Oh, hey, look at this, only five months between posts, that's pretty good for me. I take that as a sign I have nothing to complain about. But then again, I'm always complaining. I'm just not taking the time to weave it into a hilarious anecdote for the interwebs to enjoy. I use the term 'enjoy' loosely. Anyway, things are going well, I'm keeping busy and I've been doing a lot of cool stuff lately. When I started apprenticing, the idea I had in my mind about my future career matches very, very closely to my current reality, and that makes me happy. Of course, as it is with any of the slimy tentacles of the service industry, close contact with humanity is part of the job, and that's the one spot from whence my rancor is spawned.
I was dicking around on the shop computer at the front desk when a dude walked in holding a to-go cup from some swillholle coffee chain. I asked if he needed help and he said he needed a couple of tattoos covered up. I asked him to show me what he had and he said, "Well, I got this swastika right here," and pulled down the neck of his shirt to show it to me.
Before I go any further, I want to clarify a few things. To begin, there are two kinds of white people who get swastika tattoos. The first kind is a white supremacist. That's pretty cut-and-dried. They walk in and ask for a swastika, and they look a little uncertain about it. They don't know if they're going to get high-fived, or if they're going to get their asses whipped. I actually don't hate this first kind nearly as much as I hate the second kind, because this first kind is at least up-front about hating people. The second kind of white person who gets a swastika tattoo is the dude who is trying to impress people by showing them how worldy and down with the Buddha he is. And when you gasp at his swastika tattoo, he can roll his eyes and cluck his tongue and say how IGNORANT you are, and how you don't know ANYTHING about Eastern religions, and that the swastika is an ancient symbol of peace and divine love and blahbitty blah blah. And once he feels he has thoroughly trounced your ignorant ass, he congratulates himself on being far above such narrow-minded, puny-worldview imbecilles like yourself. Simultaneously, he feels the warm glow of a twelve-year-old who has gotten a rise out of his parents by saying the F-word in front of them. And this is why I actually hate this second one more than the first one. This one is trying to show you how worldly and tolerant and loving he is by getting a tattoo, but then he's an uppity, rude, immature douche about it, and he gets off on getting a rise out of strangers. He totally hates people and does so by masquerading as someone who loves people. I'm pretty sure Buddha frowns on that.
The problem that your average white Buddha-man doesn't bother to ponder when he gets his "Eastern" swastika tattoo is that a lot of people don't care to hear his explanation. Yes, he is correct, the swastika has been around for a long-ass time, it's used in many of the world's religions and all that jazz. I know, I know, feel free not to forward me a thousand links about the roots of the swastika. I'm well aware of it, I admire the huge brass balls of Manwoman and his tireless quest to restore the true meaning of the swastika. However, for about 95% of the western world, swastika equals nazi, and nobody gives a flying fuck about your explanations of what the Hopi were doing with it five hundred years ago. That's just the way it is, sorry, kids, I think it sucks too, but good luck with that whole 'shattering the public's perception' thing. So I'm pretty sure that this white Buddha-man standing before me thought he was gonna wow some dreadlocked art-school chick with his stellar knowledge of Eastern religion. In reality, he got his shirt off, she got a load of that tattoo, she threw on her batik broomstick skirt and ran her unshaven self right the fuck out of his apartment. I'm pretty sure he realized very early on what a major cock-block a swastika tattoo is. It only works if you are Ed Norton in American History X and you are bouncing Fairuza Balk's head off the wall every night.
No, I'm not posting a link, look it up yourself.
So back to the shop. This guy pulls down the neck of his shirt and shows me this swastika tucked right in where his neck meets his shoulder, just above his collarbone. It's definitely the more Eastern-style swastika, so I imagine him sobbing in his bed alone with a boner after Dreadlilocks got scared and ran off. I take a breath, sweep that ridiculous image from my mind and get down to business. Before I can even start to discuss what I can do for him, he immediately launches into the longest, fastest, nuttiest rant I've heard in a long, long time. I couldn't repeat it verbatim if I tried because he went on for a good three minutes without taking a breath. My eyes slowly glazed over and my neck started to get all gummy just listening to him go on and on. I realized it would be best to just let him tire himself out, because I clearly wasn't going to get a word in edgewise.
