Angry Ink

Haunted Ink

I had a guy come in with a so-so tattoo, not great, not terrible, just needed a little sprucing up. He wanted to add in some background so we made a plan, set a date and we were on our way. When he came back, things went along okay; he was a little high-strung and anxious about the process, which I understand. Some people barely say a word to me the whole time, some insist on grilling me about safety and questioning my every move and whatnot. We get a lot of Eastern Europeans in our place and they're definitely much more type-A than the average American. They're great customers, don't get me wrong. For every one of them we work on, they'll bring twenty of their friends to us later, which is greatly appreciated. They're just a lot more intense about things than the locals are. It takes a little getting used to, but I definitely respect the people who don't come in cringing and cowering and can barely make eye contact. Anyway, the tattoo came out really nice, he liked it, and aside from him being a bit wound up about getting started, there was nothing remarkable about the whole turn of events.

The next day, the phone rang right at open and it was him. I picked up and he sounded breathless and relieved to hear from me.

"Oh, thank you for taking my call, there is big problem," he panted. No artist likes to hear that. I don't want to fuck people up or make mistakes or get anyone sick, so when I get a complaint, my nerves go into high gear.

"What happened?" I asked.

"Well, when I was in your store I did not notice this one detail, but then I am home and I see it and I say, 'Oh, my God..."

"Okay, what?' Now I was starting to panic. I quickly scanned the image of the tattoo in my mind, trying to think what might be the flaw. I couldn't think of one thing that would have been a problem with his. I reoutlined an existing tattoo, recolored it, and added some background. I don't drink or do drugs so, aside from an occasional dip in my caffeine levels, I'm 100% cognizant of everything I do. I'm also not the type who would secretly put subliminal stuff in people's tattoos or anything like that. It's funny in theory, not so much in practice.

"Well," he said, "I'm looking in the mirror, and part of the blue shading...?"

"Yes?" I was about to stroke out right about then if he didn't spit it out.

"It looks like a face. A profile of a human face."

I let out a sigh that could have filled a parade balloon. Ah yes, the old 'I look at the tattoo and I see blahblahblah', happens quite a bit. Someone comes in complaining that they see something that isn't actually there. They usually say 'penis' which tells me that maybe Sigmund Freud was right. More often than not all they need to be told about their subliminal penis is 'you're crazy, the tattoo is fine' and they say thank you, and that's the end of it. Worst case scenario, you're doing a little tweaking to get rid of whatever it is in the tattoo they're hallucinating about, and then you can put the whole thing to bed.

He continued on. "I see this face and I am so scared. I did not sleep all night."

"So...it's like the tattoo is haunted," I replied casually.

"Yes! Oh, I am so upset. I come to show you later."

I got off the phone and almost died laughing. I recounted the story to my co-workers. One of them said she was jealous that no one ever accused her of putting a haunted tattoo on somebody.

The guy never did come back to show me. When he had initially come in to talk to me about the tattoo, his wife was by his side. She seemed to be fairly unimpressed with the whole matter and I gathered pretty quickly that she was the brains of the operation. I can only assume that she came home from work, he went off on a tirade about the ghost in his tattoo and she told him to shut the hell up and quit acting crazy. I also recalled that when I was tattooing him, he told me what the artist who did the original tattoo had said: "He told to me, 'you won't be back'." I can only assume that, for his first go-round, he was such a wacko about the whole thing the artist assumed he'd never be able to recover and do it again. I can see now what he might have been getting at.

So, the blue phantom is still out there, lurking in space, tormenting souls....beware, my friends....he may show up in YOUR next tattoo! Muaaaahahahahahaaaaa...... *flips cape over face, reclines in coffin*

Time Is Not On My Side

*On the phone, May 10th*

"Hi, I had an appointment with you on May 28th?"

Yeah?

"I'm afraid I'm gonna have to cancel. I found someone who will do it a LOT sooner."

Okay.

