My Forever Home
Recently I travelled to Glasgow, Scotland, to spend a few days in the city that saw me change from a confused teenager into a marginally less confused adult. As soon as my Glasgow pilgrimage was over, I got a new tattoo. I dedicate this instalment of my column to these two seemingly unrelated facts.
I lived in Glasgow for a total of four years, from the beginning to the end of my undergraduate degree. Across those years I stayed in three different flats, and every time I go back to visit I make sure to walk all the way to every one of them; it’s a process that usually involves wearing headphones and listening to my favourite playlists from my Glasgow years or chatting with friends as I stroll along the path that used to be my everyday route to and from university.
My first flat was in the area known as Kelvinhaugh Gate: it was a very simple student accommodation which offered neither a living room nor a sofa, and which was always gleefully trashed by its inhabitants and all their friends and acquaintances. All its furniture was composed of an unpalatable mix of old wood, grey, and painfully bright blue hues; yet, it was the only place I’ve ever lived where I had my own bathroom, and for that, among other things, my memories of it are filled with joy.
After that came Oban Drive, which had the appeal of being “a real flat”, rather than a student accommodation. My first real flat had the smallest kitchen I’ve ever seen in my life, smaller than a closet and rendered somewhat hostile-looking by its horrible fluorescent lights: to this day I blame it for killing my chances of developing any kind of culinary skill. We also had a bathroom with a mysterious dark hole on its ceiling, right above the toilet; still, the rooms were spacious, and even if there was no living room, we quickly managed to turn it into a welcoming home. No amount of words could capture the amount of fun and happiness that I experienced in that shitty, mouldy flat.
My last Glaswegian flat was in the Woodlands area; I was thrilled to move there because the rooms were absolutely gigantic, we had a huge kitchen and an even bigger living room, complete with two couches and two armchairs. Of course, it was far from perfect: the bathroom was a bit small, and it had a ridiculously tiny mirror which would be more accurately described as a tile where you could see your reflection; all the floors were mysteriously tilted, so that if you were to set a bottle on its side it would quickly roll to the opposite end of the room; we also had mice, a kitchen that somehow never looked clean no matter how hard we polished it, and a permanently sticky floor-cover that would lift up every time we would hoover, revealing rotten wood underneath it. Regardless, it was and still is the biggest flat I’ve ever stayed in, and I cherish its memories, which look back at me, fragmented, like my own tiny reflection in our bathroom tile.
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As I reach my former home in Oban Drive, I discreetly peek inside the window, trying to imagine who lives there now, and how they have arranged that space I know so well. I recall some small details from when I was a tenant there: the way the floor tiles felt against our red Henry the Hoover as I cleaned my room, the way I had organised my kitchen shelf, the noise the kettle made when it went off.
I picture my bedroom the way it used to be, with my sheets still on the bed, the colourful ones I bought as soon as I moved to Scotland, hoping that their bright hue would contrast with the grey Scottish skies. I picture the fairy lights that I had stuck to the wall above my bed, with small polaroid pictures clipped along the cable; I recall how once the whole thing had fallen on me in the middle of the night and woken me up, after which I had moved it to a different wall. I picture my posters, the horrible blue chair that came with the room, as well as the desk that I had bought and put together, and which I felt so proud of.
To young me, away from home for the first time, that room and the wee trinkets I filled it with felt more mine than anything I’d ever owned up until that point; and yet someone else lives there now, with their fairy lights, their bed sheets, their small trinkets. I had to leave the desk behind though, so it’s possible that they might still be using it as their own. Isn’t it crazy? Someone else studying on the desk I put together, laying one of their hands on it as they use the other to apply nail polish, filling it with clutter, calling it their desk.
As I think about that, I remind myself that the wardrobe was already in that room when I moved in, and it looked a bit wonky, like a kid had put it together. I start picturing a bunch of strangers assembling furniture for this one room and then passing it on, a little bit more complete, a little bit better equipped, to someone else.
Just as my old homes are now filled with new objects and new tenants, the face of the city has been changing too, with new businesses substituting the ones that were there back when I was part of Glasgow’s population. The bright blue café where I always used to meet one of my closest friends has now turned into an elegant clothing shop, its walls constellated with serious-looking shelves; one of my favourite shops has changed the design of its logo to one that I’m quick to criticise for being ugly and illegible; the best tea shop in the whole world hasn’t survived the pandemic.
As I walk along the Clyde, I feel like I’m looking at someone that I used to know really well for the first time after two decades without contact. The changes are hitting me all at once, leading to a silly, yet unavoidable, consideration: “my, you’ve really changed, I guess this must mean I’ve really changed, too”.
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As my Glaswegian pilgrimage came to an end, I booked the third tattoo appointment of my life. At that time, I remembered a conversation I had had a long time before, back in my tattoo-less era, with someone who is dear to me and who was also, and still is, tattoo-less.
“I think I understood why people get tattoos now,” they said, solemnly.
“Really? Why is that?” I replied.
“To prove that they’re brave. They are not scared of the pain; they’re not scared of the commitment of having something on their body forever. It’s like a proof of courage, you know, for all the world to see.”
“That sounds plausible,” said sixteen-year-old me.
***
I was always one of those people who appreciated tattoos on other people, but who didn’t even dream of getting one myself. I found them too permanent, too serious, nothing I could think of seemed important enough to earn a permanent space on my skin. I found myself questioning all the values that I regarded as linked to every design, until I would inevitably decide that I didn’t feel committed enough to any specific value to get it tattooed on my body. It took me almost a decade to realise that you might want a tattoo because it looks good, it makes you feel happy, and it compliments your style, and nothing more.
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It’s been almost ten years from the conversation dating back to my tattoo-less era, and I can’t say I’ve understood with certainty why people get tattoos, but I am aware of why it’s something that I now personally enjoy. There are two reasons: first, our body, temporary as it may be, is the most permanent of our homes. Our forever home, if you will, at least for an atheist like me who isn’t hoping to inhabit any other shell after this one. It makes sense to make it mine, make it pretty, make it cosy. Turn it from a house into a home.
A similar, albeit different reason, is that we don’t choose the body we’re born into. As Alain de Botton puts it, it can often feel like the body we’ve been given doesn’t represent us, as if they had cast the wrong actor to play our role in the movie of life.
Tattoos are a way to reclaim this body that we haven’t chosen, to let something of what’s inside of ourselves determine our outside, so that it feels a bit more ours, a bit more representative of who we feel we are. That is the reason I enjoy tattoos, they’re small details of my physical existence that were chosen and determined by myself only: not by my genes, not by my environment, not by someone else. How many other permanent traits of ours can we say this about?
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I will always consider Glasgow my home, but I am also aware that, like a dear friend that lives far from me, she will evolve independently of me in ways that I cannot predict and might not always appreciate. As long as I can, I will never stop going on silly pilgrimages to my various Glasgow homes, nor will I stop picturing their inhabitants, hoping that they are cherishing those old walls, and that those walls are in turn treating them well.
However, my body is my forever home, and it’s easier to remember and cherish this if I give myself some time to really settle in the place and make it mine, which might at times require doing some decorating.