Under My Skin

Not very long ago I was in New York for a few weeks and decided to get a tattoo while I was there. It was a partly impulsive decision. I’d thought of doing it for years, but I think of doing all sorts of relatively exciting and ostensibly transgressive things and never do them, either because I am too lazy or too cowardly or because I come to my senses in time to stop myself.

I was in New York mostly on account of not wanting to be in Boston. I was at sea from a breakup, and the former beloved happened to live next door. You are probably supposed to get a tattoo removed at the end of a relationship, get that name in the heart erased or changed to signify something else — Ken to Kenya, Olivia to Bolivia. But somehow this great unpleasant change in my life made me feel as if it was the right time to get the tattoo done. You have all sorts of ideas for self-improvement at such times. And I had always had a particular self-improvement purpose in mind for my tattoo: that it should serve as a visible reminder to be a better person, a symbol that, every time I saw it, would remind me that I had made a commitment to myself to be good.

A friend recommended a place to me, but I waited too long to call. So I just wandered around in the East Village looking for a place. I told myself I wouldn’t go anywhere that had a chain of bongs hanging in the window. Half a dozen parlors on St. Mark’s Place eliminated themselves immediately, and I was getting ready to give up when I crossed First Avenue and saw a sign above a bong-free window that advertised a combination tattoo parlor and cappuccino bar. How urbane! I thought.

Inside, a young man, grumpy but not at all rude, was waiting. He was round and hairy and, appropriately, covered in tattoos. He asked me what I wanted for mine. I’d been thinking about this. The tattoo was supposed to remind me of what I tended to forget every day, to be less selfish, or less insular, to remember promises, to try to think less of my own largely imaginary suffering and devote some time and energy to considering the suffering of others. I thought of words to this effect, but words seemed too obvious, and too public; I didn’t want just anybody to read about my failings. A picture seemed like a better idea.

I thought of John Calvin, because even though I think he’s a secret softie for the beauty of creation and the potential of mankind even in a fallen state, he seemed like the sort of figure who could issue the kind of reminder I was seeking — with just his face. But then I imagined people at the beach telling me how much they liked my tattoo of Professor Dumbledore. Calvin? they would ask. Like Calvin and Hobbes?

Ultimately getting a tattoo of someone’s face seemed disrespectful and unnecessary. Any permanent mark would do. In the end I got . . . a dragon, something mildly sinister, something that said to me, Be good or I will bite you.

It took about four hours. That was exactly as much time under the needle as the grumpy little bear told me — after sizing me up with a sweep of his eyes — I would be able to take. I learned that I have a very poor tolerance for pain, and I had time to consider every fantasy of my youth in which I resisted some torturer for a cause of right. I realized I would last about 20 seconds in the hands of a real torturer, but I told myself that any lasting process of improvement must be cemented in pain.

When it was over, the grump Saran-wrapped my torso and told me how to take care of my new tattoo. I was barely listening, and I left with a spring in my step. I was happy because the pain had stopped, and because I thought I had somehow outwitted my own sinful nature. I’d made a promise to myself that I could not break without the help of a very skilled dermatologist and as many hours of pain as it took to put it there in the first place.

But the spring was fading by the time I got to 110th street, to the friend’s apartment where I was staying. And the next morning, when I woke and discovered that I had made a large and permanent dragon imprint upon his very fancy sheets, the whole thing already seemed like folly. Questions occurred to me like: Why did I get it on my back, where I won’t even see it? Why did it have to be so big? And why can’t I just look at the sun and the clouds and remember that someone wanted me to be good, or that someone thought I could be?

The great regret lasted no longer than the euphoria, and what settled in me was a combination of the two. But the experience made me more distrustful of making such a covenant with myself. A covenant is about security, but if I am good it is probably because I am spiritually insecure. Maybe instead of trying to quiet my unease, I should learn to live creatively with the fact that I am almost never sure about the right thing to do.

Chris Adrian is a pediatrician and a divinity student in Boston. A collection of his short stories, “A Better Angel,” will be published in August.