I have two tattoos, which I got a little over a decade apart. I've noticed a lot of things have changed in those ten years. Though the first tattoo parlour I patronized was clean and professional, the technology for equipment like autoclaves has greatly improved in the intervening time. It also seems that artists are much more sensitive about changing their rubber gloves constantly and finding ways to keep blood and ink off their equipment and the floor than they used to be. I actually signed a contract at my most recent appointment, asserting that I was of age, unpregnant, and fully aware of the permanency of the procedure. Perhaps this parlour was unusually conscientious, but given the number of affluent kids getting tattooed these days, I suppose it's getting more and more important for the artists to cover their asses.

Things have changed even more if you go back a generation or two. My stepfather loved to tell the story of a friend he had who got incredibly drunk and got a full-sized back tattoo of an elephant taking a shit. Nowadays, if you're not in prison or on a ship, I doubt you could get a tattoo while you're drunk at all; no respectable or even semi-respectable tattooist will want to deal with the thinned blood of a person who may storm into the parlour the next morning filled with angry regrets.

Nevertheless, even today, mistakes happen. Despite the excellent quality of the parlour that I visited this year, a mistake happened to me. I found myself on the table with a misplaced set of lines that I needed to remove.

The artist assured me that fresh ink can be removed without having to go through laser surgery and all the other "official" tattoo removal procedures that cost thousands of dollars. (For information on these, this node is extremely helpful.) When I came home, I googled some of her suggestions and found nothing whatsoever on the topic, so I'm sharing some of my experiences here.

WARNING: the following bit is kinda gross, and if you have a history of self-harm, it might be a bit triggery too. Reader discretion is advised.

If you've had a tattoo before, you'll remember the aftercare instructions:

• keep your skin moisturized
• keep the new tattoo out of the sun
• don't scratch itches or pick at scabs
• don't use products containing peroxide or rubbing alcohol on the area
• keep out of the water for a few days

Well, it stands to reason that if you do pretty much the opposite of what those aftercare instructions say -- obsessively and repeatedly -- then you'll get colour loss. And in this case, colour loss is what you want.

The tattoo artist recommended that I rub the affected area with a peroxide-soaked Q-tip at least twice a day. (OCD creature that I am, I took this to mean that I should do it every hour or two.) The idea is that the skin will dry out and eventually scab up. Then, when you remove the scab (she recommended doing it in one fell stroke, with tweezers, and warned me that it would hurt a lot), the ink goes with it and your skin is clear again. She gave me an estimated time frame of three weeks for the whole process.

For the first week or two, things went as planned. The peroxide applications made my skin dry, wrinkled, and an angry shade of pink, and the lines started to fade almost immediately. Within only a few days, the black of the mis-inked lines shifted into grey, and the sharp edges became fuzzy. I marvelled: why had nobody ever told me about this before? Heck, if this process works as well as it looked like it was working, we could treat all tattoos as temporary tattoos!

However, a couple of weeks into my regimen, my skin began to heal. In case it's not clear from what I've said so far, healing is bad. It gives the ink a chance to set, and set tattoos are, obviously, quite permanent. Despite my ever-more-vigorous applications of peroxide, my skin got healthier and healthier, and it looked like I would not be able to burn off that top layer with peroxide alone.

What I should have done was call the artist and ask for her advice (or sue her), but I was way too freaked out and embarrassed to do the rational thing. Instead, I decided to take matters into my own hands. "If what I want is a scab," I thought, "then I can make a scab."

And that's what I proceeded to do. If I'd had sandpaper to hand, I would have used that, but I didn't, so I used an emery board. I scraped until a thin layer of blood appeared on my skin, then applied my peroxide to the wound. Then, the next day, I did it again. And I kept doing it until it looked like I might leave a scar -- at which point, upset and paranoid, I stopped.

Yeah. Icky. But it worked... more or less. The scab did take quite a bit of the ink with it, and what remains can easily be covered with stage makeup (I recommend Dermablend). Since the tattoo is on my leg, people won't generally be looking closely enough at it to see the misplaced lines. And since I took good care of the correct parts of the tattoo, hopefully their bold colours will be what draw the eye.

All that having been said, I can hardly say I recommend this process. Though it costs only about ten bucks in peroxide and Q-tips (as opposed to the hundreds or thousands that laser surgery would cost), its effects are imperfect. It's also lousy for parts of your body that you can't easily reach or see (like the lower back, a trendy place for tattoos these days), or where constant itchiness and scabbing would be inconvenient (like the butt). In my case, the unwanted lines were relatively small and fine, and I could easily keep my calf out of sight over the course of scraping and healing. I can't guarantee that it will be the same way for everyone.

In short: do not try this at home. But if you absolutely must get rid of a tattoo the morning after, the peroxide treatment might save you some money and embarrassment. If I had to do it over again... well, I wouldn't have wanted the mistake in the first place. But if I had to do it over again with the mistake, I would have used sandpaper, and I would have brought it into the equation earlier rather than later. I hope it's not a decision I'll have to make again. It was a depressing and humiliating process.