Prelude to Ink

I’m nervous.

It’s surprising, but I’m nervous.

I mean, I’ve done this 4 times before, the first was when I was about 15!

My friends and I took a pin, shoved it into the eraser of a pencil so that the tip was sticking out, wrapped thin thread around the base of the pin to hold ink, then dipped the ink in to a small bottle of Indian Ink and stabbed each other in the arm repeatedly until a pattern emerged.

Art.

Well, perhaps not art. I mean, my “peace sign in the shape of a tear drop” design is not exactly high on the scale of artistic merit. The original design was to be the eye of a woman, extending across my left pectoral muscle such that the teardrop, that was on my arm, was coming out of the eye. That didn’t happen. Personally, I’m glad. I still think the eye would’ve been cool– but not designed by a 15 year old and applied with a needle in a pencil eraser.

No regrets, though. I mean, it’s not the most artistic piece, but it is still art. Body art.

I’ve had 3 other tattoos done since then:

Comical

A vampire bite, placed right over my jugular vein, also a high school addition. I brought my copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the artist, so that he could have the exact definition of what a vampire bite looked like.

The funny story about this one is that the tattoo artist had some weird condition as a child that made his incisors grow so long that they set into his lower jaw. He had pictures, it was freakish.

One day in 6th grade or so, the teacher was out of the room for a bit and he got into a fight with another kid. The other kid bit him in the neck, so he bit back. The teacher came back to find one kid bleeding profusely from the neck, and another– fanged– with blood all over his mouth. She left teaching. He got suspended and had his teeth filed down.

I thought that he was the perfect artist for this tattoo. He measured his own incisors, and tattooed that spacing on my neck.

Spiteful

I have a yin-yang symbol in flames on my left hand. The design was chosen for no better reason that it was the only yin-yang the artist had. I wanted that symbol, so I took the best I could get. The spiteful part? That’s the placement.

I was in Navy bootcamp, after serving in Operation Desert Storm in The Army. We had leave and the drill instructor told us that we’d get kicked out if we got tattoos. Everyone was scared. A bunch of us got tattoos, but everyone else got them on their chests and arms (covered by shirts) or legs (by pants). Me? I wanted to make a point. I’d fought in a war, no-one was going to pull the old “You’ll get in trouble if” line with me. Kicked out? For a tattoo? Honestly! So, I got it on my hand. A place that was impossible to hide.

The next morning, standing in formation with a bandage on my hand my drill instructor said– in his normal, scary, I’m going to pretend to be really mean voice “What the hell’s wrong with your hand seaman!?” My reply, as deadpan and matter of fact as I could be: “Tattoo, sir.”

I’d say something like “he wasn’t pleased,” but that would be  completely missing the point. I mean, it wasn’t about his pleasure at all.

Artistic

The last one is the large mendi-style piece extending from my upper calf to the top of my foot. This one came out of an evening session where Jessica and I made up some henna, and drew designs on each other. The design she drew on my was a spiral with the top on my calf. It extended, in a wavy pattern down, around my ankle bone, to the top of my foot. It was beautiful. I knew immediately that I wanted it to be permanent.

I designed some elements to fit into the curves of the spiral, various things that are meaningful to me. Then, the search began. The difficulty here is that I wanted a female tattoo artist, but I wanted a tattoo artist who was also a very good henna artist. Because I wanted the design to be more than just spiraled lines, I wanted to find a henna artist who could design the spiral as if it were mendi. I didn’t actually think I’d find one, but I did.

The Pain

So, now I’m preparing for #5. An enormous piece, designed completely by me, that extends from my upper shoulder down past my elbow. A fish… of sorts.

But more on that later. Now I need to prepare. It’s a lot of ink, and today is just the outline… a lot of outline. That means a lot of pain.

I forgot about the pain part. Seriously. I forgot until this morning. Then I started thinking about it. Now, that’s about all I can think about.

But, we– humans, that is– have been tattooing ourselves since long before we’ve been writing. Body art is a part of human culture worldwide. And no-one has done it without pain. Mostly, I think there’s a purpose to that. Pain is part of being alive. Body art is a spiritual path. Without the pain, it wouldn’t be what it is.

So, I’m nervous, but I’m also excited. A new piece, my biggest yet. In two hours, I enter the room.

Comments are closed.