As the weather finally improves, I'm getting increasingly worried. As I look around at others in the sunshine, I fear that I may not be normal. As Britain starts to strip off for spring, I have a terrible confession to make. Yes, unbelievable as it may sound, it's absolutely true. I don't have a tattoo. How did that happen?
There is no blotchy blue design sprawled across my upper arm. No dragon's claw or dolphin's tail pokes out from beneath the hem of my t-shirt sleeve. I haven't got a row of Chinese characters running down my forearm, nor the name of my firstborn emblazoned across my shoulderblade. There's no intricate Celtic knotwork encircling either of my biceps, nor the emblem of my favourite football team etched permanently into my calf. No constellation of stars adorns the nape of my neck, and no mythical beast-filled tableau plays out across my chest. My skin, alas, is totally wholly 100% tattoo-free.
It's bewildering, to be honest. Surely by this point in my life I should have subjected myself to the needle at least once? Surely my mates really ought to have cajoled me into the artist's chair for a shared Maori symbol or an impulsive Union Jack. There must, surely, have been one drunken evening when I felt the need to stumble into a tattoo parlour and demand that a comedy bulldog be injected beneath my skin? I must, surely, have woken one morning with a thumping hangover and wondered why my skin was suddenly peeling in technicolour. How can I have held out for so long?
And yet no. My unblemished skin remains a virgin embarrassment. Other men can whip off their t-shirts in public to reveal inclusive tribal markings, but I need to wear long sleeves to hide my un-inked shame. Other people wear their personality with pictorial pride, like a hieroglyphic hallmark (football team, sign of zodiac, MUM, firstborn), whereas I have no distinguishing features whatsoever. Everybody else's epidermis appears to have succumbed to indelible scarring, but not mine. As the sun starts beating down for summer, I can no longer pretend to be a functioning part of modern society. I am so very very sorry.
I guess a tattoo's just something I've been putting off, like a trip to the dentist. Maybe one day I'll identify a particular design I want plastered all over me in perpetuity. Maybe one day I'll choose to adorn my bodily canvas with something spontaneous and witty. Maybe one day I'll step up and join the ranks of the permanently marked. Maybe one day I too will be innately fashionable, even with nothing on. In the meantime, I'm resigned to being alienated by my lack of artistic taste.
Please, I beg of you, don't laugh at me. And I promise not to laugh at you when your dragon fades, and your angel blurs, and your phoenix sags, and your inkblot wrinkles, and your beloved divorces, and your football team rebrands, and those Chinese characters turn out to spell a particularly crude swear word. In 20 years time, I may still relish being the odd one out.
