![]() He quit his job at the tattoo shop and picked up odd, low-paying jobs here and there thanks to his connections at the church. From there, Arias got clean and began to turn his life around. On one of his lowest days, about five years ago, a tattoo shop client invited him to church. A New York City skyline represented “what I’d lived.” The spider-web tattoo on his ear symbolized that “I was trapped in drug addiction, and I wanted to kill myself,” he says. He started with smaller tattoos: a cross on one cheek, the Chinese character for “warrior” on his other. The tattoos were a way for him to show the world what he was made of, he says. I always thought I would die young or go to jail for the rest of my life.” When Arias started tattooing his face, he didn’t even think he would live long enough to see the consequences: “I never thought I was going to change. ‘We’ve all made mistakes, but our mistakes aren’t always the first thing people see and judge us by.’ Although he had work as a tattoo artist, he was “surrounded by a lot of negativity, drugs, alcohol.” The teen quickly fell into a life of drug addiction. His mother brought him and his brothers from Colombia to the US a few years later, but he ended up on the streets of Queens when he was 14. ![]() His father was murdered when he was 8 years old. “And if they can’t get a legit job, they might end up back on the wrong track again.”Īlthough Arias avoided prison, he felt like he was living in one until recently. “A lot of times, have prison-gang tattoos, and those are going to get in the way of getting legitimate work,” Garnett says. “Face tattoos have become a bigger part of pop culture - they’re a little more mainstream now.”Ĭlients run the gamut: teens who regret their ink decisions, women with botched microbladed eyebrows and recently released prisoners hoping to find work. (They usually cost around $400 per session.)Īlthough clients with face tattoos account for only about 5 percent of his business, “We are seeing more and more of it,” Garnett says. “We’ve all made mistakes, but our mistakes aren’t always the first thing people see and judge us by,” says Garnett, who is donating six sessions of tattoo removal to Arias. He is the co-owner of the tattoo removal company Clean Slate Laser, which has locations in New York and New Jersey. But they’re not exactly trendy for people like Arias or former inmate Paul Algarin, a North Carolina man who made headlines last week after Kim Kardashian - now a criminal justice advocate - brought her doctor to him to begin removing his face tattoos.įor some people, erasing their ink, and the bad memories associated with it, can be the final, “liberating” step of turning their lives around, says Jeff Garnett. “I’m gonna cry like a baby.”įace tattoos are making a comeback with celebrities like Wiz Khalifa and Post Malone. “You don’t know how much I think about that day,” Arias says. The painful procedures, which will span six sessions (he’s already undergone two), will eventually get him to a point where the first thing people see isn’t a reminder of his dark history. So, between getting his degree, working full-time in construction, and going to church several days a week, Arias, who is now five years sober, is in the middle of getting his face, neck and hand tattoos removed with lasers. ![]() “As soon as I walk in for a job interview, they’re gonna think, ‘Who’s this guy trying to get a job looking like that?’ ” says the Queens resident, 30. Images like a bloodied knife and brass knuckles tell the story of a five-year period of his life plagued by depression and drug addiction - not exactly the first thing he wants prospective employers to see. Mauricio Arias wears his past on his face: Eleven tattoos cover his skin from his eyelids to his cheeks, down to his neck. ![]()
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