Have you ever noticed that architecture isnt really well respresented in tattoo art?
The reason I bring it up in the first place, is personally I am alarmed and somewhat apprehensive at the direction tattoo art tends to be heading lately. And Im not talking about the avant garde skin graft conceptual sculptures they are webbing together with needle and ink in the basement parlors of France and Denmark. I am talking about the very real and very dangerous trend in body art known as Medical Mimicry.
It began with fake moles and scars, but has escalated recently into grotesque representations of tumors and skin conditions, such as eczema and jaundice.
You remember Dangle? I cant remember his real name, but we all called him Dangle. But thats another story for another time...
You remember he saved up his insurance fraud money for like six months and then went to the tattoo parlor to get his leg done up to look like the latter stages of diabetic gangrene.
You remember that? He came home all drunk and pissed off, saying he got ripped off. He pulled up his pant leg and showed us the tat', we were all disgusted and amazed. But Dangle insisted it wasnt realistic looking. It wasnt real enough.
And you know what happened to Dangle?
Well, the other night we were at that seedy intellectual bar where Dangle likes to hang out, cowering together around a wobbly table and a few dark pints of mysterious tasting poison. Dangle is buzzed and as usual starts into his Frank Lloyd Wright diatribes, his whispered pleas rising into fevered crescendos about the "damned rules of architecture".
Well, apparently he caught a few ears with his rants, and pretty soon he was arguing with a half dozen bikers. Real mean looking guys, the types of guys who drink Jack Daniels on their Harleys whilst extolling the virtues of Mies Van Der Rohe. Needless to say it got ugly pretty quick. In the ensuing melee, Dangle was knocked unconsious when a flying beer keg got in the way of his head, and he was taken out on a stretcher.
He had a pretty major concussion, and with the aid of medication, he was unconsious for three days. When he finally awoke, the doctors said there was no permanent damage to his head and that he would recover fully in a short time in that respect. But, they said, there was another matter.
It seems that when he was first taken to the emergency room, it was quite a frantic night and he was examined rather quickly, and it wasnt until after his left leg had been amputated that the surgeon realized that the gangrenous decay was merely a tattoo.
"You cut off my leg?" Dangle asked the doctors incredulously, "Because you thought that was real?"
"Yes" the head physician solemnly stated, handing Dangle his amputed leg to see for himself, "We are deeply, deeply sorry."
Dangle took his leg, and ran his former limb around in his hands, like warming up a baseball bat, re-examining the extensive artwork which had been stitched into his skin, admiring it now for the first time in a new light.
"Nice", he said, a sly smile creeping up one side of his mouth, "Very nice work."