Customizing the Body (PDF file) - Print My Tattoo

71 The Tattooist
did. I had these tattoos and I was looking for something to do
for a Hving when my marriage broke up. I was turned onto a
man in Florida namedS-- who agreed to teach me. What it
was was that I Hved in his house for three years and I had to
complete 6800 hours of time in the shop. It started out that he
gave me a panful of dirty tubes and a Q-tip and he said, "You
clean 100 of these and then tell me if you still want to tattoo," I
got that done and I said, "OK what's next? Let's go." So after
three years I was doing pretty good and I went back to my
hometown and opened up a business. Every night I would
think, "Am I doing the right thing?" I really was because there
was nothing else in my Hfe. I had done a lot of things with the
pubHc. I love people. So I have no fear of working on another
human. Some people have the fear of close contact with other
people. I don't. Actually I apprenticed with S-- in Florida for
2 years. I started out shaving people. That was it. That was my
main job. We went to Bike Week in Daytona and that was my
first chance to really draw stencils-it was hectograph at the
time-and start out doing the basic things. I couldn't have
asked for a better man to train me. S-- is a very hard man to
work for. He'd get me out of bed at 2 o'clock in the morning
and he would make me sit there on this Httle stool next to him
while he shaded. All he did was the shade work. His wife did
all the Hning. I'd sit there some nights and he would make me
so mad I'd want to cry. But it made me a better person because
he wouldn't just skip over something. He'd get it out and say
this is the way you do it. He had four women apprenticing with
him at the time and I completed 1600 hours in 9 months
because I elected to work 7 days a week 12 hours a day to get
everything I could because I wanted to get back home. I wanted
to prove a pOint. When I left I had nothing and I wanted to go
back and show I could do it.
The other two common means of acquiring tattooing skill
through personal interaction with an estabHshed tattooist are less
formal. The novice maybe hired by the tattooist to do basicjanitorial
and shop maintenance work in return for occasional tattooing instruction
or the initiate may simply be allowed to "hang out" in the
studio, picking up basic knowledge by observing the tattooist. 6