Tattoos and regret

Just came out of Rabbits Eat Lettuce 2026 where I didn’t wear a shirt in five days (the bush is hot here) and I haven't thought about my tattoos once.

That's not entirely true. There's one on my chest that irritates me every time I catch it. Wrong style. Doesn't fit with the rest. It's been there for ten years and it still hums in the background like a fridge you can't switch off.

I used to want it gone. Laser it. Bare skin. Clean slate.

But I didn't. And the reason I didn't is worth talking about.

Mark Nara has been tattooing me for years. He uses this idea of composting. If something on your body doesn't sit right, you have two options. You can process it. Sit with it. Let it break down slowly until it feeds the next thing. Or you can rip it out, bury it deep, wrap it in plastic and pretend it was never there.

The second option feels decisive. It feels like action. But the thing is still there. The body recorded it. The skin remembers. You just made it harder to access.

Tattoo regret is a spectrum. There's the people who are devastated. And there's the people who say they don't regret anything but won't look at a certain spot. Both ends are carrying something. The difference is whether you process it or just push it further from view.

At some point I stopped calling that chest piece a mistake. Started calling it a misfire. Different word. Completely different relationship to what happened. A mistake is a dead end. You got it wrong. A misfire has trajectory. There was intent. It just didn't land where you aimed it.

That reframe matters. Because if it was a misfire, there's something to learn about your aim. If it was just a mistake, there's nothing to do but feel bad about it.

I've got tattoos I love. Pre-colonial Colombian work that I planned for years. Pieces that record exactly who I was at a specific point in time. And I've got that one on my chest that doesn't belong. They're all doing the same job. They're all keeping score.

The body records everything. The good ink and the bad ink. The wins and the misfires. You don't get to choose what it remembers. You only get to choose whether you let it break down into something useful or bury it so deep the flowers won't grow.