"Sorry about that...I'll keep you in mind for next time, though....?" He hesitated, as if he were waiting for me to offer him something sooner.

Okay.

"Well...bye..."

Bye.

 

Here's the thing, kids...I like getting paid. I like getting paid sooner rather than later. So if I can do your tattoo today and get paid today, I will. I won't tell you to come in a month from today if I COULD do it today. I don't think people get that. I prefer to have the money when the car payment is due instead of three weeks after when I'm getting angry phone calls from the bank. Same goes for my mortgage. I like to eat every day, more than once. So I'm not going to postpone getting money from anyone unless there are already other people in line that are going to be paying me today and tomorrow, et cetera.

When I'm making appointments with people, I make a point of bringing my appointment book over to them and making a big show of flipping through all the pages so that they can see every day has stuff written all over it, and I'm flipping through weeks and weeks of full days to find an empty spot. I think people think I'm bullshitting when I say I don't have anything free for a month or more. I'm not. I honestly don't think I'm that great, but people really seem to dig what I'm doing and they don't mind waiting for it. Apparently I'm doing something right, and fairly consistently. So what I'm not getting is these people who come running in, panting and slobbering for me to tattoo them, then they can't believe they have to wait. I don't know if they feel like the guy who discovers the supermodel standing in line at the grocery store or what. They're always dismayed that they won't be my first.

I'd just as soon scrape off some of these barnacles who want it yesterday. They're pains in the ass to deal with and I'd probably never make them happy anyway. The yahoo I mentioned above isn't the first, I get them pretty frequently. He'll 'keep me in mind for next time'? Oh, I'm sure he will, and I'm slobberingly grateful for that. I'll keep him in mind, too. Next time I'll tell him the wait is two years.

The Darndest Things, Said Customers

"I'm surprised there's a tattoo shop in [our town]. I thought [our town] was too classy for a tattoo shop," said the woman standing in our tattoo shop holding her four-month old baby.

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"Believe me, I'm not another one of those chicks who gets tiny birds tattooed on her, this actually means something to me," said the chick getting tiny birds tattooed on her.

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"I can't spend that much, you can lower the price a little," said the guy with shitty homemade tattoos.

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 "I had two kids with no anesthesia, so I can take pain," bragged the woman just before she complained about the pain through all five minutes of an infinity sign on her wrist.

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"I'm really picky about who I let tattoo me," said the guy who rolled up his sleeve and showed me three of the shittiest basement tattoos I've seen in years.

Your Mom, Vol. 3: Double Trouble

Two in the same day, what are the odds? It's getting worse and worse, people. I'm stunned, not only at parental overreach, but by kids' unwillingness to transform into the adults they are at eighteen years of age.

Early in the day, a young lady came in for a small tattoo on her hip. As I'm getting ready, she hands me her cell phone.

"My mom wants to talk to...the tattoo artist?" She half said, half-asked, and I had no idea why she was so confused as to who I was and what my job was. We had exchanged emails several times the evening before, suddenly she thought I might be the janitor or something.

I took the phone from her and asked, "Can I help you?"

"Uh, hello...hello?" Came the feeble voice from the other end.

"Yes, can I help you?"

"Oh! Uh, well, this is _______'s mother," she began.

"Yes?" I asked.

"Well, uh, my daughter is eighteen now, and, well, you know, she wants to be a rebel, you know, kids, they just, well...you know, they gotta go out and just be themselves, and..." I sighed and caught myself starting to eye-roll, as I realized that the girl was standing there watching me and this was her mother on the phone. As stupid as this whole scenario was becoming, I still wanted to be polite.

Mom continued, "So, anyway, so where she's getting this tattoo, on her hip, will she be able to drive herself home, or will she be...does she need someone to accompany her?"

"No, ma'am, what I'll be doing to her is very minor. It's not major surgery."

"Oh. Okay. Well, I know, she's eighteen, and so she's an adult, but, I'm her mother, I don't need to be there with her, do I?"

