Angry Ink

Lucky Streak

I never cease to be appalled at the lack of hygeine practiced by the average citizen. The girl with calloused, gnarled, smelly feet who wants a dainty daisy on her toe....The dude whose front teeth have rotted out, leaving jagged black stumps, and he wants his tongue pierced. With gold, natch. Tonight, however, I was treated to a horrifying low in hygenic inattention.

A yuppie-ish group meandered in, slightly tipsy but otherwise well behaved. I was given the sole woman of the clutch, who was getting a small tattoo on her butt. She asked to use the washroom beforehand and I sent her back. Then I proceeded to wait for what seemed like and unusually long time. When she came back, I herded her back to my room where she dropped trou. "You're not going to get anything on my pants, are you?" she asked, pulling them down way further than was necessary.

"No, no, you're fine, they don't have to come down that far, really," I replied weakly as that big jelly ass flopped out and hung down the back of her legs. Unfortunately, she ignored me, and straddled over the chair so I could get to work.

I kid you not, the stench wafting from her ass crack made me gag. Oh, swell, she was back in the can burning a mule and now I have to hang out with her ass for the next five minutes, I thought grimly. Well, thank God it's a small design.

Every time I'd lean away to get more ink and then come close to work, the smell hit me like a haymaker. When I was done, I leaned back in relief and took a deep breath of non-ass air. She got up to look in the mirror and admired my work, and I quickly bandaged her up and got her out of the room. I grabbed the can of spray disinfectant and went to blast the chair. And there, where that bare, smelly ass crack of hers had squashed on my chair, was a two-inch long shit streak. And not just a little skid mark, either, this thing had a freakin' dorsal fin on it. If I hadn't been working on an empty stomach, I might have lost my lunch all over the floor.

Seriously, people. you brush your teeth before you go see the dentist. Wash your ass crack before you see your tattoo artist.

Gross Anatomy

The shop I apprenticed at was very small, there was only one piercer there, and one Saturday night, he got a bug up his ass and quit. I sat there, meekly tracing flash, trying to lay low as he and the bosses went back and forth with each other. After he had taken his things and gone, one of the bosses sighed, looked at me and said, "Well, ya wanna learn to pierce, too?"

I took him up on it. I figured that would make me a bit more viable in the industry, and it has. Escpecially considering the squeamishness or sissiness of most of the piercers I have encountered. They won't do this piercing, they can't do that piercing. Me, I'm a total scavenger. If someone wants to pay me for it, I'm doing it. "If I can grab it, I can stab it," I always say.

When I began to pierce, genital piercings weren't all that common, I did one here and one there. Now it's almost a daily occurrence. and I can say this about the vagina...I am scared to death of those things. Yeah, I know. They feel great, but they're terrifying to look at sometimes. I had never before examined one under such clinical surroundings. But when there you are, under glaring fluorescent lights, wearing rubber gloves and holding steel instruments, cleaning the genitals of a woman you find completely unattractive with or without panties, it's a whole different ballgame.

Guys tell me they wish they could do my job, and I assure them that they absolutely would not. It's not as if all the girls who come in and want their hoods and labia pierced are beautiful. I can think of two occasions in ten years where the girls were slender, drop-dead gorgeous and had a nice box. The rest of the time, the girl had either been horrifyingly obese, or had some condition/affliction/infestation that nearly made me launch my lunch right between her thighs.

The thing we all wonder about the shop is, why do the two-ton tessies always want it done? I assume it's so their boyfriends can wave a metal detector around their crotch and when he hears it beep, he knows he's close to the zone. But, man, what a nightmare to pierce. They squeeze into the chair, their hips completely filling the seat and spilling over the chair's arms. Then you tell them to spread their legs, and those thunder thighs barely part. You actually have to force them apart by pushing one roll up and over the top of her leg. You will never be prepared for the smell that comes out of there, I imagine that is what awaits when exhuming a body after a month or two. Then, with your free hand, you have to pry open that sweaty slit and try in vain to find the hood. Good luck with that. I could go on, but I'm wondering how quickly this entry is going to get yanked.

Anyway, the frighteningly fat aside, I have seen Vaginas Behaving Badly in all manners. A couple of times I've been treated to the sight of a tampon string hanging out. Ladies, really. You couldn't have waited a week?

Once as she was hiking down her panties, a young lady exclaimed (or explained?), "I just had a baby!" In my estimation, there were still some leftovers that needed to be taken care of. The ectoplasmic sludge that was seeping out, clinging to her bush and her inner thighs stretched, chewing gum-like, from her hole to her panties as she slid them down for a good five inches before it snapped and shot back up to whence it came. I had tears in my eyes from the gagging I was trying so hard to hide.

