Banking on Human Nature--in This Case, Regret

Every tattoo tells a story, many of them involving a lonely guy and a few beers.

Yet many people (including men) make stone-sober tattooing decisions. They want to memorialize a love. Or they think a goat’s head on their forearm looks pretty cool. Or that a blood-dripping dagger embossed on a forearm might be an ice-breaker at a party.

You know how life goes. Love fades, goat heads lose their charm. Bloody daggers can be off-putting.

Jerry Lorito knows all that, and it led him to start a tattoo removal business in Costa Mesa now in its fourth month.

Think of the people with tattoos (one Web site estimates 20 million), and then think of how many wish they’d never done it.

A woman named Shelly came to Lorito’s Tat2 Be Gone office earlier this week. Now 39, she self-tattooed her left shoulder when she was 15--a small heart encircling her boyfriend’s initial. “I was sure we’d be married, and I’d like it forever,” she says, while awaiting an appointment to remove it.

Actually, she’s removing a subsequent tattoo of a rose, applied to obscure the original. Unfortunately, she never liked it.

“People say, ‘What is it, a clock?’ ” Shelly says. “I say, ‘No, it’s a rose,’ and they say, ‘Oh, it looks a clock.’ ”

She’s right. What are meant to be rose branches look like the hands of a clock showing 25 minutes to 5.

Lorito loves stories like that. Every time he hears one, he hears the ka-ching of the cash register.

He runs the office under the medical direction of Doug Mest, a physician with offices in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Using a laser technique that “shatters” the dye beneath the skin, a registered nurse does the tattoo removal, which usually takes only five to 10 minutes. Customers are told that multiple visits will be necessary to remove the tattoo. Even then, Lorito doesn’t guarantee that every tattoo can be completely removed, though he says that goal is within easy reach of the laser.

Technology aside, it’s human nature that Lorito, 36, is counting on to keep the business flowing. I find myself wondering why he doesn’t call the clinic the “I Told You So” center.

Rosalinda Rangel, 23, showed up with 25-year-old boyfriend Juan Ramirez, who has a few small tattoos with friends’ names on them. Trouble is, Rangel’s family abhors tattoos, associating them with gang involvement.

That means, she says smilingly, that Ramirez’s must go. “Even if you’re not a bad person,” Rangel says, “it’s the first impression that counts. For me, if I’m going to be with him, I don’t want people to judge him wrong, because he’s a very good person.”

Earlier in the afternoon, a twentysomething woman had a more personal reason for coming. She has a half-angel, half-devil tattoo on her stomach. Not many people are going to see it, but the woman (who didn’t want to be identified) doesn’t want it anymore.

“I got it three years ago,” she says, awaiting her consultation with nurses Barbara Groff and Linn Boden. “My mother had died, and I wanted it to signify the good and bad in me.”

She came to realize it was a decision made in the emotional aftermath of her mother’s death.

Summoned by the nurses, the woman stretches out in a reclining chair. The tattoo is exposed and Groff explains what will happen. The laser will feel like a rubber band snapping against her, she tells the woman. Removing the black color shouldn’t be a problem; the red might be more stubborn. She tells the woman to expect half a dozen visits.

“I definitely want to get it done,” the woman says.

“Had you thought about it for a long time before you got it?” Boden asks.

“Not long enough,” the woman replies.

They begin the procedure, but it’s clear the woman isn’t taking to it.

She clutches Boden’s hand tightly while Groff traces the tattoo with the laser. “I don’t know if I can do the whole thing,” the woman says. Within a minute, she says, “This isn’t worth it. It’s too painful.”

Lorito later theorizes that her discomfort stemmed from the sensitivity in the stomach area. Indeed, a 67-year-old man who had the next appointment had treatment on two bicep tattoos without flinching.

The woman says she’ll return another day but first will apply a cream to deaden the area.

Lorito says 300 people have come for consultations since the center opened in May. About 100 decided on removal, he says.

All you have to do is walk the streets to see the potential client base. I ask Lorito, Will you ever run out of customers?

“I don’t see that as a problem,” he says, chuckling. It’s the laugh of a man whose arms first were festooned 20 years ago with wizards, castles, waterfalls, eagles, skulls and dragons--but who now is having them removed.

It was the laugh of a businessman who knows you can’t go wrong when you’re banking on human nature.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.