I resisted the urge to tell her that she answered her own question. I think I might have given myself a hemorrhoid from the strain. "No, ma'am, you don't need to be here," I said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, good. Because, you know, I mean, she is eighteen and all, but I just don't know how..." her voice trailed away as I took the phone from my ear and handed it back to the girl. Mom kept going for a minute or two and didn't seem to notice that the "Uh huhs" she was getting as a reply were now coming from her kid instead of me. They launched into a two-minute game of "I love you...I love you more...I love YOU more...I love you the most...no, *I* love you the most....bye...bye....bye...." and she finally hung up.

"She is CRAZY." The girl sighed.

"Do yourself a favor, kid," I said, with a stern look. "When you go off to college, go to Guam or something."

 

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Later that same day, a young lady came in looking for a quote. I wasn't helping her, but I had the (dis)pleasure of standing nearby as one of my co-workers got sucked into one of the finest evening melodramas I've seen in a while. Having picked out a quote and a font, the young lady asked for a minute to text her mom and send a picture of the stencil. Mom came right back and demanded a different quote.

"She says get a different quote," the young lady announced to her friends. The phone pinged, she looked and read, "something spiritual".

The three girls puzzled over what mom meant by that when the phone pinged again, and our Heroine read, "It better not be big". She looked to my co-worker and asked, "Can it be smaller?" 

She got the explanation over why tattoos cannot be super-tiny, and she texted back to mom whatever her version of that spiel might be. The phone pinged, she read, and then she asked, "What size is that, exactly?"

My co-worker sighed. "I have no idea."

She looked down at her phone. "She said, 'it cannot be more than one-quarter inch'."

The girls had another huddle and finally she said, "Whatever, I'm just gonna do it. Let's do it." Atta girl, I thought to myself, as her thumbs furiously tapped her phone screen, making her intentions clear to mom.

Ping.

She stared at the screen. "You'll be sorry," she read. The three looked at each other for a moment. She sighed and said, a little ruefully, "I'll be back in four months." They went out into the night and I wondered what was going to happen in four months. She was moving out? Joining the military? Murdering mom with a loaf of stale French bread? Kids, listen. I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you're an adult, act like one. Make your own decisions. Stop asking your mommies. They're not going to agree, they're not going to approve, and when you beg you're just embarrassing yourself in front of us and your friends. And the internet when I write about it. If your parents are that controlling, that emotionally manipulative, just move out. I keep hearing, "They're not gonna pay for my college/rent/crack habit if I get tattooed." Well, here's an fascinating fact about life: The person paying for all your shit gets to tell you what to do. If you're accepting all the free shit, you're locked into that agreement. Stop mooching off their stuff and expecting you're gonna get to do whatever you want.You can't have it both ways. My Pop always used to say, "When you pay your own way, you can do whatever the hell you want," and he was right. The last time I called him to ask if I could do something, I was asking if I could use a 30-W motor oil in my car because I couldn't find my chassis manual, I was covered in grease and I didn't want to go tromping back through the house to look it up online. I certainly didn't ask for permission to buy that car because it was my motherfuckin' money and he hasn't paid my bills in two decades. So there it is, kids. Move out if you don't like their rules. Or else just do it anyway and be a real fuckin' rebel. Rebels don't check with their mommies first.

 

 

Mania: A Short Story

Hey, can you draw my tattoo?

I was really hoping you could draw my tattoo now. I really want to get going on this right away.

Did you start drawing my tattoo yet?

Are you done drawing my tattoo yet?

Can I see the drawing for my tattoo yet?

Can I get my tattoo today?

Why do I have to wait two weeks to get my tattoo?

I know my appointment is in two weeks, but is there any way I can come in sooner?

I know my appointment is next week, but is there any way I can come in this week?

I know my appointment is tomorrow, but is there any way I can come in today?

I know my appointment is at 6:00, is there any way I can come in at 3:00?

I'm sorry, I know this is short notice but I'm not going to be able to make my appointment. Can I reschedule?

