the tattoo...

I posted this a while ago. I'm moving it in my blog to detach it from Jason's full name which I used in the original post, but I wanted to keep the story...

------------------

I used to know a guy named Jason who was a tattoo artist. He had tattoos all down his left arm, starting at the shoulder and wrapping down to his wrist, of dragons and Asian women, black swirls, and other designs webbed together to make the beginnings of a tattoo sleeve. He was about 17 or 18 and had moved from California. I was 17 or 18 and had grown up there, in Colorado. I used to talk to him in the cafeteria about his tattoos.

Jason asked me for a picture of myself one day. I didn't have one to give him, but told him that I'd try to find one.

I went out for pizza at Fargo's, a pizza place fully equipped with a player piano, an arcade, and a photo booth. The photo booth was an old booth that produced a strip of 4 wallet sized black and white photos. I jumped in to take some pictures for Jason. I took one with me smiling and one with me not. Then my friend Lance stuck his head into the booth making funny faces for the last two. I kept the pictures with Lance and me, and presented Jason with the other two photos the next day at school. Jason said they were perfect, thanked me, and ran off to class.

The next Monday, I saw Jason and went over to say hello. He was happy to see me and showed me his new tattoo. It was on the back of his left arm just below the elbow - the next open space. It was of me. It was a tattoo of my face, looking just like I did in the photo booth picture stylized to fit into the intricacies of his design, but it looked just like me. I didn't know what to say. As I sat there staring at it, my friend Javy came up to us. When Jason showed Javy the tattoo, Javy looked at it for a minute, perplexed. Then he looked at me and, in kind of a bewildered amazement, pointed at me and said, "that's you..."

It's strange to have your face permanently drawn on the back of someone's arm. It's sort of flattering and offensive all at the same time. I wanted to take a picture of the tattoo - to recapture the image recaptured, the compliment, and the absurdity - but, before I could, Jason moved back to California. Gone.

I have always wondered what happened to Jason and my photo booth image etched into his arm.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile