And #3. Staying Power—Will I still be happy looking at this thing when I’m eighty? Will this mean anything to me in the nursing home?

That last one is kind of the trickiest, you know, because you have to make a prediction about where your mind’s gonna be at in the future, and I don’t really think anybody is particularly good at that. I mean, for someone like Z or for someone like Skelet0r, they’re both just sort of like: Whatever. The only thing that’s real to me is right now, and right now I want a fucking Snickers bar on my nose. And I totally respect that. I actually think that’s kind of a dope way to live. But I try to think about my own tattoos from the perspective of my whole life, because, like, I don’t know, I care about that guy in the future. I want him to have a good time.

Like, for instance, I don’t have any tattoos about my dad—at least not directly—because I’m still not sure how that’s gonna sit over the years. Like, I’ve got a ton of stuff about my mom—I’ve got a rabbit, which is her favorite animal, and a dentist’s chair to commemorate all those years she was working—but I don’t really have anything to do with my dad, because, like, I don’t really know if I want to see that shit every day, you know? Like, if I got the dates of his life or like, his name and “RIP” or something, I’m just not sure I want to be reminded of that shit every time I look in the mirror, or like, every time I get out of the pool.

Because one of the beautiful things about tattoos, one of the things I really love about them, is that you forget about them sometimes—like, especially when you have as many as I do, you forget about certain ones for days, weeks at a time—and then you’ll be reminded of them sort of randomly throughout the day or throughout the year, because, like, one of them catches your eye or like, someone will ask you about it when they see you with your shirt off or your pants off, and you’ll be like: Oh, right, that thing! And if you’ve chosen your tattoos well—like, if you’ve only put stuff on your body that you really care about—those moments are actually sort of beautiful, because you get to talk about something that’s really special to you, and you get to let this other person a little bit deeper into your world. But I just don’t know that I want to set myself up to be ambushed every once in a while by these memories of my dad and all the shit he put us through, because I’m not sure how I’m going to react to that. I’m not sure it would be a good idea to plant a little land mine like that on my body.

I’m only thinking about all this shit because a few weeks ago, I had my assistant commission this graphic designer to draw up that diagram I was talking about of all my tats, and she just finished it and sent it over to me a few minutes ago, and I’ve been sitting here on the plane looking at it, like: Wow. There are so many talented people in the world. She really knocked it out of the park.