Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

65 The Tattooist
He must have been in his late sixties or so. He had a lot of
Charlie Wagner's work all over him. I started to watch him
going out of the lines and everything and I made the mistake of
letting him do a second one on me. He said, ''I'm not used to
this design" and this and that. So I let him do this skull and
crossbones on me. The motorcycle has been redone a couple of
times. When this was healing up it swelled up like I had an egg
under the skin. A while after that I went up again and he was
asking me if I wanted to buy any equipment because he had
something set up for a guy, couple of machines and this and
that, needle bars, and some flash-110 bucks. That was high
dollar to me back then. I was working for [a factory] at the time
then I left there and was working at a construction warehouse.
I said, "Nah" and kind of let it go at that. When I seen how
crummy these were coming along, I went back up there and
said, "Can you just sell me part of it, I don't want to buy the
whole thing. I just want to do a little work on myself:' So he
gave me one machine and a little toy train transformer, a
couple of old brass tubes, some brass needle bars, a couple of
packets of needles. That was 45 bucks.
Personal contact with a tattooist is, therefore, a key step in the
process of becoming a tattooist. Personal contact provides knowledge
of the financial and creative opportunities offered by tattooing,
a source of information about the technical aspects of the
tattoo process, and a source of the basic equipment needed to create
a tattoo (cf. Boles and Garbin, 1974).3 In some cases the tattooist
acts directly as a recruiting agent.
(My friend) was much into pursuing the Japanese form as a
style for himself. Of course I presented him with a rather rare
opportunity for someone who hadn't been tattooing for more
than a year to get into a large scale tattoo. Little did I know
that I gave him much too much play. I had faith in his creative
and artistic ability but, after having been in the tattoo
business now for five years, I realize now that it takes two,
three, even four years before even a skilled draftsman becomes
skilled at tattooing. The transition from the traditional forms
to tattooing is a considerable transition not only emotionally