Black and red cut-out style lettering tattoo across a forearm reading I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not.

Quote tattoo on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A forearm carries a long line of black typewriter-style lettering reading I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not. Some words are struck through or overlaid with red script and red strokes, including the words love and hate. The lettering is shown in close focus against a checkered floor and a dark padded surface, with the skin lit evenly.

Lettering Forearm Quote Word Love

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Imperial in the back office at Corrigan and Shaw had a sticky h, and by the third week of March Maud Pell had stopped trying to fix it. Every hate she typed came out with its crossbar lost, so the word looked like a mistake, which suited the letters she was paid to type. Mr Shaw dictated them with his feet on the radiator: refusals, reminders, and one notice of dismissal for a net-mender whose hands had gone.

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On Thursday he dictated something different. A cutter named Harold Dunn had come in with his boat's papers, and Shaw wanted a letter to the harbour board saying the man was known to be trouble, that he was disliked on the quay, and that nobody would sign for him. Maud typed the first line and stopped. She asked whether Shaw was sure. He said he was sure everyone in Grimsby was sure, and that was all a clerk needed to know.

She took the sheet out and rolled in a fresh one. Above the harbour board's address she typed the line she had copied from a calendar in the ladies' lavatory: I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not. Beneath it she wrote that the Dunn file was blank, that she had nothing to say about him, and that Mr Shaw's opinion was his own. She signed it Maud Pell, typist, and posted it before lunch.

Shaw found the carbon on Friday and shouted until the radiator knocked. Maud kept her coat on and let the sticky h sit on his desk, a little black hook in the middle of every hate, and waited. The reply came the following week, addressed to her by name, asking whether she had any further information on the cutter. She sat with the envelope in her lap for a long time, then rolled in a clean sheet and began to type.