Sitting 7 - Background COMPLETE

Date: March 8, 2012
Tattooing Time: 4.5 hours
Breaks: 2 (25 minutes)
Total Tattooing Time: 26.5 hours

Right after we finished up the lower-spine (right above the crack in all of its unforgiving, spinal-column brutality), Rube gave me a smoke break while the crew dragged out a table to replace the chair I had been A.C. Slatering.  When I came back in, I dropped trou and laid on the table awaiting what I knew was the final work on the wind-bars and waves around my ass and all of it's next-door neighbors.

Just as soon as he starts shaving my ass-crack (after all, my lineage is Scots/Lebanese/Hungarian/Russian), a Sade record rolls over on the in-house stereo.

"OH, SHIT," Rube yells as he uses his elbow to hit the volume knob in his workstation.  "Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Sade on tour?"

Which he proceeded to do, at length, as I listened patiently.

After the following three minutes of silence, he looked at me in the mirror on the wall and said, "Fuck... this is gonna go on the blog, isn't it?"

Yeah, dude... this is my lede.


###

I've already said time and time again in this blog that my actual (butt) cheeks don't hurt very much when hit with the machine.  This day, however, Rube really got in there right in the crack to fill in all of the waves and background.

I don't quite care if you have a butterfly or a pair of lipstick-prints or your baby-daddy's name on your cheek, but when an artist is actually getting into your CRACK to make you look cohesive when you're standing upright...?  Well, that's a different sensation all together.  While the hand-mirror proves to me that he was quite far away from my trash-chute, I could have sworn at the time that his machine was on a direct mission to eradicate the hemorrhoids that I've been suffering in my advancing age.

Not fun in the least, but I jokingly thanked him that he had decided to do all the waves splashing out of my ass-crack so we wouldn't have to go back in there for color.

"Old trick of the trade," Rube joked.

It also occurred to me that - many years ago - Rube used a footswitch for his machine.  Now, no longer.  Obviously, I had to ask why.

He explained that the slight elevation of his foot was taking a major toll on his lower back and - if he could stop the machine expertly with his hand - why wouldn't he eliminate the pedal?

Unorthodox, perhaps... Or maybe just a man who knows his tools.  After all, I've seen my father do shit with a table-saw that yields beautiful results, despite risking life, limb and an OSHA lawsuit.

###

I can't possibly begin to explain how excited I am that the "background" is done.  No more black.  No more grey.  Well, that's the theory, anyway...

But the important part is that we now start with color.  Colors that neither of us have really discussed in much detail since I proposed this project, much less when we literally began it.

I worked as a graphic designer for many years (and this economy finds me back in that line of work).  I always hated the term "pop."  Clients or art-directors would always say, "Can you make it pop more?"

Well... my backpiece is about to do just that.  And I'm fucking amped.

Talk to you kids soon...

A Quickie

Once the bruising goes away, I'll get some proper pictures and write-up my last sitting... in the interim, I'll just be sitting down very, very carefully.

Here's a pic from the Kings Ave Instagram account.  Apparently, I am "infamous."

Vacation

(PS - bad filter on Marisa's camera... no way I'd let my ink get that rosy)

I'm back in the chair (AKA: on the table) on Thursday.  Sadly, I had to turn down a few open cancelations at the end of February because I was going to Puerto Rico for a well deserved vacation, but it feels good to go back to work on the back.

Heading to a tropical climate as a heavily tattooed man is never easy.  In all honesty, I feel a lot more compassion for my loving girlfriend who is both far more covered than me and - well, let's face it - a woman and, as a result, subject to a lot more scrutiny.  Regardless, you're gonna hear a lot of shit down by the pool, especially when you're both lying around in Speedos.

The winner, however, for our trip was a woman in her 80s who was shuffling about in a giant sun-hat and a bathing suit that perhaps should have covered a bit more of her thighs.  Regardless, I couldn't help but love her.

As I stood by the back-end of the pool smoking a cigarette while working on a book of Sunday NY Times crosswords, I heard a small but confident voice behind me...

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I want you to know: I think your tattoos are beautiful.  Did you do them all at once?"

I turned around to find a woman who has been collecting social security for almost as long as I've been alive, approaching the "scary" guy in a sarong down by the pool.

"Thank you very much, ma'am.  No, we've been working on my body for about a decade.  We're still not done just yet."

"Well, whoever is doing all this beautiful art is doing a great job at tying it all together.  I'm gonna go get a henna tattoo at the other pool and really freak out my friends in North Dakota once I get home."

Seriously?  I wanted to hug her.  But, that might have been creepy considering that I was wearing a very "compact" bathing suit.

She rocked.  Unlike many of my fellow hotel-guests who felt the need to speak to me for that three-day excursion...

1. "Sick ink, Bro!"
2. "Sweet tats!"
3. "How long did that take?"
4. "How much did that cost?"

All honest, but cliched questions.  I consider it my duty to help keep people informed, especially when they're not being judgmental. I'm more than happy to hear praise from a stranger when I'm displaying my pasty, half-Scottish body poolside in the Caribbean.  After all, I'm quite sure I asked a black person at one point in my pre-pubescence if I could touch their hair.

The winner for the weekend, however, was a man in a Desert Storm Vet cap and a very prominent gold tooth on his front, right bicuspid...

"Your tattoos are really nice, man.  I wish I could afford work like that, but I got kids."

"Well, I got a mortgage in Downtown Brooklyn - it's not too different."

Talk to you kids over the weekend.  We got another double on Thursday.  Wish me luck.

Sitting 6 - Ribs and Pork Butt

Date: February 3, 2012
Tattooing Time: 4 hours
Breaks: 1 (25 minutes)
Total Tattooing Time: 22 hours

As I mentioned in my last post, Sitting #6 was scheduled to be a double-session, which I was dreading like nobody's business.  I had far too many lingering memories of our first session - an utterly brutal gauntlet of outlining - so the notion of another six-hour sitting was not sitting well with me.  Fortunately, two things happened: the appointment (originally scheduled for the Massapequa shop) was switched to the Bowery location and... we only did four hours.

It was a crowded day in the shop.  Admittedly, I was 15 minutes late for my appointment and when I arrived, the machines were grinding away under the talented hands of Grez, Brian Paul and Sarah Schor.  After a brief review of how I was healing up (verdict: great, just a tiny bit of "fall-out" near my armpits), I was back on my right side as he dove right in on the left side of my rib-cage.

I've been having an easy go with the ribs - they've not nearly been the horror story that I've heard about from other tattoo collectors who have the "skank-flank," as it's affectionately been called ever since rib-pieces have seemed to surpass the "tramp stamp" in popularity.  In all honesty, I think the open layout of the Bowery location combined with a steady client flow also helps make the pain far more tolerable.  The chatter, the bullshitting and ball-breaking, the constant stream of goofy wisecracks from Grez... while I'd never recommend letting out a big belly laugh when you're under the needle, a steady stream of snickering definitely keeps the endorphins flowing.

And then we sat me up on a chair...

"I wanna hit this spot next," Rube said to me as I felt him tap the waves on my spine and sacrum and my brain went into a mild state of panic.  Not this shit again, I thought.  Things were going so smoothly.

The chairs in the shop are quite big and very comfortable... when you sit on them the "proper" way.  But when you have to rock an A.C. Slater, it's a different story.  I had to get my right leg in between the seat-back and the seat-back adjustment lever, which then torqued my left leg nice and good.  You can almost stop focusing on the pain of a shader in your sacrum when you're concerned about dislocating your own hip on a piece of furntiture... almost.

"You're hating me right now, aren't ya?" Rube asked.  I'm not your biggest fan right now, that's for sure.


I wasn't gonna tap out after just three hours, though, so we decided to take a brief break for "lunch" and, much to some people's surprise, I suggested that we crank out another hour before my girlfriend arrived. Rube went to the back to eat some chicken and rice and I... went outside to find a bar to spend 20 minutes steadying my nerves.

Now, this is New York City... you can find bars that open their doors at 7am if you know where to look.  This was 4pm on a Friday on the Bowery and yet the first three places I dashed to all had their doors shuttered up tight.  I cursed my decision to head north instead of south; why hadn't I listened to my initial instinct?  But, just as I was about to give up my quest for liquid comfort, I spotted a Chinese restaurant...

A cocktail at a Chinese restaurant can either go very well (semi-skilled bartender who makes extremely strong drinks) or very poorly (semi-skilled bartender who makes extremely weak drinks).  Fortunately, my good man was one of the former and - even though I had to interrupt him from shelling snap peas to make my second beverage - I was able to return to the shop in a subtle but delightful haze before Rube had even finished his meal.

The last hour was spent on my left hip and ass cheek - another area that I've heard is nightmarish, but I've had surprisingly few issues with it.  Well, at least the ass-tattooing part.  The healing is certainly less than pleasurable: I've bruised up quite a bit on my hip and wearing pants (or simply sitting to type this) has become... "problematic."

But in the words of my friend Chad, "No pain... no killer fucking backpiece."

This will probably be my last sitting for the month.  The little lady and I have booked a well-deserved Puerto Rican vacation at the end of the month and I need to be fully healed up before I go anywhere near the sun or the swimming pool.

That said, I'd like to give our fellow hotel guests fair warning: we may be a heavily tattooed couple, but we're intelligent, polite people... please don't stare and definitely don't touch.

*cricket chirps*

My apologies that it's been quiet around here lately but, hell, I haven't been getting tattooed since my last update.  That's just the way it works...

