Neil Gaiman wrote a book that came back to haunt him the other day:
There were a couple – a man and a woman, both in their twenties at a guess, both short and dark-haired, looking into a shop window, with their backs to me. The woman had a tattoo on her shoulderblade – writing – and because I cannot pass writing without reading it, I glanced at it. Part of the writing was covered by a strap.
But I could still read it. And I knew what the words covered by the strap were.
The tattoo (thank you Google Image Search) was a lot like this (which is to say, the same content, and similar typeface, but probably not the same person. I’m already trying to remember if it was the left or the right shoulderblade):
(I took that photo from here.)
I read the tattoo, read words I had written to try and exorcise my own small demons eighteen years ago, and I felt like a ghost. As if, for a moment, under the hot Sydney sun, I was only an idea of a person and not a real person at all.
I didn’t introduce myself to her or say anything (it didn’t even occur to me to say hello, in all honesty). I just walked home, through a world that felt flimsier and infinitely stranger than it had that morning.
