GETTING CLEAN

For decades, people covered their bodies with more and more tattoos. Now, they're getting them removed as fast as they can. We speak with the patients going under the laser, tattoo-removal technicians and the tattoo artists whose work is being erased to understand how something so permanent became so ephemeral.

- CARRIE BATTAN

THE WORST PART of getting a tattoo removed, apart from the searing pain and the two-year commitment, is the sound the laser makes as it hits your skin: a violent, unnatural popping and crackling that could soundtrack an animated video of someone being electrocuted. During the procedure, patients are advised to wear protective goggles to shield themselves from the laser’s rays, and they often close their eyes in fear. Without actually watching the removal process, the mind takes all the other sensory cues—mainly that awful sound—and conjures an image of some horrific mutilation occurring. It feels, and sounds, as if your body is a stretch of New York City sidewalk being torn into by a torch, electrical sparks flying every which way.

More and more people are choosing to undergo this form of torture, from reformed delinquents to millennial dads to celebrities freshening up their images. In February, Pete Davidson, long pictured with a full-body armour of tattoos, popped up in a fashion campaign looking like an AI version of himself: tattoo-free. Before the big reveal, the 31-year-old comic went on Fallon and described the experience. “It’s horrible,” he said. “They gotta burn off a layer of your skin... And then you gotta do it like 12 more times.”

This is the biggest misconception about tattoo removal: that it involves literally burning off a layer of skin. No one could be faulted for spreading this kind of misinformation, given how painful the process of tattoo removal can feel—to say nothing of the smell, the faint but unmistakable whiff of hot biomatter. “The smell really freaks people out because they think their skin is burning, and it’s not?” says Jeff Garnett, cofounder of the laser-tattoo-removal chain Inkless. “It’s the hair follicles. The smell is the same as burnt hair. But it’s something so psychological, and I noticed years ago that people say, “Oh, I smell my flesh burning.”