Room 712, The Apache
January 18, 2007 | permalink
The Star and I were talking the other night while sitting in the waiting room at Inkstop for Jose to finish up with his previous appointment. She was asking me about my experiences getting tattooed, and dealing with tattoo artists. Not that I have a ton of experience, mind you- I only have a few tattoos. But that's more than she had, and she was feeling nervous about communicating what she wanted and second guessing herself regarding whether or not she had picked the right guy to do the work. I asked her if she had like Jose when she met him the first time to talk to him, and she said yes, immediately. I told her that she had made the right decision, then, and that if she hadn't felt that way she should wait. Then I told her this story about my dealings with an artist named Spider, who at the time was working at Bay City Tattoo, in Erie, PA, to distract her from being nervous.
A little backstory: I was in a fire when I was but a young lad, and was quite badly burned. My right leg is mostly one big scar, and my right side has a veritable constellation of large and small sccars. The unburned parts of my right leg (which consists of my upper and inner thigh) and all of my left leg are covered with skin graft scars, where they harvested skin to patch me up, as the fire completely consumed the upper layers of flesh in the aforementioned areas. (There was a time while I was in the hospital, after all the burned tissue had been removed, but before I was strong enough for the skin graft surgeries, when I could see my own muscles and tendons and bone- gruesome, eh?) The end result is that the lower half of me is a patchwork of scars, and I was terribly self-conscious and embarrassed about my appearance for a very, very long time.
About fifteen years later, while I was in college, I finally got to a good place with myself about this. To celebrate, and as a badge of my acceptance of myself, I decided that I wanted to get a tattoo on the outside of my right calf, firmly in the middle of the biggest section of scarring. (That's the end of the backstory. We can now rejoin the present day, and the story that I was telling The Star, who knew all of that, of course.)
I went into two places before I went to Bay City and met Spider. Once they saw the scar and what I wanted done, they were very reluctant to do the work. Apparently the structure of scar tissue makes tattooing difficult and the results unpredictable, as well as more prone to infection and other problems. One guy actually said to me that he didn't think I should have it done in that spot, but he would, if I insisted.
Their reluctance did not fill me with confidence, Gentle Readers, and rather than proceed with misgivings, I decided to wait and and find someone who was as enthusiastic about this as I was, and understood how important the symbolism was to me.
A couple of months later, I accompanied a friend to Bay City where she had an appointment of her own, to go down and talk to them and see what they had to say. While she was getting her tattoo, I started talking to Spider, a tattooed, leather-clad mountain of a man, about what I was looking to have done. I have this scar, I said, that I want to have a tattoo done on. He immediately rolled his eyes, a little, and I realized that he saw me as some soft college kid and thought I meant some pansy-assed little scar from a cut or the like that I was trying to cover it for cosmetic reasons, and wasn't at all getting that this was tantamount to a spiritual quest of self-acceptance for me. I was indignant, and instead of trying to explain any more, pulled up my pants leg to show him the scale of what I was talking about.
His eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. He came around the counter and pulled up a chair, and sat down to take a closer look. Then he asked me if he could call his buddy who was in the back to come out and have a look. I said that he could, and yelled back to John that he should come out and have a look at me. It was a bit strange- I'd been so self conscious for so long about my scars, and this guy was excited about them. It was like I was an instant celebrity, and Spider's attitude changed from one of veiled derision to total respect, all because of those same scars. Heady stuff.
John rolled out from the back room. Literally rolled. Like Spider, he was very much the stereo-typical tattooed biker, but unlike Spider he was missing one arm and one leg and was in a wheelchair, and like me was covered in burn scars. He was also excited about my scars, and they asked me what had happened to me. I told them the whole story of how I had come to be burned and why I wanted the tattoo there and why (and since they asked me, and so clearly thought that I was some kind of badass by virtue of the scars, I asked John what had happened to him- motorcycle crash, followed by coma), and I asked Spider about the concerns the other tattoo artists I had spoken to mentioned. He said, yes, there can be problems, but that he had lots of experience, at which point John began excitedly shoeing me some of the work that Spider had done on him and his scars.
I was totally sold. Spider's work was beautiful, and these guys completely got what I was after and why, and were totally into it to boot. When I asked about making an appointment to come back, Spider told me we could do it right then- he would ask his next appointment to wait. So we did it then and there. It turned out exactly as I wanted it, and to this day still stands as one of the best things I have ever done for myself.
By the time I was done with my story, it was The Star's turn under the gun. The desired effect was achieved, though, and instead of being overly nervous she was really excited to get started.
Posted in Family Matters & Musings & The PastI'm So Excited / I'm So Scared was the last entry.
Dreaming My Dreams With You is the next entry.
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This is a really great story. One of the best blog posts I've read in a while.
Thank you!