A man tattooed me once for ten hours, from 2 PM until midnight. There was necessarily much to talk about, or at least a lot of time to fill with talking, and he told me about a little man that lives inside of him, a little man that he does not like that has thoughts he does not like and that wants to take actions he does not want to take. This little man becomes taller, becomes bigger, was the tattoo artist's words, when he is drinking. "I've been drinking too much, lately," he said, "I notice it, and I try to drink less, but I'm still drinking all the time," he said, "six beers motor-scootering with my friends." "Motor-scootering?" i said. "And if the little man is inside me, regardless, though, then why should I stop drinking?" he said. "The little man is the problem, and he's going to continue to be there," he said, "so why should I stop drinking?" When people repeat a question like this, i don't know if it's because they want an actual answer to the question, or if it's because they want the question repeated back to them in statement form, with a meaning that matches the meaning the question is leading – alongside hope and hopeless self-delusion – towards. So instead i told him a story. Have my story about my life, i thought, and interpret my story to fit your story of your life, however you see fit, i thought, or if you don't see at all, however, and you can convince yourself your blindness is a kind of Braille, then be a literary critic of your own life story, read it with your shaking hands, the hands holding the needle that wounds and paints me new now, i thought, and changes my skin, if not my life, just the skin of my life, change your life or don't, i thought. The tattoo has since become corrupted and its imperfections are perfectly visible, but only if you seek and follow the broken lines that frame it. "Motor-scootering?" i asked again. "Motor-scootering on the beach," he said.