I was sitting on the table, my nails making crescents in the white paper covering. The blood roared in my ears, perhaps trying to drown out the steady ticking of the laser and the smell of my own skin cooking. My eyes were squeezed shut, but not tight enough to stop the tears from pouring down. And all I could say in my head was, "Why did I ever do this in the first place? I deserve the pain I am going through now and I deserve to have to spend this money, because I shouldn't have gotten these shitty tattoos in the first place." Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. Just as the doctor turned off the machine and lifted up his goggles, I burst into tears. All the pain and regret and guilt seemed to pour forth in a flood of prickling, burning heat, raising white patches on my skin.
At A Glance Author Annie Contact [email protected] When N/A Artist Dr. Rand Studio Tattoo Removal Center Location New York, NY "I hate this!" I screamed. "I fucking hate this! I always forget how much it hurts! Why does it have to hurt so much? Why did I have to get these tattoos in the first place? They'll never be gone! I hate this!"
Dr. Rand said that we all do things we regret and that it's never too late to turn around. "It will get better," he said. "I'm sorry for your pain."
I finally calmed down enough to go home. I don't think I've ever cried like that since; I was extremely stressed at the time. It was two weeks before the test to get into IATSE Local 600, the camera union which I was hoping to join, because I'd finally found something in my life that I cared about. Something that made me realize I wanted to change certain things about myself...like these tattoos that I got when I was at a different place in my life. I was a bundle of raw nerves, aching and miserable, walking down Madison Avenue in a stupor, my ankle already swelling up and my hair sticking to the gauze on the back of my neck. I got on the train, completely spent, feeling like everyone was staring at the bandages on my ankle and neck, wanting them to feel this pain too so that they would never question me about it again, or lecture me about how I shouldn't have gotten tattooed in the first place.
I took the union test and passed. I quit my job and went freelance and worked as a second assistant camera on a 35mm feature. My ankle took one for the team when I hit it on the latch of a camera case in a moment of carelessness, but the blisters from my third treatment healed up just fine despite this. I went back for another treatment in January and I still cried, but this time I cried because it was winter and I had no money and no work, and having to walk around with these stupid bandages on me was just the icing on the cake.
I pay 500 dollars a treatment and undergo more pain than most people are probably used to. Simply put, I do this so I can finally look in the mirror and be happy with who I am. As all of us who are modified know, the body is a temple, and we are free to do with it what we like. But we have to respect this temple too; it works both ways.
I've been contributing to this site for about 7 years. It started with self-piercing and moved to scarification and ink rubbing, with the occasional tattoo story. In 2004, something in my mind did a 180 and I decided to begin the long journey back to the center...less modified outwardly, more modified spiritually. I no longer wanted to stand out, and most of the artwork on my body no longer represented who I was. It crushed me to realize this. Perhaps it would have been easier to stay how I was.
But sometimes, "easy" or "hard" doesn't cut it. I've been undergoing laser treatments for almost two years, taking it very slowly. It took me a year to find a really good doctor to do it, someone who was dedicated and knowledgeable about the technology and who also understood the psychological pain. I have spent as much money on this, as I have spent to join the union, and more than I spend every month that I live here in New York. But just like the journey of self-discovery I embarked on when I first began getting pierced, this has been worth it every step of the way, even through all the pain.
The other day, I went to get my hair trimmed. "Don't cut the back too much," I told the stylist out of habit, "I don't want my tattoo to show."
She looked at me in genuine bewilderment. "What tattoo?" she said.
My mind stopped in its tracks and I realized what I'd said. I stared at the back of my neck in the mirror, so used to seeing that black outline of a bat there, what I thought I wanted when I was 20 years old and didn't know my ass from my elbow. Three laser treatments later, it was gone at last.
"Oh," I said, "I used to have a tattoo back there but I got it removed...it's funny how I got so used to it."
I spent $50 on Dermablend makeup to see if it could cover the remnants of the skull and crossbones on my chest. I explained this to the woman at the makeup counter. She carefully blended it into my skin and then dusted it off with the powder puff. My throat closed up and my eyes burned. To see pure, untouched skin there instead of blotchy, faded ink, was the best modification I could ever ask for. It was a sign of things to come.
You can get a piercing or a tattoo, or a bunch of them. Or, you can leave yourself exactly as you are. The true celebration of a modified culture, is the recognition of our abilities to choose what we want to look like, down to every last detail. If you had told me 10 years ago that it would be possible to remove tattoos with the same laser that can fix your eyes or remove sunspots, I would have laughed. But that's the way it goes now...and I think it's incredible. I am eternally grateful for a world which has allowed me to go in one direction with my self-expression, and then back again in another. I think this is the true experience that we all look for, whether we're getting a tattoo, or getting rid of one.
I guess what I'm saying is, never say never, and never say forever, either. Each choice you make has a price to pay and a potential consequence. And you only get one body to make that choice with...so you might as well try and get it right.