A Face Tattoo

Why is my skin required to be a blank receipt? The superstructure demands SMOOTHNESS. It demands a face that slides frictionlessly through the HR screening software, a face that reflects the fluorescent lighting of the open-plan office. It is a blank screen where the system projects its little movies of Competence and Sanity.

“I am safe, I am credit-worthy, I will not steal the toner cartridges.”

I am contemplating the total sabotage of my Human Capital. I am contemplating taking the "employability" index and setting it on fire in the town square. NO. It is the murder of the "Employee" so that something else can survive.

Does this bar me from the PMC lifestyle? YES.

Does it kill the dream of the beige sedan and the mortgage and the 2.5 children? Maybe.

What if I must push the logic of the Face to its ecstatic limit. I must become more visible than visible. More signaled than signaled. To tattoo the face is to enter the realm of the OBSCENE. It is to make the face so heavy with meaning that it crashes through the floor of the marketplace.

It is a derailment. It is a train wreck I am engineering with my own hands. Worst case? I am homeless. I am shivering under the bridge of my own bad decisions. Worst case? I am a statistic. But am I free? Or am I just cold? (Am I just cold?)

You think I am deciding to get a tattoo? That is the illusion of the Subject. "I think, therefore I Ink." WRONG. The Ink is waiting. The geometry is already there, hovering in the virtual, waiting to seize the meat. The Object (the Tattoo) is cunning. It wants to be real and It uses my anxiety as a fuel source. I am just the hostage. I am disappearing into the tattoo. I will no longer be a person with a mark. I will be a Mark attached to a decaying animal.

Here is the sick joke of the polite society: If I took a knife, a rusted knife, a violent knife and dragged it horizontally across the bridge of my nose, cheekbone to cheekbone, opening the red zip of the face... What happens? They pity me.

Why does the Scar get a pass? Because the Scar is "Real." It smells of blood and accident. It has the nostalgia of the biological. Society loves the Scar because it proves you are vulnerable meat. It proves you can be hurt.

But the Tattoo? The Tattoo is ARTIFICE. It is superficial and depthless. It creates a surface so intense that it denies you have a soul underneath. That is why they hate it. It challenges the depth of the human. It says: "I am everything you see. There is nothing behind the curtain." It is the seductive power of a violent sign. A one that I chose on myself.

My great-grandmother wore the geometry of the mountains on her face. Her chin was a code: Blue lines, Green fade. Was it tradition? Or was it a way to ward off the Evil Eye? (Credit Bureaus and surveillance cameras). Was she a criminal? No, she was a Matriarch.



But if I do it? It is to take the tribal signifier and feed it into the machine until the machine chokes and probably spits you back (unemployment). If I drag that history into the 21st century, does it become Decolonial or a temporal glitch? Or is it just "Mental Illness" in the eyes of the beholder? I want to rupture the continuum, it’s just the raw, ecstatic refusal to be "useful." Or is that just suicide by aesthetics? She wore it to be recognized by the stars. I want to be recognized by nothing and nobody. I want to be opaque.

Mom and Dad? They are guarding the perimeter of the Social Contract. "We worked so hard," they scream at the circus freak.

My Girlfriend? She loves the man, not the fatal object. She cannot follow me where I am going. Am I ruining the aesthetic of US? Am I betraying the couple-form? She might leave. She probably should by then.

BUT THE SISTER. The little sister. She doesn’t care about my social status. She doesn’t care about the credit score. She sees the rupture. She sees the waiting room of a new real. She sees the Tattoo as the only honest thing in a world of holograms. She is the only tether. The only one who wouldn't flinch. Everyone else is a cop. Even the ones who love me. They are cops in the precinct of my face.

What happens to my eyes when the skin around them changes? Does the world look different when you know the world is afraid of you and doesn’t trust you? I exit the timeline of "Success." I enter the timeline of "What The Fuck Is He Doing?" Will I be happy? Happiness is a bourgeois value. I don't want to be happy. I want to be INEVITABLE.

Will I have regrets? PROBABLY.

But will I be Real? It is the desire to ruin my life just to prove that it was mine to ruin. Do I pick up the needle? Do I pick up the knife? Or do I just laugh? Why am I laughing?