I got my first tattoo when I was 18 years old. For a lot of folks, that's become a kind of rite of passage, and it way as well be, but keep in mind that in 1991 tattoos weren't exactly as cool as they are nowadays.
Then again, most of the time when people get a tattoo, they go to, like, you know, a tattoo parlor.
My good pal Kiersten Alder (then, Bergquist) had a roommate. Two actually. One named Samara (I think I spelled that right) who I had a minor crush on, and Naomi. (Side note: In my diction, "minor crush" means I really liked her but I was too chickenshit to do anything about it. I had a lot of minor crushes on girls in college. I'm sure that'll come up later.) Anyway, Naomi had recently taken to doing tattoos. Nothing too big, mind you, just little tribal designs on her toes and stuff like that, and by God, I wanted in too. So the next time I'm over at Kiersten's house for a party, Naomi and I hatch a plan to give me some ink. Turns out Naomi wasn't exactly working with your standard 20th Century toolkit here, so she busted out a sewing needle, a spool of thread, and a bottle of India ink. She wrapped the thread just above the point of the needle, and it served the purpose of absorbing the ink and keeping a steady stream of it going down to the point of the needle. This, it turns out, was her ink gun.
I wanted to get a tattoo of a yin yang. I know it has a lot of meanings, but I had my own garden-variety definition that I hatched based on a little snippet of wisdom I took from an episode of Beavis and Butthead. I wish I could find a copy of it to post here, and if I ever find it I'll edit it in, but the scene goes like this:
Beavis gets pissed off that a video sucks, and he's getting pretty amped about it. Butthead intervenes and says something like, "We need the videos that suck so that we can have a standard by which we know that the videos that rule, actually do, indeed rule." In my translation that means that we should be thankful for the bad days, because they make the good days just that much better.
So again, back to the tattoo. Turns out that Naomi, more specifically her hand and wrist, are her tattoo "gun." I took my shirt off (My 1992 Lollapallooza shirt. I remember that vividly because I was twisting it as hard as I could in my hands while she was stabbing me with the needle and the silkscreening pretty much just crumbled right off.) and she started perforating my chest. Directly above my left nip. As fortune would have it, I saved the tissue that I used to dab the blood. Interesting trivia note: It's the exact size of a Carmex container.
My good pal Kiersten Alder (then, Bergquist) had a roommate. Two actually. One named Samara (I think I spelled that right) who I had a minor crush on, and Naomi. (Side note: In my diction, "minor crush" means I really liked her but I was too chickenshit to do anything about it. I had a lot of minor crushes on girls in college. I'm sure that'll come up later.) Anyway, Naomi had recently taken to doing tattoos. Nothing too big, mind you, just little tribal designs on her toes and stuff like that, and by God, I wanted in too. So the next time I'm over at Kiersten's house for a party, Naomi and I hatch a plan to give me some ink. Turns out Naomi wasn't exactly working with your standard 20th Century toolkit here, so she busted out a sewing needle, a spool of thread, and a bottle of India ink. She wrapped the thread just above the point of the needle, and it served the purpose of absorbing the ink and keeping a steady stream of it going down to the point of the needle. This, it turns out, was her ink gun.
I wanted to get a tattoo of a yin yang. I know it has a lot of meanings, but I had my own garden-variety definition that I hatched based on a little snippet of wisdom I took from an episode of Beavis and Butthead. I wish I could find a copy of it to post here, and if I ever find it I'll edit it in, but the scene goes like this:
Beavis gets pissed off that a video sucks, and he's getting pretty amped about it. Butthead intervenes and says something like, "We need the videos that suck so that we can have a standard by which we know that the videos that rule, actually do, indeed rule." In my translation that means that we should be thankful for the bad days, because they make the good days just that much better.
So again, back to the tattoo. Turns out that Naomi, more specifically her hand and wrist, are her tattoo "gun." I took my shirt off (My 1992 Lollapallooza shirt. I remember that vividly because I was twisting it as hard as I could in my hands while she was stabbing me with the needle and the silkscreening pretty much just crumbled right off.) and she started perforating my chest. Directly above my left nip. As fortune would have it, I saved the tissue that I used to dab the blood. Interesting trivia note: It's the exact size of a Carmex container.
Nice, huh?
It was at least five years until I was able to let my mom know I got this. I might have fancied myself a little bit punk rock, but I was still afraid of my mom.
Twenty one years later, I've got a lot more ink than this, but this still remains one of my favorites. Lots of folks have suggested I go to a pro and get it patched up, but that, to me, would defeat the purpose. My tattoos are a scrapbook in ink, and this is maybe the best way I can think of to remember that when I was 18, I was the guy that let a girl tattoo him at a party with a bootleg tattoo kit, even by prison gang standards. I may grow up to be old and boring, but hopefully this will help me remember the less old and the less boring times.
