave this world with the same body I came in with, albeit more wrinkled. (And how about those wrinkles and their effect on whatever design first went onto supple flesh?) I won’t even mention the pain involved, or the cost.
So, why do people choose to tattoo? Perhaps because of vanity, peer pressure, or to mark a rite of passage, to commemorate an event or a loved one, to identify oneself as a part of a group — or as apart from a group — to celebrate their bodies, to express themselves.
Rob Costa has a beautiful colored tattoo of Ray Wells’s dune shack. Why? He was conceived there. (Actually, in the dunes behind the shack, but they are not as tattooable.) That is an event to commemorate! Katie Silva has nautical coordinates on her arm: they signify the exact spot on MacMillan Wharf where her father’s fishing vessel tied up. That is devotion of a different nature. (She also has a pooping gull on another arm: good luck, she says.)
Kris Smith, who has been a tattoo artist in Provincetown for over 30 years, pointed out what I had been missing: the artistic aspect of tattoos. He, like many of his fellows, got into the practice because of an interest in art and drawing. And most of his customers are similarly focused on beauty. Whereas I might purchase a painting and look at it on my wall, they purchase tattoos and look at them on their own bodies. Kris emphasizes that every tattoo is a collaborative undertaking, starting with a client’s concept and involving his expertise regarding design, placement, and execution. The result: as personalized a piece of art as there can be.
Joe Navas, the noted local photographer, is Kris’s friend and a longtime client. He has at least eight tattoos, most of them by Kris, and says he “will probably never be done.” His tattoos run the gamut from the commemorative (a celebration of his sobriety 23 years ago, his Boston Marathon record times, his wedding anniversary) to the artistic (a stunning Death’s Head Moth). Some take some explaining, but each means something to him. He describes his time with Kris as “three hours of therapy” and values “the letting go.”
These conversations briefly tempt me to consider a tattoo. I look down at my arm and for a moment see a whale’s tail, the Monument, Botticelli’s Venus, Guernica…. But no, it is just my pitiful bicep. The rest is in my mind.