 

THE END

Under No Management

We get a lot of sales calls here at the shop. I appreciate that these people have a job to do, but tattoo shops are not like most businesses. What other businesses need, tattoo shops really don't. So when someone calls and the first thing they do is ask for the owner or manager, they're most likely trying to sell us something. We save them the time and oxygen by ending the call as quickly as possible. We're also saving the boss the aggravation of having to listen to their spiel and then say 'no thanks'. I like my bosses best when they're not aggravated.

So one afternoon I pick up the phone and hear an older woman ask, "Can I speak to a manager?" That's usually a dead giveaway that it's a sales call, so I come back with, "There's no one in at this time."

She took an exasperated breath and asked, "When will someone be in?"

"Monday," I replied, which wasn't a lie.

"So there's no one there right now who's a manager," she said, not asking a question, but stating it flatly, like a cop who was trying to trick me into screwing up my story. I beagn to suspect that there might be some sort of a problem, but I didn't want to come out and ask. If there's a problem with a tattoo, we want to help, but we always hope that is not the case. So, I tried to see if I could warm things up with a little humor in case this was not a sales call but an aggraveted customer. "Well," I began, with a hint of a chuckle in my voice, "we're big boys and girls, we take care of ourselves."

I heard nothing but silence on the other end. I waited a few beats and was just asbout to ask if she was still there when she said, "So there won't be a manager until Monday."

"No," I answered, and wondered why the hell she just wouldn't tell me what she wanted.

"Well, that's strange, because, you know, usually there's someone around who's a manager," she said, sounding weary and annoyed.

I was annoyed myself at this point. I believe in being polite to people until they start acting stupid. "Well, ma'am, this is a tattoo shop. Things run a little differently here. It's not like fast food."

She sighed and told me she'd call back Monday and hung up abruptly. Fifteen minutes later she called back and asked for our address. I assumed that some aging, irate woman was going to come down and read us the riot act for tattooing her kid/grandkid/husband, but we never got such a visit. If she just wanted to know where we were, I don't know why she needed to hear it from a manager. Even the dumbest lackey in any establishment can tell a caller the address of the place. Like I said before, tattoo shops are not like most businesses. There is no night manager or crew chief or corporate office. Whoever picks up the phone most likely will have the answer to your question, you won't be told to press 1 and you won't be transferred to another extension or be told you have to call corporate after the weekend. When you're asked if we can help you, we mean it, because we can, even if our name isn't on the lease.

Customers Say The Darndest Things! Mo' Tattoos, Mo' Problems

I have an older woman in my chair and I'm fixing up a crappy tattoo she got elsewhere. She says to me, "This is my first tattoo. My husband had a fit. I really wanna get another one, but I can't until after he's dead." I laugh and then she says, "It won't be long. I can't wait."

I didn't laugh at that.

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A mom with her two kids comes in to ask questions. She picks up one of our cards off the counter and says, "This is you? _______ Tattoo?"

I make a funny face, take an exaggerated look around and say, "Last time I checked."

"No, but this is you? _______ Tattoo?"

"No," I reply, "We have cards for another tattoo shop at our tattoo shop."

She catches on to my sarcasm and says, "Well, I'm just checking, you know, I wanna be sure."

I think my humor is wasted on most people. I should just answer the damn stupid questions.

 

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An older guy comes in, Bluetooth in ear, doing the open-mouth tough guy gum-chew. I'm in the middle of a tattoo and I ask if he needs help.

"I have a 2:00 appointment, I was wondering if I could get in early, " he says.

"Who's your appointment with?" I ask.

He reaches into his wallet and pulls out one of our shop cards and holds it up to show me the backside, where one of my co-workers has scrawled their name and the  appointment time. I'm sitting a good twelve feet from the counter, so I cannot read it.

"What's that say, man? I'm too far away, I can't read that."

Instead of reading me the name, he moves the card about six inches closer to me. I can't read any better at 11.5 feet than I can at 12. Luckily, the artist he had the appointment with came walking up right before I barked, "Just fucking read it to me, will ya?"

