He sat across the table from me, its pale plywood surface gleaming in the flickering light, and insisted with incredible optimism that tattoos could define someone. I disagreed venomously, but he reasoned diligently, gesturing towards the table to illustrate his point. He claimed that, like the table, appearances in terms of conformity were like a circle. When you were a teenager, you stood on the edges of the circle and, whether you dressed like a skater or hipster or a gangster, you dressed distinctively. He claimed that as we aged, we would unavoidably drift towards the middle, and begin to dress the way all middle-aged fucks dress, that we would begin to look the same, or to be the same. He claimed that tattoos could be permanent marks of individuality, that they could ensure that you never conformed to those around you. Essentially, he claimed that tattoos could both create and validate uniqueness.
The obvious problem with this theory is that it’s shallow, that it fails to realize that appearances never make you truly unique and can only make you stand out, which are too wholly different things. Deeper, however, was the disregard for dimensions, for how any premise of individuality can be altered greatly by the surroundings of this person. If there was a circle of conformity, I was sure that it was a fucking cylinder. What he was missing was that there were levels to this, that dressing like a hipster or a skater or a gangster might seem different compared to adults, but for his age and location, it was the most average mundane identity one could have mustered. The fact is, there is nothing even remotely special about a North American teenage or twenty-something kid with some tattoos or piercings. These supposedly edgy styles were just typical youthful rebellion, as monotonous and pretentious as ever. I don’t say any of these things with disdain for tattoos - which can be meaningful to a person or can provide purely aesthetic amusement - or for him. In fact, I found this simple and ultimately superficial belief almost endearing. It also seemed terribly hopeless and sad to me though, as if he and I were both trapped in the idea of who we thought we were, attempting to define and create our own identity but only really lying to ourselves, trying to prove our uniqueness and therefore our worth in such stupid, silly and meaningless ways. This was depressing, but it was no more depressing than my usual view of the world and its inhabitants. Still, for all my cynicism and contempt, I have never really fallen out of love with the place or its people. It still enchants me, if only for it’s bizarre complexity and beauty. The world has always struck me as very strange, but undeniably full of opportunity and discovery.
