Last summer I got a tattoo on my forearm. It was a frame from a Chris Ware graphic novel showing a nervous man cringing in shock from the noise of a telephone, represented by the word “RING” in huge red script. It was the first of my tattoos to involve any colour, the rest all being black line-drawings. When I woke the morning after I looked down and saw, rather than the familiar image, a nightmarish, enormous smudge of angry red that covered 8in of my arm.
In my half-asleep state this sight put the fear of God into me and I leapt out of bed, mind racing. For a minute or so, before I could unravel the bandage and investigate the area properly, I believed that something had gone terribly wrong and I was now to have an entirely red forearm for the rest of my life. I did panic, admittedly, but then something surprising happened – I rapidly reconciled myself to this new life I was to lead with a red arm. I even managed to laugh. It wasn’t that I would enjoy looking at the hideous mess, but rather that I thought I would easily come to enjoy its presence in my life, even though it was a mistake. Why? Because it would have been my mistake, something that happened to me and only me. It would have been a part of my one, unreproducible life.
