Prison Recipe for Tattoo Removal (by Polish Avenger)

Polish Avenger - A software-engineering undergraduate sentenced to 25 years because his friend was shot dead during a burglary they were both committing. Author of the classic "Shit Slinger" series.
 
15 little packets of salt
1 handkerchief
High pain tolerance
Willingness to act stupid
Hooch (optional, but strongly recommended)

Get plowed on hooch. Wet the handkerchief and pour salt on it liberally. Shave the tattooed area. Rub the handkerchief on it in a circular sanding motion. The salt acts as an abrasive, and quite literally eats the skin away as you rub. Oh yeah, that old expression about “rubbing salt in the wound,” there’s a reason why they say that. Yes, as you might expect, it hurts like a purple hairy bastard!

Continue sanding for about an hour until the area is an angry beet-red color. Rinse, bandage, and prepare for a solid month of excruciating and itchy recovery time. The recovery is even worse than the sanding. In my case, every little movement of my foot caused the edge of the scab to crack open again and leak out a thick custardy pus, and the itch was maddening at times.

The tattoo itself doesn’t come off during the sanding. Planing off the skin above it has the curious effect that as it heals, new tissue from below pushes the ink up and out.
On the happy day that the godforsaken scab finally comes off, you can hold it up to the light and see the tattoo suspended in it like a ghastly holocaust item. In fact, I kept part of mine in a photo album for years until the humidity made it all gooey and stinky.

In the end, it worked for me. She was gone. Unfortunately, I had gone a bit too deep, and had a blazing scar in her place. Whoops! The fellows assured me it would lighten up over time. It has – after about five years! Today, it’s still discoloured but nowhere as disgusting as it used to be.

Ever one for irony, I wound up getting another tattoo there anyway to cover up the scar! Ha ha! But no more girls’ names – this time it’s a memorial to my real true love: the caffeine molecule! Yes, on my ankle I have the molecular diagram and chemical formula for the greatest stuff ever invented. Now that’s ink I can live with!

Click here for Polish Avenger’s previous blog on prison ink.

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Shaun P. Attwood