A cute, sweet little gal came in once, looking as nerdy and chaste as could be. I was kind of surprised she was getting her hood pierced. As soon as she dropped trou, I saw what real-life genital warts look like. I sent her on her way and proceeded to boil everything in the shop.

Women always ask, before we begin, if they can use the washroom. Good call. Make sure it's nice and clean before you force me to crawl in there. However, most of them go about it this way: take a big wad of toilet paper, get in there and scrub the hell out of it. Now, if there is one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you don't wipe a pussy like you wipe an ass. When you do, you end up with all kinds of little rolled-up bits of toilet paper everywhere in there. Nothing like a gal going in there to clean herself up, and coming out worse than before she went in. She drops her drawers and her bush is sprinkled with bits of paper, and then inside is even worse. One insightful piercer referred to this phenomenon as "clittie litter." Bravo.

Despite the fact that they are organs with strange powers to do amazingly disgusting things, vaginas can be pretty scary even when they're not doing anything. Some of my co-workers and I have been slowly compiling a list of descriptive names for the ugliest among them. If you feel I've missed a good one, let me know, I will be more than happy to add it.

Space Orchid (That one's mine, I'm pretty proud of it.)

Baloney Flower

Broken Balloon

Beef Curtains

Mudflaps

Goober Gully

Steak-Umms (you have to be over a certain age to get that one)

Roast Beef Sandwich

Octo-Pussy (that's not referring to the cool James Bond kind, either)

Penis Flytrap (as in, "Holy shit! That one had TEETH!")

Cold Grilled Cheese Sandwich. (imagine trying to pry open a cold grilled cheese sandwich. 'Nuff said.)

Now, that's not to leave the guys out of it. They come in still oozing from their last jerk-off session, as they assume the'll be out of commission for a while after getting their penis pierced. Seriously, dudes. I don't want to bear witness to your post-orgasmic tricklings. Get that damn thing to calm down before you come see me. Otherwise, I might be forced to introduce you to a Penis Flytrap.

It's A Tattoo Machine, Not A Magic Wand

She walked into the shop, all eyes upon her. We were riveted. And I don't mean that in a good way. She was clearly mid-to-late forties, her wavy black hair a matted mess. She wore black bicycle shorts which revealed her cellulite in high, spandex-gloss relief. Her legs were unshaven, VERY unshaven, and a pair of dirty, worn flip-flops proudly displayed her gnarled hammertoes, bunions and way-too long toenails. The piece-de-resistance of the ensemble was her white half-shirt, stained many times over, under which hung her jiggly, stretch-marked belly.

She wanted to cover a name on her ass. And lucky me, she singled me out because I looked "nice". I think my co-workers would beg to differ. She chose a decently sized vine with full, red roses. "I don't want nothin' tacky," she said, grinning, displaying a gaping hole where her front right incisor had once been.

"Nothing tacky, of course," I consented in astonishment, wondering how I could possibly assume she were less than a member of the upper eschelon going about dressed like that.

I got her back into my room and when she dropped trou, I was treated to the sight of what resembled a hefty bag full of cottage cheese. To make matters worse, the dimpled, dented skin was also striped with stretch marks that would make a tiger envious. I stared in horror at all that before I even began to look at the name to be covered, I was shaken free from the spell by the sound of her voice.

"Make me pretty, baby, make me look sexy," She cooed in a smoker's gravelly, low tone.

"Sure thing, mama," I said absent-mindedly, spraying her rocky-road ass with green soap. Sheesh, it's a tattoo machine, not a magic wand, I told myself glumly.

I got the stencil on and she squealed in delight when she turned away from me to look in the mirror, treating me to the full-onslaught of that deflated-balloon belly and her wild, untrimmed bush. Oh, for the love of God, I'm going to need years of therapy to get that image out of my head, I thought, my eyes fighting to close against the affront.

Well, I did the tattoo to the fullest of my abilities and she was delighted with the results. I'd have to say, considering the conditions I was working under (something akin to trying to paint a delicate watercolor on a hunk of broken concrete) it turned out quite nice. "Ohhh! Look! I'm so pretty! Look how sexy!" she declared, shaking her ass back and forth as she looked over her shoulder into the mirror. Oh, please, stop that, I thought. I don't want to have to replace the mirror....

