Akro Inked by Lydia Silver
(Picture: Akro Inked by Lydia Silver)From where I’m sitting on the Judgey Bench, only sea captains and Russian criminals can plausibly sport tattoos. If the answers to ‘Am I at the helm of an 18th-century whaling schooner?’ and ‘Am I currently languishing in a Siberian gulag?’ are both, ‘No,’ then you can confidently allow your body’s largest organ to remain unmolested by cartoon butterflies or self-help slogans rendered in 72-point Gothic font.
It’s not just the commitment of tattoos that spooks me. There’s also the mayfly shelf life: yesterday’s expression of precious individuality is tomorrow’s shop-worn meme. When I seek to amplify my oomph, my poison is perfume, not ink. Scent is a manifesto as legible as any live-laugh-love jive, but invisible and temporary. A smell is a spell, not a billboard. But like a tattoo, perfume is a mark left behind.
