Ten: Road Rambling pt. 2

Sitting in a rock & roll bar in downtown Savannah, I was approached by a hulking lumberjack of a bartender who looked straight out of any movie that has the scary ax-yielding redneck standing alongside the road.
He would’ve rightly scared away a hearty portion of clientele, should he have worked anywhere else in quaint little Savannah, but this was a rock & roll bar. People here liked whiskey shots and tattoos—and this guy had one heck of a tattoo on his arm.
It was supposed to be a horse’s leg, I think. It may have extended past his sleeveless flannel button-up onto his chest: a whole equine scene, complete with bales of hay and a trough. I never got around to asking because I was so captivated by the uncanny resemblance that the horse’s leg had to a penis.
With throbbing veins and a turned-out horseshoe, this galloping stallion had a full-on erection.
I spent a few minutes pondering my options. In all of my social inappropriateness, I really wanted to pointedly mention this to the guy.
“It’s interesting that a burly fellow like you has a massive Johnson inked on his arm,” I would’ve said.
I like my teeth, though, and I would’ve hated to provoke anything that would have me returning to school without a few.
It got me thinking, though. Tattoos are great. Unless they’re bad.
Is there any way to tell someone that they’ve got something absurdly awful embedded into them? I’m not sure there is, which is a shame. There are a lot of bad tattoos floating around out there.
I’m a snob about such things, I suppose. Not everything has to be a divine work of art, but is it that hard to get something that doesn’t look like it was drawn up by a fourth-grader on a caffeine binge? Bad tattoos scream ‘Cheap.’ Or worse—‘Jail.’
If someone is that adamant about forever donning, I don’t know, let’s say a tree frog, on their ankle, they should treat it like the investment it is.
Tattoos are art. Good art costs more.
Nobody goes out looking for an authentic Warhol print expecting to pay $17 for it, and similarly, nobody should go out looking for a genuinely good-looking tattoo expecting it to be super cheap. You get what you pay for, typically, be it food, wine, clothes or art. The difference here is that most of the above aren’t needled into the epidermis. They are enjoyed and then they’re over. Not so much with the tattoo thing. That tree frog will stay on that ankle until a doctor with a laser beams it off.
I’m pleading: don’t be that guy. If you’re getting a tattoo, shell out the cash necessary for a good one so I don’t end up sitting across the bar trying to find a way to tell you that you have a giant penis on your arm.