 

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This happens so often I can't single out one incident anymore: Someone comes in and shows me an image on their phone. I get busy working on a drawing and they begin to meander around and flip through the racks. After a minute, they turn back to me and say, in a voice dripping with incredulous scorn, "Do people actually come in here and just get stuff off the wall?"

My answer is this: "What's the difference between picking something off the wall and picking something off the internet? Google and Pintrest are just giant flash racks."

They always look amazed after I say that, and say something to the effect of, "I never thought of it that way....." The funny thing is, 49 times out of 50, what they have brought me is not even a photo of a drawing, it's a photo of an actual tattoo that has actually been done on an actual person. I have to try hard to resist the temptation to point out that anyone who picks a design off the rack is showing a little  more thought and originality than someone who is bringing in a photo of an actual tattoo on someone else's body. There is a chance the design on the flash rack has never been done on anyone. A photo of a tattoo is proof that the design actually has been done already. It's tough to refrain from calling people hypocritical snobs.

 

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OLDER WOMAN: I want a little rose on my ankle.

YOUNGER WOMAN: (scoffing) Oh, God, really?

OW: What? I like roses.

ME: It's a classic, there's nothing wrong with that.

YW: I dunno, I just--Everybody does that. I can't do that. I gotta be different, you know? I mean, I gotta do my thing, you know, I can't do what everybody does. I wanna get a treble clef and a bass clef in the shape of a heart.

(If you don't know why that's funny, click here.)

YOUR MOM, Vol. 2

Many moons ago I was working in a big city shop and I was piercing in addition to tattooing. One Friday night a nice young lady came in and asked for a nose piercing. I put a pretty little diamond stud in for her and she was quite happy. The next night, she came back in and I recognized her immediately. She was with a woman who looked just like her, only slightly stooped and older. I assumed this was her mother and I was correct. I greeted her and asked how she was doing. She had a big smile on her face, but something seemed off about it, something about her eyes was not quite right. The older woman said to me, "Is there somewhere we can talk in private?"

All of my alarm bells went off and I told my visitors to come back to my room. Mom asked me as soon as we crossed the threshold, "You did this piercing?"

"Yes I did, what's up?"

Mom pointed at the stud in her daughter's nose and said, "Why did you do this to her?"

I looked back at the daughter, who was looking at me with that plastered-on pageant smile, pleading with her eyes for me to just play along.

"Well, your daughter is twenty-one years old," I replied. I still remembered carding her the night before, and I had made a wisecrack to her that she was going to buy us all beers after the piercing. "She's old enough and she had the money to pay for it and she asked me to do this to her. That's why I did it"

Mom smiled, a pleasant but terse smile, and clasped her hands together. "I do not approve of this," she said.

"Well, that's between the two of you, ma'am," I replied, "If you don't approve of her getting a piercing, I think you need to take that up with her."

I looked at the daughter again, and I could tell she was dying inside, but she wasn't going to say a word. I scowled at her, and I could feel the vibration of her internal anguish increasing. Mom, however, wasn't willing to back down just yet.

"But I don't want this," she continued, her words quivering with tension and frustration.

"Well, you know what? She's an adult and she paid me to do it, and that's the end of that. I don't know what it is you want from me, but you oughta be glad I didn't tattoo her, if this is such a big deal. I think you should go now."

Mom sighed in resignation, and turned away. The daughter gave me that look with her eyes, that mortified, apologetic look, and turned to follow her mother out the door, never letting that painted-on smile slip. I stood in the doorway, watching them leave the shop and I wondered what kind of ass-chewing that girl was in for since I didn't volunteer to take the fall. Parents, take note: Your adult children are going to do all sorts of things that are going to piss you off and there isn't squat you can do about it. Going around trying to pick fights with purveyors of legitimate services is a waste of time. You have neither a legal leg to stand on, nor are you going to get any kind of apology or refund. Take it up with your kids if they disobey your rules. Maybe your rules are for the child your kid was, not the adult your kid is.

