Hmmm…. I guess I was reading this as the tattoo man feeling like he had been put-upon. So I sought to come up with a reason why he’d feel that way rather than reading that as straight reportage.
I think you’ll need to establish him in his doing of good deeds or somesuch before establishing him through his tendency to suffer prejudiced or his tendency to brawl (as I’m still assuming from being bounced). Otherwise I can’t imagine folks latching on to the reading you intend.
Also, “show me a man” way too easily triggers a “Oh, the speaker is macho and longs for the good old days when men could behave roughly and weren’t held responsible” sort of response. That doesn’t make it a bad phrase, but it does make it a phrase that especially requires clarification in its context.
So you might need a stanza before the one about the prejudice that somehow develops this character. I don’t really think we need to see the tattoos more as much as we need to see why he’s a gem. I can’t really imagine that someone would be highlighted in the title as being tattooed if they weren’t heavily tattooed that face tattoos are included is indeed, a vibrant picture, but it doesn’t clarify what we need to know about him in order to get on the right track. Presently, I think we are supposed to get the fact that he’s a gem from that one phrase “put-upon,” which is both insufficient next to all the rest of the space devoted to his experiences and can easily be read as his conception of himself rather than as a true evaluation.
D
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