I was driving home in my beat-to-shit old ’74 Ford LTD, known to my friends as the mighty Scrap Iron. I was taking long back roads because the car had developed a nasty shimmy in the front end at high speed, and taking her on the freeway scared the bejesus out of me. On the side of the road I noticed a guy hitchhiking. Odd place to try to thumb a ride, there was seldom ever much traffic on this particular stretch of road that ran through mainly pasture land. The guy was in his mid-twenties, had long hair, a ratty beard, shabby clothes and looked like a dangerous ex-con with an old Army duffle bag that could potentially contain the dismembered head of the last person to give him a ride.
He tossed his bag in the back seat amongst my fast food wrappers and empties. I asked him where he was heading, and it turned out that he lived just a mile or two from my place. Jeez, I can’t even recall his name. Kurt? Maybe Brad?
“Wanna’ smoke a joint?” Kurt, maybe Brad, asked. Oh yes, yes sir I did.
We fired one up and drove along in my old clunker talking about music, chicks, cars, motorcycles and whatnot, sucking in the sweet smoke and enjoying the 450 air conditioning (you know, four wheels and fifty miles-per-hour). Eventually the conversation rolled around to art. I told him how much I liked the black-and-white tattoos he had all over his forearms. At the time I guess I was just too naïve, or stupid, or stoned, but it didn’t really dawn on me that they were quite obviously prison tattoos.
“Hey man, I did most of ‘em myself; I’m a tattoo artist.”
“No shit?! I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for a while. Do you have your own equipment and a shop and stuff?”
“Naw, no shop, but I do have my own tattoo equipment. Hey man, if you wanna’ swing by my place, I could pick up my Tattoo Kit and give you a righteous tattoo,” Kurt, maybe Brad, said.
“Yeah?” I asked, “what’ll it cost me?”
“Well, you got any beer? I ain’t allowed to have alcohol where I’m stayin’, and I could sure use a few brews. You fix me up with some beers and I’ll tattoo you.”
I had about ten bucks in my pocket, but that was more than enough for a couple o’ three six-packs of Schaffers, one of the cheapest, nastiest, foul-tasting beers on the market. Maybe it was Carling’s Black Label. Do they still make that shit? I zipped into a Zippy Mart and bought three six packs of the cheapest. I had my trusty fake ID at the ready, but didn’t need it. The clerk looked too bored to even care if I was eighteen or eight. My passenger had a beer open and half-downed before I even started the car.
We picked up his equipment. Although he really wanted a TicTac or something, he mooched a cigarette before going in to hide the beer smell on his breath. I was never sure if it was a girlfriend that wouldn’t allow him to drink, or if he was staying in some sort of halfway house for recently paroled cons. He carried a beat-up old primer-gray tool box with the words “Tattoo Kit” handpainted on the side in dingy red paint above a sloppy cartoon skull.
We drove the two-or-three odd miles back to my house. I drank one of the beers, he killed two. Nobody else was home, so we sat in the livingroom and shot the shit as we drank still more beers.
I had a look at Kurt, maybe Brad’s, Tattoo Kit; it was a plug in transformer from a model train connected to a handpiece made out of a tiny model car motor duct-taped onto a Bic Pen housing. A piece of bent coat hanger wire with a sewing needle soldered onto it fit into a hole in a tiny wheel at the end of the motor; each time the motor would turn, the coat hanger wire and needle would plunge in and out of the Bic pen housing. There were copious amounts of duct tape all over the whole assembly and splashes of decades-old colored inks. I had never seen a ‘real’ tattoo machine before, so this low-tech gadget, straight out of San Quentin, looked like a miracle ‘art’ machine to my glassy young eyes.
The design was a sword; specifically the sword birthmark on the neck of the warrior chick from the movie “Heavy Metal”. I had a back issue of “Heavy Metal” magazine that showed the aforementioned sword.
“Oh yeah, man, no prob…” a bleary-eyed Kurt, maybe Brad, slurred. The beers he’d slammed were beginning to show. I probably should’ve stopped him right there, but I was buzzing along nicely myself. We drank a couple more as he sketched the design on my right shoulder with a black pen. He broke off the rolling ball assembly from the pen and dipped the tattoo needle into the blob of black ink oozing out of the plastic tube.
Drunkenly swaying like a sapling in a stiff breeze, I frowned and said, “Hey man, aren’t you ‘sposed to be using some kinda’ special tattoo ink? I’m pretty sure there’s a special tattoo ink…”
“Naw, man, any ink will do. It’s all the same stuff, right? The people who make tattoo ink just want to charge more ‘cause it says ‘tattoo ink’ on the bottle.” Seemed like sound logic to me.
I dubiously looked at the sketch on my right shoulder. The sword blade leaned from the handle at a strange angle and the little doohickeys that stick out to protect the hand were different sizes. More drunken frowning.
As if reading my mind, Kurt, maybe Brad, laughed and said, “That’s just a guideline, man, just to give me the general shape to do. When it’s finished it’ll look a lot better.”
“I’m not so sure I shou…” I started, stopping to belch.
“C’mon, man, don’t be a pussy. I’m ready to start. It’ll be cool,” Kurt, maybe Brad, scowled, holding the buzzing, clicking tattoo machine up and carefully inspecting it, insuring that the needle was going out at the proper depth and speed. Or pretending to carefully scrutinize; he was much drunker than me, and I was…I was pretty damn drunk.
“Alrighty, let’s rock-n-roll.”
“OK! Fuckin’ A-right, man!” Kurt, maybe Brad, beamed, “Now this might hurt a little at first. Whatever you do, don’t flinch or move, you’ll fuck up the tattoo.” I nodded, grit my teeth and steeled myself for a hurting. And I got one.
“Ow, ow, owww! Fuck, man!” I hollered as the needle tore into my skin, sending drops of blood and ink flying. I didn’t flinch, even though it hurt like a sonofabitch. Kurt, maybe Brad, had an expression of utter surprise. He once again squinted at the tattoo machine, and a sudden look of “AH-HA!” crossed his face.
“Oops, sorry man. I din’ have it adjusted right. Hold on…” he fiddled with the train transformer and adjusted the handpiece. “This ought to fix it.”
I noticed the first bit of my new tattoo consisted of four or five big, black, copiously bleeding dots. It looked like someone had gently stabbed me a few times with a shish kabob skewer rolled in ashes. He re-dipped the needle in the ink and prepared to start again as I clenched my teeth and tightened my arm.
Whatever adjustments he had made seemed to have done the trick, as the needle gently purred across my skin with no more pain than a scratch from a kitten. I was comfortable enough to light up a cigarette as Kurt, maybe Brad, set to work. He stopped a few times to dip more ink on the needle. It seemed to take an hour, but in the time it took to smoke two cigarettes it was all done. He wiped my shoulder off with a wet paper towel and I got a good look at my first tattoo.
It was crooked, sloppy and much longer than I had wanted it. The lines were either way too thick and blob-y, or so thin and spider web-y that you could barely see them.
I was sixteen, or maybe just barely seventeen, drunk as a skunk and grinning from ear-to-ear.
I loved it.
