The Zombie Guy

Rick Genest was sixteen when he decided to cover his entire body in zombie tattoos. Not partially, not as a statement that could be walked back—completely. Skull cap peeled away, jaw rotting, every visible inch committed to the vision. By his mid-twenties he’d spent over seven thousand dollars on it, mostly with Frank Lewis, a tattoo artist in Montreal who got what he was building.

He started in freak shows. Traveled all over North America with his body as the attraction—the tattooed guy, the fire-eater, the sideshow prop. He was quiet about those years, but he got tired of being hired as weird. Wanted something that was his.

Then fashion noticed. Thierry Mugler, Paris and Milan shows. He became the male Charlotte Free—the exotic, the beautiful committed freak, proof that someone could choose an aesthetic so completely that it becomes inseparable from who they are. There were rumors about Lady Gaga. The magazines cared. The industry loves that kind of vision, that kind of irreversible decision.

But the affection doesn’t last. These things have shelf lives. A new interesting person appears and the interest just evaporates. You’re still covered in zombie tattoos. Still the same person who made this choice at sixteen. But now you’re outside the frame, and the frame is the only thing that matters.