Despite my protestations, she insisted on giving me a big hug after I bandaged her up and she put her bicycle shorts back on, not that that was any salvation. Glad to be rid of the name of her rotten Ex, she sashayed out the door, head held high, every inch of her exposed flesh jiggling joyfully. I had to hear about it from the rest of the crew all night about my new 'girlfriend', and I did my best to laugh it off. Even though I have to work under some horrifying conditions, when I make someone that happy, it makes me feel good, though I am loath to admit it. I kind of pride myself on being a crab-ass, so I can't get too chipper about that stuff. I'd rather crab about the gross stuff. It makes for much more interesting reading. I figured if anyone wanted uplifting stories, they wouldn't be here.

So, despite doing a good deed, I still want to gag when I think about that ass. 

The Gypsy Curse

When I was a little kid, my mom used to use the funny threat of selling me to the Gypsies if I didn't behave. I always imagined Gypsies as crystal ball-reading crones in headscarves and gold hoop earrings. I figured they hailed from some far-off European land and had most likely gone the way of Knights and Pageboys. When I got into the tattoo industry, I found out that they were thriving just fine, and quite populous in my own city.

A huffy young lady once snapped at me when I made a remark about Gypsies that the word was "racist" and they "prefer to be called Romanians". Well, I've tattooed "Gypsy Boy/Girl" and "Gypsy Power" on more than a few of them, so they're not too put off by the term, apparently. And I've found that while there are plenty of Gypsies in Romania, they're also plentiful in England, Ireland, France, Belgium, Italy, Russia, et cetera, et cetera--Do they "prefer" to be called Romanians too, I wonder? But, I digress.

Anyway, I encountered the Gypsies very early on in my apprenticeship. They have a very odd, clandestine culture that seems most strange to the rest of us. One thing I am surprised about is the astonishing rate of illiteracy among them, it is almost absolute. Yet most of them carry driver's licenses, I'm really disconcerted about how that works. We are required to have our customers sign releases before they get tattooed or pierced, and the things I get back from the Gypsies are a stitch. I had a young girl sign her name as "Pizza John". A guy signed his as "Papa John". Either Gypsies love pizza, or 'John' is the only name any of them can spell. I had another girl, who had no I.D., tell me she was 23 years old as she tried to convince me to tattoo her. "What year were you born?" I asked.

"1965," she answered. Needless to say, she got the boot.

The interesting thing is, for a group of people who can't read, their tattoos are almost always words, names and "Love Mom" and such. When I was an apprentice, a young Gypsy came into the shop and said he wanted his girlfriend's name on his chest. Having the nicest handwriting in the place, I was delegated the responsibility of making the stencils for the bosses when lettering was involved. I grabbed a sheet of tracing paper and a pencil and asked him for her name.

"Suprina," He replied.

"Sabrina?" I asked.

"No, Suprina," he enunciated, in that odd Gypsy accent.

"How do you spell that?" I questioned, furrowing my brow as my hand sat poised over the paper.

He thought for a minute and then grinned. "I'm not sure."

"S-U-P-R-I-N-A?" I coaxed, as one of my bosses looked over my shoulder.

"No, S-A-P, I think," First Boss began, as the other boss got into it.

"Like "Sabrina" with a "P"," Other Boss interjected, dragging on a cigarette.

The Gypsy boy scratched his head in confusion. "I don't know..."

"Maybe there's a 'Y' in there?" I asked no one in particular, looking around at the three of them.

"Tell ya what, Bro," one of the bossmen said, handing Gypsy Boy the telephone. "Get her on the horn and you ask her how she spells it."

He made the call, it lasted less than a minute. After he hung up, he turned to us with a wide grin, part sheepish, part amused.

"She doesn't know, either," He announced.

The two bosses and I stared at each other in disbelief.

"S-U-P-R-I-N-A?" I asked flatly, ready to write again.

"Sure, fuck it," One of the bosses growled. "Not like either one of them'll know the fuckin' difference."

And so it was. We could have put "Pizza John" on there and he and old Suprina would have been as happy as pigs in shit, none the wiser. The best part about this particular posting? I won't get any hate mail from the Gypsies because they can't read this anyhow.

The Answers To The Questions I Already Know You're Going To Ask

No matter what, as soon as you get someone into your chair and set up to tattoo them, they are going to fire off the same list of questions. Now, they are perfectly valid questions, some that definitely shoud be asked by a person who is about to be tattooed. But, seriously, when you have to answer those same exact questions five to ten times a day or more, five days a week, for ten years, it wears on you. I've joked before with my co-workers that I am going to make a poster for tattooers and call it "The answers To The Questions I Already Know You're Going To Ask". And all it will be is a numbered list of answers, no questions. As soon as the person in the chair begins to ask, you simply point to the poster and they have all the answers there. If you're wondering how that list will go, here it is below. Anyone who's a tattooer will know which questions I'm answering. If you're not, or you are and all your customers are mutes or something,  I've listed the questions below the answers for your edification.

