It was a beautiful day at the beach. The sun was shining; the sand was hot. The waves were huge; the women were not. Absolutely perfect. But I couldn’t enjoy myself. Not with all that whispering and snickering going on.

There. A pair of teenage girls laughing behind their hands.

And there. A mother pointing with her eyes and muttering a cautionary tale to her children.

A bunch of studs with a football grinning like fools. Even the dogs seemed to be looking at me and smirking.

So, they noticed. I am unadorned. All of that bared flesh and not one needle-prick of ink. Not one dragon or skull, anchor or Chinese letter.

There, I said it. Are you happy now? I have no tattoos and the whole beach knows it.

There was a time, of course, when I wouldn’t have been the minority. Just a few decades back, they weren’t so ubiquitous. I tell you, there was a time when only ex-cons, drug dealers and bikers sported tattoos. The rest of us trembled and stepped back whenever they came near. Because everybody knew that if a man was so bold as to have color carved into his skin, he no doubt kept a gun in his waistband and a razor in his shoe.

My, how times have changed. Skin art: It’s not just for bad boys anymore. Your dentist is sporting a half-sleeve. The guy who rotates your tires has one of those teardrops you’ve heard frightening things about. The sweet old lady who grooms your dog? She bends over in front of you and you catch, in shock, the tramp stamp on her lower back.

That’s right, Pat Boone. Girls are getting tats at the same pace as boys, if they’re not getting them quicker. We’re not talking harmless butterflies around the ankles anymore. We’re talking full sleeves and backs that read like billboards. We’re talking snakes and daggers and blood dripping roses on extremely ticklish areas of the female form.

It’s everybody into the ink pool, man. You don’t have to be a prisoner, gangster, cage fighter, Navy SEAL, martial artist or malcontent to sport a tattoo. All that’s required is a willing patch of flesh and the gusto to submit to the needle for hours. Suck it up, take the pain and before long, you too will have yourself a bright emblem of independence, just like everybody else.

Which may be the problem, when you boil it down. So many people are sporting tattoos these days that the very concept is becoming diluted. Tats were once the avatars of rebellion and danger. But how dangerous is that nephew of yours — the one who left the Boy Scouts just a year ago and who still sleeps in Power Ranger sheets — now that he has a pair of dice forever sketched on the back of his leg?

We all know a nice, young lady who knits sweaters for the homeless, belongs to three book clubs and engages in at least one quilting bee a year. But now she has that four-leaf clover on the small of her back. Is it a sure sign that she’s a party girl just waiting to be taken to the swingers’ club? Give it a shot, hot stuff, and let me know how you make out.

A lot of men and women of great character and mystery are sporting tattoos, it’s true. But the character and mystery came first. It didn’t get pounded into their being by the tattoo gun, like some ingredient injected into the soul.

Ink will not make a man enigmatic and streetwise if he walked into the parlor a dud. A tattoo, no matter how intricately drawn, will not transform a bland girl into a starlet.

Or, so I reason. I don’t have a tattoo, so can I really say for sure? Maybe all kinds of great things happen when you turn yourself over to the ink slinger. Maybe tattoos do come with guaranteed charisma. Perhaps an ace of spades on my right shoulder would make me a better dancer, rider, lover. And there’s only one way to find out.

But here is my problem. Reeling down Venice Beach one sunny afternoon, I was tempted by sidewalk artists. Friends in the hazy past tried to lure me into the parlors with offers of drink and double-dog dares.

It’s my fear of commitment, you know, that keeps my skin pure. It’s not that I have no interest in tattoos. It’s that I wouldn’t know what to order up — what is there that’s so perfectly symbolic and meaningful that I’d want to wear it all of my days and into the grave?

The tattoo is the ultimate permanent record. It becomes an instant reference point for those who behold it. Police will make note of your body art when broadcasting your description in an all-points bulletin. You want it to be just right.

And so I remain the blank page, the empty diary, the slab of granite with nothing chiseled thereon. Not a single word upon me written; nothing on my flesh at all that wasn’t there the day I was born. In this time of ink gluttony, we unadorned are the freaks on the beach. We’re the misfits, the oddballs, the mavericks.

Kind of ironic, huh?

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Send suggestions for the perfect tattoo to [email protected].