Don't Lift A Thumb

I got a phone call from a guy with a thick, Eastern European accent. He told me I had done a tribal tattoo on his friend that he really liked and asked if I could do one for him. I told him I sure could, and he asked how much it would cost.

"Well," I said, "that depends on what you're getting. If you're getting something small, it's cheaper than something big, but I can't give you a price until I see for sure what you're getting."

He thought for a second. "Well, how I can get some design?"

I told him, "Come into the shop, we have some stuff here, or you can go online and find something. Bring it in and then I can see what it is and how big, and then I can tell you how much."

"Can I give to you my cell number, and you can send some design to my smart phone?"

I was flabbergasted. Usually I have a smart-ass answer to everything, but this time I had nothing. There were a couple of seconds of me making some weird squeaking noise but no words were coming out at all. Finally I managed, "Dude, I'm not spending all day searching the internet for your tattoo and then sending you ideas. Take a look yourself. You just said you have a smart phone, go on Google and find something."

He sighed heavily. Apparently I had, once again, failed to deliver the stellar customer service that was expected of me by someone who wants their hand held and their ass wiped. "Okay," he grumbled. "I'll look myself."

A few weeks later he came in and mentioned the phone call. I recognized his voice immediately. He pulled up an image of a tribal on his phone and asked for a price. I told him it was gonna be about 400 bucks. He made an astonished face and quickly pulled up a second image. This one was even bigger, covering the upper arm, part of the chest and the back.

"Well, that one's bigger, that's gonna be even more than that other one," I cautioned, and he made the astonished face again. He flipped back to the first image and said, "So, this one is 400?"

"Yeah, that's gonna be 400."

"I talked to the girl in _________, and she said she could do this one for 250."

"Well, good luck with that," I said. He made astonished face for the third time. Many potential customers assume that if they threaten to go somewhere else, we'll fling ourselves at their feet, sobbing and begging them not to go, and that we'll do the tattoo for the same price or less than they got quoted elsewhere. I don't have a problem giving people a little break, but I'm not going to be held hostage by someone elses' flea market prices. Our answer to the bargain hunters is some variation of 'Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.' They can never understand that, they don't get why we're not pleading with them to stay and agreeing to work as cheap as the scratchers.  Besides, I've been in this game for a while, and I learned very quickly that most people are bluffing anyhow. More often than not, they didn't even go to said shop, they're just fishing for bargains to see if we'll bite. I found this out when I'd have people saying they talked to So-And-So at Such-And-Such shop, when in fact I knew So-And-So, and I knew Such-And-Such shop would never do big work for peanuts. I think people don't realize that it is possible for people at 'competing' shops to still be friends, or for an artist to have worked at said 'competing' shop at one point and to be well aware of how the place operates. The funny thing is that this particular guy who said he got this bargain-basement price mentioned the name of the town, not the actual name of the shop, and I'm almost positive that town has no shops in it whatsoever.

So, he stared me down for a second, waiting for my tearful collapse on the carpet where I would beg him not to go. When he didn't get anything other than a smirk and a raised eyebrow, he tried again.

"I really don't want to pay that much."

"Cool, man, see ya, have a good night." I sat down at the computer and opened up my Facebook page.

Defeated, he left, and I was glad. That's the last thing I need, some lazy motherfucker who can't even be arsed to do a Google search for his own tattoo, then expects me to bust my ass tattooing half his torso for peanuts. I know, technology is making people lazy and stupid, I'm guilty myself. However, I wouldn't dream of calling up Amazon and telling them to find me some books and send them to my Kindle for me. For crying out loud, how is some kid at the service center supposed to know what I'd like? For all he knows, I'd really want Wuthering Heights but he'd send War And Peace and then I'd have to get all huffy about why he's not sending me 'what I want'. Really, people, technology is presenting us with a dizzying array of choices in just about all areas. It's overwhelming and it can be hard to make a choice. But at the end of the day, what you put on your body is YOUR choice. I can suggest and guide, but the idea has to start with you. I might not love your idea, but as long as it's going to heal well and the actual tattoo will not reflect poorly on me and/or the shop, then fuck it, I'll do it. It's my job, and that's my end of the bargain. Your end of the bargain is to know what you want and to do a little bit of homework. There's nothing in my job description about delivering your options to you. They're right there in your pocket, you don't even have to go home and sit down at a computer anymore to find something.