THE ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS I ALREADY KNOW YOU'RE GOING TO ASK

1. __________ years.

2. As soon as I could hold a pencil.

3. I bugged the hell out of everyone in the city until I found someone to teach me.

4. I did, but not for tattooing. There's really no such thing.

5. Beats digging ditches.

6. Oh, yeah.

7. That depends on what you consider 'weird'.

8. Six hours.

9. Hell no.

10. Sure, but it's a lot easier not to, I think.

11. Well, not in the womb, I think I got the idea more in my teenage years.

12. As of now, a toilet.

Well, for those of you who know what the questions were, hope you got a good laugh, feel free to print this out and post it in your section, send me five bucks or something. For those of you in the dark, read on.

1. How long have you been tattooing for? (In my case the blank would say 'ten' but you fill in your own time there, obviously.)

2. Were you always an artist? (Now, I happen to know for a fact that there are a lot of tattooers who really can't draw too well. But they manage fine in spite of themselves, being able to mimic a design off of flash. But no one wants to hear that, so I guess you're better off lying if you aren't a bona fide 'artist'.)

3. How'd you learn how to do this?

4. Did you go to school for this? (Now, question three and four are interchangeable, you either get asked one or the other. I guess people assume there is some sort of tattoo school you enroll in, or that art colleges teach tattooing. Although I suppose neither option is too far off these days...)

5. Do you like it? (Well, I don't hate it. But it is a job, it's a hard job and it takes a lot away from you. It burns you out, but it does have advantages, it's a decent living and much more interesting than driving a desk. Or digging ditches. But again, no one wants to hear that you work all night, all weekend, get burned out to the point of insanity, so I keep my answer to this one very simple.)

6. Is it harder than drawing on paper? (The paper moves, the paper bleeds, the paper vomits. 'Nuff said.)

7. Where's the weirdest place you ever put a tattoo? (I know they want to hear 'genitals'. And I, in my impish humor, refuse to give them that satisfaction. Besides, what I consider weird is based on infrequency of occurrence. I have tattooed infinitely more genitals than I have, say, behind the ear. So I would actually be more weirded out by tattooing behind the ear than on the genitals. It's like being a doctor in a weird way. You see enough of one body part, you really stop caring.)

8. What's the longest time you ever spent on a tattoo? (I used to complicate this one by asking, "Well, you mean at one time? Or how much overall?" This question they ask is always referring how much time, start-to-finish, in one sitting. I guess I should have left that blank for you to fill in, but now you know what my time is.)

9. Do you do your own tattoos? (Plenty of people can, and do, but not me.)

10. Yeah, but, could you? OR, Why not? (Becuase I'm a wuss about it, I hate to look at it when I'm getting tattooed. I hate to see my own blood, I'd rather lay back, squeeze my eyes shut, go to my happy place, and let it be done.)

11. Did you always want to be a tattoo artist?

12. What's the weirdest tattoo you ever did on anyone? (Always subject to change, of course.)

And there you have it. If I think of any more, I'll be sure to add them in, I pretty much have the list committed to memory at this point.

The Deaf And Their Genitals

We have a couple of floor walkers at the shop. Floor walkers, for those of you not in the know, are sort of the P.R. arm of a tattoo shop. They guide the customers around to specific designs, they answer the easy questions and handle the phones so the rest of us can tend to the bloodletting. They're a valuable asset to have in a busy shop so the artists can spend more time actually tattooing (or sleeping or reading or downloading porn). So, one of our floorwalkers is a rather excitable fella, he gets a little worked up over stuff and often his reaction to things is funnier than the actual situation. He gets a hard time from us on account of that, which is a little mean, but tattoo shops are kind of like a frat house. There is a lot of ball-busting and pranking going on, and if you want to be in the club, you had best be able to suck it up. But I'll get back to him in a minute.

We often recieve calls from deaf people who have questions about tattooing and piercing. The deaf can communicate by telephone using a TTY device, which is basically a keypad where they type in their questions. The call goes to an operator, who calls the intended destination and relays the questions by voice. The call-ee answers the questions, and the operator types the answers into his or her device, and the deaf caller gets their answers on their display.

