A young man with tattoos has been repeatedly caught trying to subtly redirect every conversation he is involved in back to talking about tattoos and the “complex and interesting” meanings behind his own tattoos.
Chris Taylor claims he hasn’t had a single social interaction in the 6 years that he’s been getting tattoos during which he hasn’t at some point tried to “talk, often at length, about tattoos, my tattoos, the meaning behind my tattoos, tattoos I’m planning on getting….tattoos”.
Chris, who has a full sleeve tattoo on his left arm, a full right leg and numerous tattoos around the rest of his body, insists that “every conversation that isn’t centred around tattoos is pointless and irrelevant”.
“Sometimes it’s difficult to bring the convo around to tattoos like if the person is talking about concepts or ideas because it’s very hard to draw a concept,” claimed Chris. “Other times they might be boring you with talk of a dead relative or emotional trauma, which means you have to work harder to get them to shut up, so you can then tell them why you had barbed wire tattooed around your upper arm, otherwise you can seem a bit self-involved and insensitive.”
“The way I see it, the world doesn’t want to hear about you and your problems,” he continued, “they want to hear about me and my tattoos.”
The young student, who claims he had difficulty getting a facial tattoo because he kept moving his mouth to talk about tattoos while getting a tattoo, provided some examples of how he “subtly brings the conversation around to tattoos”.
“Well if we’re talking about someone famous chances are they’ll have a well publicised tattoo so I’ll jump on that as a segue,” he explained, “but if we’re talking about something entirely unrelated to tattoos like politics or cars then I’ll usually just sing one of Russian girl group t.A.T.u’s numerous hits until somebody asks me who I’m singing.”
“Once I say ‘oh, it’s t.A.T.u’ then I can justifiably say ‘speaking of tattoos.'”
Chris, who admits to difficulty displaying his numerous tattoos at once, especially in winter, says that he considers himself “both a trendsetter and a trendfollower” in how he wears his tattoos believing himself to be the “Mona Lisa of the tattoo world, except if she could talk to you and tell you what exactly she’s smiling about”.
Chris’s tattoos have often led to difficulty according to the 24 year old student. “Sometimes it’s tough having so many tattoos,” he admitted. “You’re thinking to yourself, what am I going to wear that allows people to see my full sleeve, chest and neck tattoos as well as my entire right leg? Well, you do the only thing you can do, and that’s eliminate all sleeves and pant legs while wearing plunging wide neck vests.”
“I look a bit unusual with no left arm sleeve or right leg trouser and my chest constantly exposed to the elements, but it’s essential that your tattoos are on display at all times,” he added. “Otherwise how is anyone going to talk about them?”
“People who don’t have tattoos disgust me. Why would you do that to your body,” concluded Chris. “Once you don’t get a tattoo then you’re stuck with it for the rest of your life. You’re going to get old and your skin will get saggy and there’ll be nothing there on your skin to get stretched and misshapen.”