I was stunned that that dude actually made the trip down here and allegedly went to a second shop after acting like scrolling through images on his phone was a back-breaking ordeal. Good lord, his thumbs must be incredibly weak. I'm actually surpised he didn't ask on the phone if I'd come to his house and tattoo him instead of coming to the shop. Either way, he'd probably want help wiping his ass as well.

Fantasy Camp

On the tail end of a long, busy Sunday after a long, busy weekend, I sat down at the front desk to catch up on email and get some references printed out. A small group of people outside caught my eye as they peered into the window. I could see in the darkness that there were three boys, not quite teenagers, and the man who must be Dad. After a few minutes of peeping in like a clutch of curious raccoons, Dad opened the door, then turned back to the boys and said, "You can't come in here."

He entered and grinned at me and I gave a tepid smile back. I could already tell that this was going to be something stupid. Anyone who would stand outside and gawk in the window at us for five minutes, then come in with a Cheshire grin makes me wary. That, and he was wearing the requisite suburban dad uniform; Teva sandals, khaki drawstring cargo shorts and button-up pastel plaid shirt. When Dad decides he's gonna go out and 'get crazy', it's more sad than cool.

"Can I ask you a weird question?" He asked, a little louder than necessary, and I wondered immediately if he had been drinking.

"I don't know, can you?" I replied. As much as I hated people saying that to me as a kid, I enjoy doing it as an adult.

He chuckled. "Well, you don't have to answer, but I'm gonna ask you anyway." Wrong answer, Jacko.   Every time some middle-aged dude walks in and starts off by announcing he has a weird question, it's going to get really, really stupid. I hate my age group. They're too old to act like frat-boy douchebags in public, but they do it anyway. Guys my age are always the ones wanting to know if we'll do tattoos on penises. And they use words like 'junk' or worse, 'weiner', and they can barely contain their mirth when they do it. I don't know if they don't get enough attention at home, or what. I can't say that I blame whoever is there for avoiding them. I silently debated telling him to just leave, but, against my better judgment, I looked at him wearily and waited to hear his word-vomit.

"So, I want a tattoo but I don't want ink on my skin," he said, rubbing his forearm.

I took a second to process that and still made no sense of it. "What?" I asked, with my best Sunday-night scowl.

"Can you do tattoos without any ink? Like, is that actually possible?"

I think the face I was making must have been something like this because I was at once trying to process what the hell he wanted, and why the hell he'd want it. Sure, you can tattoo with water to mark out a stencil so you don't wipe the whole damn thing off, or mark little areas so you know where shading goes, but I've never had anyone come in and ask for an invisible tattoo. He was wrong, it was not a weird question, it was a fucking stupid one, and it was only going to get stupider.

I didn't feel like explaining bloodlining to him. I don't like to explain the mechanics of tattooing to jackasses, so I just said, "Yeah, it can be done."

"So, like, you can go in there and do the tattoo with no ink, and then there's nothing left there but the redness?"

"When it heals, there won't be anything," I told him.

"Oh, yeah, that's fine, that's what I want. But it can be done, then, so that is humanly possible," he said, resting his forearms on the counter and leaning a little too far into my personal space. Apparently I had piqued his interest by answering his questions when I should have just poked him in the eye with a pencil.

"You're gonna have to pay for it," I said quickly. I suddenly realized that I ought to head off the idea that invisible tattoos might be free tattoos, before he had a chance to ask.