So, last night, a busy Saturday, such a call came in and our easily-irked floorwalker happened to pick up. The burning questions were in regards to a Prince Albert piercing, we all know what that is by now. If you don't, it's one of the many types of penis piercings, you dope. Anyway, I've been designated, as my co-workers call me, the "cockmaster", as I have no qualms about such work. I am a scavenger, and if I get paid to do it, I will, creepy or not. It's a day at the office to me. So, as I was in the middle of a tattoo, the floor walker didn't wish to disturb me with a phone call, and he tried to handle the call himself. I knew nothing about it until he appeared at my door afterwards, flushed and agitated to recount the story.

"So, he starts asking me about it," the floorwalker told me. "He was asking what piercings I had and what I looked like, and how would he find me," he explained, the ruddiness in his face deepening. "And I told him he'd have to talk to you, and then he was asking if you were hot."

I started to laugh, as he pressed on, growing more and more agitiated. "And he was saying, no, he wanted to talk to me about it, and then he wanted to know if he could see my piercings, and if I was hot, and I said, 'You know what? This call is over.' And then I hung up on him."

I began to disinfect my counter as he stood in my doorway, shaking his head. "I just got prank-called by a deaf guy. That's how fucked up my life is." I completely lost it at that moment. I've gotten a lot of prank calls of many natures at work, but I can honestly say, none of them ever involved the time and effort of a TTY relay call. Now, that's impressive. That's proof positive how hard the disabled will work to overcome the obstacles and challenges put in their way to do the things we all take for granted...like prank-calling.

A Formal Ink-troduction

A tattoo artist's blog...this may not be the first and I certainly don't suspect it will be the last. So why? Well, I've put in a decade in the industry. Now, that's not a lot, when you consider there are still a lot of the old-timers from the 1960's and the 70's who are still going strong, failing eyesight and arthritis be damned. But, when you look at it in the volume of experiences and stories to tell, it seems like a lifetime. As the dear old man who apprenticed me used to say, in his gravelly, nicotine-stained voice, "More stories than the naked city." Rest in peace, boss. I miss ya and I love ya.

But I am always being asked questions. "What's the weirdest tattoo you ever did?" "What happens when people faint?" And the question I hate most of all, "Do you watch Miami Ink?" No, no, NO! And I'll tell you why. Well, there is the obvious reason that if I sit in a tattoo shop all day and night, do I really want to go home and sit on the couch watching the (phony and well-edited) goings on of another tattoo shop? Please, I'd rather gouge out my eardrums with a fourteen round. But mostly, I know for a fact that you're not getting the real story of what it's like when you watch one of those shows. First, there is the very slick editing and the censoring of the language. A tattoo shop without invectives and cursing is like a zoo with no animals. Second, there is a 'screening process' for that show. You have to submit your design, a bio, a PHOTO to test your camera-worthiness for God's sake, and the story of why you're getting the tattoo to see if it makes for good TV fodder. How charming. You know what makes for good TV? The bumbling idiot who has to call home to ask his wife how to spell her name before he gets it tattooed on his chest. A four-hundred pound woman who waddles in and wants her clitoral hood pierced, and the spelunking expedition that ensues to accomplish this. The pukers, the fainters, the psychopaths, THAT, my friends, is must-see TV.

So, in the spirit of kindness, and in my great disdain for the sanitized, polished verion of tattooing that the world has gotten numbed to thanks to television, I bring you the real story. I bring you the uncut verion, the raw truth, the stuff they'll never show you, what it's really like to view it from this side of the machine. Now, I want to make it clear that this is not to badmouth the industry. Tattooing has been very good to me in a lot of ways. I've had a good run, made some good friends, learned a lot about life and business and grew as an artist. I'm not attempting to smear anyone, or to make a mockery of the industry. But, as I found myself increasingly cornered in social situations, when the nature of my work came up, and pressed for details about what it's REALLY like, I began to realize I had to find a way to get the story told. The cable channels aren't knocking on my door to do a show, and I certainly hope they don't. I'd rather tell it with no interference, no censoring, no sanitizing.

All names will be changed to protect the innocent, however, out of respect. This isn't the place where I'm going to slaughter my co-workers, I'm merely reporting the stories as I see them with my cranky little eyes. And, if you think this is a how-to, or a place where I'm going to reveal trade secrets, no siree. I'm not going to help anyone to do my job. So, lifers, breathe a sigh of relief. Scratchers, piss off. Get a real apprenticeship like the rest of us did and quit trying to find new and exciting ways to fuck up your friends' flesh in your basement.

So, sit back, relax, and get ready for a lumpy, bumpy, bloody ride. Get ready to laugh a little, cringe a lot, and learn a thing or three. Get ready for some Angy Ink.