"So, I was thinking, make it a cross, like a black cross, solid black, and make, like, some triangles coming out and have them all pointing in different directions from the cross and then the cross can be, like, on the ends, kind of, like, you know, like not a square but, like, kinda pointed but not like triangles or like you know, kinda like--" Total verbal diarrhea. I can't really tell you much more of what he said than that. When he wound down to the end, he finished up with, "But I would be open to any suggestions you have."
I waited a beat to make sure he was actually done talking, then I asked, "Are you sure?"
He scowled, and started to explain his cross idea again. I said, "Listen, you have a few things working against you here with this, a cross isn't going to be your best bet. Here's the problem you're gonna have with that..." I grabbed a sheet of paper and started to sketch. "So you have this swastika," I roughly hatched the shape of his tattoo on the paper, then quickly sketched a cross over it. "So, you see, it's gonna stick out here, here, and here--"
"Just make the middle bigger."
"Well, then you don't have a cross," I corrected him, fattening up the center of the cross I had drawn. "Now, you have a ball with four little feet on it, like a cartoon bug or something. And you can't fill in the background with blue or anything. The only thing that covers up black is more black. So if you're--"
"Do it on an angle, like, make the cross on an angle," He said impatiently, making a slashing motion across his tattoo with his finger. His scowl deepened, and I already saw where this was going. People want what they want and they don't care to hear about the reality of the matter. They assume that because they imagined it, it's actually going to work, and the tattoo artist is an incompetent asshole for suggesting otherwise.
"This is right at the base of your neck, see?" I indicate on the drawing where his chest ends and his neck begins. "If you have this cross sitting on an angle right there, now you have one of the arms of the cross creeping up onto your neck. I assume that's not what you're going for, so you're going to have to use something that's going to tuck up against the base of your neck. Now, what you have on you is basically a circle," I begin to sketch a circle in a new spot on the paper and he leans over to get a look. That scowl of his was etched in deep, like that of an old man who had been sneering at the neighborhood kids for decades. I wondered how someone who was no more than mid thirties could have developed an acid puss like that already. Clearly it was the result of constant practice.
"It's a square," he hisses. "Use it as a square!"
I straighten up and look him dead in the eyes, "How long have you been tattooing for?" I ask, making sure the edge in my voice is as sharp as a razor. He slumps back onto his heels, heaves a deep sigh and rolls his eyes to the ceiling. He stares up for a moment, either counting to ten or trying to whip up a snappy comeback, but he comes up empty. So I continue. "I've been doing this for fifteen years, all right? I'm not the secretary, I'm not the apprentice, I'm not the janitor. This is what I do all day long. If you want my help, I will help you, but you need to listen to what I'm trying to tell you so we can find something that works."
I return to the paper. "Now, the problem you're going to have here is--"
"You keep talking about problems, I wanna hear solutions!" He barks, in a spittle-flecked tone that let me know this conversation was over. Really? Empowering corporate-speak? I wanted to ask him if he had just come from seeing Tony Robbins, but I assumed that might go right over his head, and I hate to waste a good jab. I'm done at this point. I want to help people, but I'm done trying to wrestle them into submission beforehand. If you come in and ask for help, be ready to accept it. If you can't do that, go pound sand.
"I'll give you a solution if you'll shut up for a minute!" I reply, just as loudly. My retort causes him to physically take a step back. His scowl was replaced by wide-eyed shock.
"I--I've got cash money!" He spat.
"So?"
His mouth worked open and shut like a sock puppet, but no sound came out. Finally he started squeaking, "I--I--," and the scowl rolled over his face like a thunderhead. "You...you blew it!" He bellowed. "I'm ready to spend money and you--I'm out of here!"