"Oh, I know," he said, "I figured that, I just kinda wanna do this."

When someone asks a stupid question, they can't just be content with the answer. They always have to continue on and let me know exactly how big a douche they are. It's like they're indirectly begging for a severe beating, right this minute, in hopes that the cycle of douche will be broken. He did not disappoint.

"I want to see how it feels, you know, but I don't actually want to HAVE a tattoo, ya know? I've been thinking about doing it for a long time, you know, but not anything permanent. I really don't want the tattoo. I just wanna experience it." So there it is. This khaki-clad cunt had the balls to walk into a tattoo shop and announce that he never, ever wants a tattoo yet he still would like service. He's too chickenshit to commit to a tattoo but he still wants "the experience". He wants to come in, strip off his shirt, thump his chest like a man, feel the pain and then walk out with absolutely nothing to show for it. Then he can go back to all his golf buddies and brag about the time that he got tattooed, when he never actually got a tattoo. And he'll feel like the tough guy he never was and maybe the Cialis will actually work that night, hopefully he can get a glass of Pinot Grigio in the old lady at dinner.

I thought that I should suggest he hack up his arms with a razor blade or burn himself with a lighter if he wanted to feel the pain. Then I figured the dumb douche would land in the emergency room and he'd cry and tell everyone it was my fault. Khaki dummies like that always have some golf buddy that's a lawyer and the last thing I need is to be sued for aiding and abetting dumb douchery. So I just nodded at him, it wasn't worth the chest pains to get riled up. He got the answer to his stupid-ass question, and if I just kept my mouth shut, he'd be gone soon enough.

 We get people all the time who come in and want us to set everything up, put them in the chair and pretend to tattoo them while their idiot friend takes a photo. Then they can post it on Facebook with a caption like, "gettin sum ink!!!!" And all their douchey little friends can be like, "SICK BRO" and "tatts r sexxxxyyyyy ;)" And they're always some over-the-hill dorks who are cackling about 'it's just a joke, ya know?' Tattooing is how we feed our families, we don't appreciate some chickenshit yuppie dicksprains wasting our time and supplies for 'a joke'. I wish for every one of them to get fucked with a fencepost. If you don't want to actually be tattooed, you don't get to play dress-up in our place, on our time. Go get a stick-on from the pharmacy or the toy store. Get henna or one of those shit airbrush tattoos at the carnival. If you're too much of a twat to take the plunge, don't look at us to help you dip your toes in. We're not running a tattoo fantasy camp for dorks and dipshits. Pretending to get a tattoo makes as much sense as a vegan ordering a steak, taking a photo with it and saying, "I just want to experience being a carnivore wihtout actually ingesting any meat." You are or you aren't, you're in or you're out. If you're too scared or ashamed to have a tattoo, don't pretend to get one.

I understand, not everyone wants to be tattooed from head to toe and some people have jobs where they can't have visible tattoos and/or their parents/significant others are total stiffs. Well, guess what? You chose that lame job, your parents have a right to be stiffs while you're living under their roof and if you date or marry a stiff who won't let you do what you want with your body, it's your own damn fault. You are where you're at and we're not interested in helping you pretend you're somewhere else for five minutes. Get things set up where you can do whatever the hell you want with yourself and then come see us. I have tattoos because I didn't want to work in an office anyway and I was willing to make my mom cry and I was willing to scare off potential mates who think tattoos are 'low class'. I made choices based on a minimum of concern for the opinion of others. That was not always an easy place to be. I have to live with people looking at me like I'm a scumbag and thinking I'm going to steal stuff or bite somebody. People are gonna think whatever they want about me, it's out of my control, so I can't sweat it. Not giving a fuck is big mojo, as an old friend of mine would say. If someone is still giving a fuck, I'm not interested in helping them pretend for five minutes that they don't. To everyone who wants to 'experience it' without living it....Quit expecting us to let you lick the knife with which we spread the rock and the roll, it's clearly too spicy for you.