Brand Xed

"Years ago, I had one homemade tattoo that covered the whole cheek of a woman's buttock and it said, in very crude lettering, Property of Nicky ," Van Antwerp says. "This woman was not married to Nicky and, to add insult to injury, the word 'property' was misspelled."

He smiles. "It's a fairly simple word," he says, "but apparently Nicky was a fairly simple guy."

He bursts out laughing.

"I like to talk to my patients," he says. "When they're having a name removed, I ask them, Is this person no longer around? I had a guy some years ago who had the name Colleen on his arm. He said, 'That's my first wife's name, but I've been through three Colleens.' I said, 'Really? Is that a requirement of yours? Do they all have to be named Colleen?' He said, 'No, not at all. Colleen is not that common a name and I think I'm attracting them because I have their name on my arm. And the Colleen thing has never worked for me. That's why I'm here. I have to get this thing off. I have to try something else.' "

Van Antwerp laughs again. He's sitting in his office between patients, wearing dark-blue scrubs. He has removed homemade tattoos, professional tattoos, tribal tattoos, gang tattoos, even jailhouse tattoos made with a safety pin and cigarette ash. He has erased tattoos from every part of the human body surface, even parts you'd think are far too tender to be exposed to a tattoo needle. The phrase "love pump" was tattooed on one guy's . . . well, never mind.

Van Antwerp once erased a naked woman from the arm of a minister of God. "He was a guy who grew up on the streets of Baltimore and went through rough times," he says, "and then he had a religious transformation and became a pastor."

One day, a young woman came in with a Chinese character tattooed on her neck. "She was told it meant 'desert flower,' " Van Antwerp says. "And she was getting a lot of attention from Chinese men. And finally somebody told her that it was a very crude Chinese word for prostitute. Some Chinese tattoo artist was making a joke."

So many tattoos, so many stories. But they all have one thing in common: Somebody made a mistake and now wants to erase it. Like divorce lawyers, revival preachers and parole officers, tattoo removers are in the business of helping people shed the past and start anew.

The second chance -- it's a great American tradition. But sometimes it doesn't work out as planned.

"I had a guy who had a tattoo on his arm and he wanted it off and he'd gone through five treatments," Van Antwerp says. "It was a big tattoo and it was costing him a significant amount of money. Then he went to a business meeting in D.C. and he got out a little early and he hit a happy hour and he's walking down the street and he goes into a tattoo parlor and he walks out with a big black-and-red yin-yang thing in the same spot on his arm.

"He came in the next day, distraught," Van Antwerp continues. "He said, 'It's the worst mistake I ever made.' "

"I said, 'Look, you're a married guy, you've got kids, you have a business. I'm sure there are worse mistakes you could have made. At least this one we can fix.' "