One afternoon a big bear of a fella came ambling in. Ruddy-faced and pockmarked, the smell of a rough night still clinging to his clothes, he approached the counter. "I want my tit pierced!" He bellowed. The piercer handed him the release form and he headed to the sofa in the waiting room. Lounging there were two lovely young ladies who were waiting for me to tattoo them. I cringed as he attempted to strike up a conversation in the most lounge lizard-esque of ways. "So, ya like tattoos? I got a lotta tattoos. You got any? Lemmie see...." I'm always wary to shield the young girls who come in here from that sort of thing. They're already nervous, coming into a place with a lot of big, goony guys with needles. They don't need to be shmoozed on by an even bigger, goonier guy, old enough to be their father and then some. The piercer hustled him away from the girls, and we shot each other a sympathetic look as the two of them headed back to the piercing room.
After the piercing was complete, this guy started asking something about some existing tattoo work he wanted finished. The piercer called out to me and I came in to have a look. The guy was sprawled out on the table, sleeveless denim shirt open clear to his navel. His rotund belly eclipsed whatever he was indicating on his chest, so I stepped around for a better look. There was one of the most gawdawful eagle tattoos I have ever seen in the center of his chest. I wish I could add photos of some of the tattoos I see to this blog, to make the horrors all the more real. But as much of a snarky asshole as I am, I really don't want to identify people on here with photos.
However, words are not going to do this thing the injustice it deserves. The whole thing was enormous, the guy had to be better than six feet tall and a good 300 pounds plus. The bristly expanse of his chest was a good three feet wide, and this disasterpiece covered nearly the whole thing. To imagine the linework on this thing, think of the line you make with a crayon. Now think of taking that same crayon and trying to color in an area about two and a half feet wide by a foot an a half tall. Now, you're not aiming for perfection, you're just trying to fill in this whole area in three minutes or so. That's what this thing looked like. Its sad, lopsided head more resembled an irate goose than a majestic bald eagle.
I peered at the center of the eagle's body and noticed the profile of a red devil's head on the guy's sternum. "That was supposed to be a cover up?" I asked. And I wasn't trying to be smart, I really couldn't tell if the guy had wanted the eagle to cover the devil, or if he meant to leave it there.
"Naw, it's a cover up," He replied, looking down at it. "He ain't done with it."
"You got that right," I said.
"So, I was wondering," He began, rubbing one of his thick fingertips over the back end of the eagle. I grimaced as the moon-shaped sliver of greasy black under his fingernail came dangerously close to his piercing, still fresh and glistening with a crimson bead of blood. "If you could fill in this part here, what that would cost me."
I took a breath to answer, but as my mouth opened to speak, he cut me off with one of the most insulting things I have ever heard in all my time in this business. "That shouldn't take ya too long, maybe about three or four hours' work, that's about what, twenty, forty bucks, right?" My eyes went wide and I think I might have made a small choking noise in the back of my throat. The piercer looked at me with total astonishment. Before I could even climb over my own shock, he continued, and this was definitely on my list of the top five most offensive things anyone has ever said to me in regards to tattooing. "IF your work suits my fancy," he drawled, (go back and read my description of what he had on him if you don't see why I'd be appalled) "I'll let you (LET ME!) put "God Bless America" underneath it."
I got my bearings and said, "Well, first of all, we have a sixty dollar shop minimum." Now, I was going to go on from there, but there was clearly no need.
"SIXTY?" He roared. "What are you, nuts?"
"No, sir, far from it."
He jabbed at his chest. "My boy did this whole thing for a hundred dollars!"
"Where?"
"At his kitchen table. But he got into some trouble and he went to the can, so he won't be doing any more work on me for a while."
"Well," I proceeded cautiously, "I can't compete with that at all. And, to be honest, I couldn't tattoo that shitty if I tried." As soon as I said it, I felt a twinge of regret. People just have no idea. They think because a tattoo is big, it must be good. They don't care if it's garbage, all they care about is that it's huge, therefore badass, therefore a good tattoo. I have to very gently break people of that idea, to warm them up to the idea that they have a humungous piece of donkey crap on their bodies, that all this time their friends have been laughing behind their backs about it. It's not easy for people to swallow, and I make it clear that I'm here to help. I'm like a sick sort of disaster relief worker after I cause the hurricane that disrupts things. However, the very idea of someone barelling in, telling me that the locally accepted pricing system was total shit and I should hammer away for peanuts really galled me. So much that my interest in being polite was completely dashed. One does not go to a restaurant, plumber or doctor and dictate what they think the prices ought to be, and we are no exception.
He leered at me, and lurched his weight off the piercing table, the heavy steel base creaking beneath him. "Y'all are crazy," he muttered, and brushed past me, buttoning up his shirt. The piercer scuttled after him to he front counter to ring up the piercing.
"Thirty dollars?" He bellowed again. "I coulda got this for ten over at __________!" Which, to be fair, is a load of crap, because we know those guys and they don't do anything that cheap. The piercer had a look of utter resignation, taking the money and wearily shoving it into a pocket. The big galoot went out the door, carrying on about what a crazy-ass rip-off we were, and a bunch of con men, et cetera. We could hear his baritone blather fading as he headed down the street.
I got the girls back to my chair and they immediately launched into a tirade about what a "Creeper" that guy was. Yes, he was, indeed, ladies. And thank goodness that we are too pricey for some peoples' tastes. What we do clearly isn't for everyone, and people who think it's acceptable to pay a hundred bucks to get butchered at the kitchen table by an ex-con with a home made rig, well....As Lyle Tuttle once famously said, "Tattoos aren't meant for everyone, and they're too God damn good for some people."
