I would prefer not to

I got this tattoo yesterday, on my 50th birthday. It’s from Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. Melville’s work was forgotten before he died, and he had no reason to think it would ever be remembered, let alone be tattooed on the arm of a writer from another country more than a century later.

The tattoo was done by Alice Kendall at Wonderland Tattoos in Portland.