A Fish out of Ink

As a rule I tend to keep myself pretty quietly tucked away in my familiar corner of society. This is a polite way of saying that I don’t get out much. Sure I tend to traipse around in nature quite a bit seeing this, that and the other thing but it is not easily lost on anyone who looks at my photo albums that there just aren’t a whole lot of people in them. At least in part this is due to no small degree of anthropophobia on my part, not to mention the concern that taking pictures of people is sometimes likely to get one punched in one’s camera lens. The point is that my experiences in the company of other actual humans are almost frighteningly limited. I can count on my fingers the number of people I’ve spent more than few hours with in my entire life outside the context of work. My circle is very small and very homogeneous.

So it is with this context in mind that I look back on the events of last night. I found myself in the company of people for several hours with whom I shared… well, absolutely nothing. Save for the acts of respiration and other simple biology, it’s exceptionally hard for me to draw any common relationship between myself and the other people in the room. What’s surprising… well, not really surprising actually, but what struck me is that as I sat, quietly observing them, listening to their banter, I built up a fair amount of respect for them. Their values systems were completely different than mine. Hell, I got the impression that they didn’t even know what Monty Python was. What more blaring sign of affiliation with an alternate reality do you need than that? Despite their vastly different life context, they seemed intelligent (though not erudite), passionate (though not about anything that I particularly cared about) and amicable (though in that “I’m likely to insult you just out of playfulness rather than spite” sort of way).

At this point, the patient reader is no doubt asking exactly WHO this demographic is that I’m referring to. The impatient reader hasn’t made it this for. So to the patient reader I grant their reward. The group in question is that you will find if you make your way into any common purveyor of the tattooed arts. The cast of characters consisted of the shop leader, a 45-year-old gent who has been at the task of tattooing for almost 20 years closely followed by a posse of 20-somethings and lastly a young apprentice who was just beginning to learn the trade. There was a fairly clear pecking order and an almost communal feel about the place. I shall illustrate the cast of characters in some detail.

The lowest person in rank, the apprentice, was clearly stuck with the grunt work: cleaning up, autoclaving, filling out paperwork, etc. These non-artistic (and possibly non-paying) jobs seemed to fall exclusively to him. A small joke was exchanged that if he continued to do his job well he could very well be at it for life, but if he sucked badly enough he might actually get to tattoo someone some day. It’s unclear that there is any formal process for apprenticeship, but there did seem to be knowledge that there was a process of sorts and that it was clear he was at the bottom of it. Physically, the apprentice was the most unique of the group. Of course everyone present was heavily laden with artwork but in particular this gentleman sported a shaved head, decorated with a colorful design as well as a cake donut with pink icing tattooed around his navel. He used this bit of art in particular to scare away a group of cackling teenagers who had come into the shop apparently for the purposes of gawking.

Next in the ranks came a man of similar age who had at least passed out of the initial stages of apprenticeship. He was in the midst of giving his first tattoo, a large, red rose on his own leg. Apparently it is common, if not required, that a fledgling artist perform his first tattoo on his own person. When we quietly inquired of the owner about this practice he said simply, “you have to learn how hard to press down.” It is comforting to know that practitioners of this art do only to us what they would be willing to do on themselves first. More amazing to me, I suppose, is that this gentleman was able to accurately and protractedly use an electric needle on his own person with no apparent outward signs of stress. This indicates a fairly high degree of devotion to ones trade if not a super-human tolerance for pain.

The rest of the group, save for the lead in our story who I shall save for last, seemed fairly non-descript. It was unclear to me if these were other artists who simply didn’t have clients in at the time or just “friends of the band” as it were. In total the group varied from six to seven with a couple of people popping in and out from time to time. As I mentioned earlier, the whole group was wonderfully congenial but one always had the sense of being an “outsider” in someone else’s party. Perhaps in part this was exacerbated by the fact that Laura and I were the only people present in the shop who didn’t seem to have some affiliation with the shop or the people in it.

At any rate, I move lastly to Roger, who I presume to be the shop owner and the only one with an actual paying client that night. Roger’s a soft-spoken gentleman who quietly seems to hold sway over the rest of the shop. Because he is such a gentle character though, it’s difficult to ascertain exactly what his relationship is with the rest of the people working there. As cliché as it sounds, he has an almost fatherly aspect. While the rest of the shop is bantering about whatever it is that 20-ish guys banter about, he’s off somewhere quietly working away on something (or someone). It’s clear from his demeanor as well that he really, really likes doing this sort of thing. His professionalism and pride in his work is obvious yet without the egotism that sometimes comes with those qualities. What struck me most though was that after he’d really settled into his task he seemed to pass into a trance-like state of complete concentration. I’ve seen the expression many times passing by a programmer’s cube at work when they’re in the throes of some deep and gritty technical problem. The two are not unrelated, I suspect.

I would feel remiss if I didn’t take at least a short moment to comment on the art itself. Having some time to browse the common designs available and see no small amount of it actually on the people in the shop, I’m struck by the themes. For the most part, it seems to be expected that men should have tattoos depicting skulls and death and gushing blood and hearts stabbed by knives and similarly gruesome themes and I honestly just don’t understand why this is at all popular. I realize in some cultures it’s important to look “bad-ass” and to carry off an aspect of toughness but is that really the majority of the tattoo-buying crowd? If I were in the market for a tattoo then I’d imagine something by Hieronymus Bosch would be much more appealing and appropriate. Is society really so fascinated by death or is this just the tattoo shop’s polite way of suggesting that perhaps you bring in your own damn design rather than asking them to tattoo the same shit over and over? Or more likely are these designs the type of things that drunken last-minute decision-makers tend to like when they stumble into the shop impaired but with a mind to mark themselves for life? Who can say?

So all in all I would say the experience was a vastly broadening one. Considering that I’ve babbled on for 1400 words about it, it apparently made a fairly significant impression. The question that now bubbles to mind is how to continue this. I don’t mean tattoo shops specifically, I could stumble into plenty of those, but how does one in today’s society reach out and find new aspects of culture to explore without invading and inserting one’s self where otherwise unwanted?