Let me address that for a moment, if you will. I "blew it"? No, sir, quite to the contrary, YOU blew it. I was ready to be polite, to be helpful, to be thorough. I'm far from the best tattoo artist on Earth, but I try my damndest to get close. I love coverups. I love the challenge. I love helping someone get rid of something to which is attatched a bad memory, a bad person, embarrasment or peril of an ass-whipping. I love to see people feel comfortable with their skin again, to look at their faces when see what has become of their inky eyesore. I love to hear people say, "I can't believe it....you can't even see it....how did you do that?....that's amazing!" I live for coverups. You, Buddha-man, you blew it. You blew it because your ego wouldn't take a backseat to good advice for just a few minutes. You didn't want to hear from an expert that your amateur idea wan't going to work. You just wanted me to do my job on your terms, terrible outcome and waste of money be damned.
I would also like to add at this point what the rest of my day looked like. Before I even showed up to the shop that day, I was already booked with a portrait to do right at the beginning of the day, and then later in the day I was booked for a big side piece that was going to take me right through until close. Before I had even finished the portrait, I got a phone call from one of my customers asking to come in that afternoon. I tucked him right into the spot between my two appointments, leaving just a little room on either end to grab a sandwich and follow up on some big pieces I was drawing for the following week. As I was finishing up that portrait, someone else came in asking for me, and I booked him for the coming weekend. Right after I finished the portrait, and just before Buddha-man came in and stunk up the place, one of my regulars came in and I booked her for the next day. Let me also point out that this took place on a Tuesday. A TUESDAY. The no-man's land of the calendar. It's not the start of the week, it's not Hump Day, it's not Thirsty Thursday or the start of the weekend or the actual weekend or The Lord's Day or any fucking day. I can't get five minutes to take a pee on a Tuesday because I'm so busy, and the rest of my week is no different.
Therefore, throwing the "I have money" card means absolutely nothing to me. I have as much work as I can handle, and often more than a sane person should, because I will take walk-ins any time my chair is empty, forgoring lunch breaks or coffee breaks just so people don't have to wait around or come back later because I'm too tired. I'm not starving. I'm not desperate. I'm not heating cans of cat food over a candle and praying someone walks in. Like I said before, I'm far from the best tattooer on Earth. I wish I was, but I can name a hundred people who blow my doors off, and there are five hundred more I haven't heard of yet who will, too. But people seem to dig me and they dig my work. I'm really nice to them, despite the impression my crab-ass blog might give you. I work hard and I really, really want people to love what I do for them. I want to love what I do for them. I'm very lucky that I got a toehold on this thing and managed to be good enough at it that I can stay busy, even in this shit economy. However, since I am not sitting in the shop with holes in my shoes, an empty belly and bill collectors calling, I'm not particularly inclined to eat a platter of shit sandwiches simply because a prospective customer wants to put the screws to me. Not all of us will stand for being treated like shit because you're dallying with the idea of spending money in our place. Unless you're the first one in at the grand opening, you're not the first customer we've ever seen. Unless you're the last one in on the day the doors close for good, you're not the last one we'll ever see. Those of us who are in the very cushy spot in which I have found myself will gladly refuse your money if it comes with the caveat that you're going to be a raging cock-demon the whole time you're in our place of business. As my boss said later when I recounted the event, "Well, take your cash money and pound it in your ass." But I digress, back to Buddha-man's meltdown.
"Bye!" I called after him as he shoved the door open, hurling himself out into the parking lot in fantastically dramatic fashion. I thought he looked rather like the Heisman Trophy, with his coffee cup all clenched to his chest while giving the door the stiff-arm. I turned to look behind me and found that my co-workers were all out back smoking. No one had witnessed this whole debacle, save for a customer, shirtless and laughing as he enjoyed a brief respite from being tattooed.
"Did that just fucking happen?" I asked him incredulously, laughing while simultaneously feeling the anger-blood pounding in my ears.
"He had a swastika tattoo. What do you expect?"
Good question. I suppose were he and I to cross paths again, I might suggest to Buddha-man that he get smaller cups of coffee. Or switch to decaf, perhaps. Or tea, aren't buddhists supposed to drink a lot of tea? Either way, I see that peaceful eastern mysticism doesn't just descend on you because you got the tattoo.