That said, I'll be back at the Bowery shop this coming Friday for another double-session -  something I swore I would never do again, if memory serves me correctly.  Can you say "six hour sitting," boys and girls?  I knew ya could.

(But, please, don't say it.  I cringe just thinking about it.)

Sitting 5 - All Ribs, No BBQ Sauce

Date: January 10, 2012
Tattooing Time: 2.5 hours
Total Tattooing Time: 17 hours

"You never heal well around your armpits," Rube said. "It's all that jumpin around you do."

(Ed. Note: I don't jump around. At all. Ever. I attribute it to the toxic waste that my body secrets from my armpits)

Today was my first day getting tattooed at the Bowery location of Kings Ave, which was great for a plethora of reasons: 1) It's an utterly gorgeous shop. 2) I've been staring at the artwork in Rube's "booth" in Massapequa for close to five years now, so the change of scenery was nice. 3) It's only two subway stops away from my house (and local bar) rather than a hour on the Long Island Railroad. 4) The always hilarious - and very talented - Grez holds it down on Bowery and I had missed his consistently ridiculous banter in the shop. 5) Did I mention that I didn't have to travel out to Massapequa?

It was a packed house at the shop for this sitting, despite Rube and Grez being the only tattooists working that day. A photographer had come in to shoot Rube while he worked (and hence, take a lot of photos of me lying in what I call my "Boticelli Pose"). My lovely lady, Marisa, had come by to keep me company and I even got a visit from my friends Ian and Jess (the latter whom you might know as the shop manager on NY Ink). All in all, a lot of chatter going on in the open-layout shop combined with the whir of the machines grinding away.

We started with filling in the clouds just underneath the dragons jaw in that lovely blue-black that Rube has conjured up. It's already making the dragon "pop" beautifully. If I haven't mentioned it before, I utterly hate it when the machine runs over my spine. I feel it in my whole body. I feel like an insect that's being tacked to a board as part of some entomological display. The pain radiates from asshole to eyelids and out to my fingernails. I suppose that's to be expected when you're banging tiny needles into the home base of your central nervous system...

We then moved on to fill in the wind bars on the right side, running from armpit down to my pelvic bone. Admittedly, I was mildly terrified about this enterprise (I've been told time and time again that the ribs are one of the most painful places to be tattooed). Well, not for nothing, but it was pretty smooth sailing. Outside of when he started drilling into my pelvic bone (which happened shortly after Marisa said, "notice how I haven't asked how you're doing?") the pain was entirely localized and manageable.

We managed to log another 30 minutes on the left side, too, filling in the wind bars over my left lat, which turned the sterile sheet on the table into a crime scene photograph worthy of a Manson Family slaying.

It may not be noticeable in these photos, but I've bruised up a little bit. I attribute this to the thinness of my skin (I'm fairly lean) rather than make any comment on Rube's touch. That said, I want that black to last and stay black, so I say, "Grind it in there, man!"

We haven't scheduled the next block of sittings just yet, so this blog may lie dormant for a little bit, outside of the occasional random musing. Considering that Marisa and I are trying to get away to the Caribbean in February, this might be for the best (wait at least three weeks before putting your fresh ink in a pool or the sun, kids!).

I'd also like to thank all of you for reading the blog and commenting. Looking at the traffic, I'm kind of amazed at how many of your are following along with the transformation of my body. Admittedly, I started this blog more as a time capsule for myself but, now that I have an audience, I'll be sure to chronicle the experience as diligently as I can.

Cheers!

Sitting 4

Date: January 2, 2012
Prep/Hand-Drawing/Stencil-Application: 0 hours
Breaks: 0
Tattooing: 2 hours
Total Tattooing Time To Date: 14.5 hours

Well, there's no real way to beat around the bush here... I arrived at Kings Ave with a hangover that must have escaped from an old Irish novel.

Originally, this sitting was supposed to be on Tuesday - giving me an extra day to recover from New Years Eve and the subsequent "brunch gauntlet" that I valiantly ran on Sunday.  Funerals happen, however, and we had to move my appointment back to Monday.

Fortunately, it was a short session today and - after stumbling into the shop and announcing my sorry state of affairs - we were able to get right to work on shading because we completed the outline at the previous sitting.  Wind-bars, clouds and waves are now complete on my upper back and we connected the right breast-plate over the shoulder and into the design of the back.

At the very least, the pain of tattooing helped me momentarily forget that my brain was swimming around in a bucket of poison and - while the nausea never really subsided - Rube and I were both amazed that I wasn't bleeding like a stuck pig.

If there's one lesson I can impart to you here, gentle readers it is this: DON'T SHOW UP HUNGOVER.

###

A friend and reader, Patrick Sullivan, asked me to discuss the healing process which I'd now like to touch upon...

Obviously, all of my previous work has been easy to care for; my chest and arms are easily accessible so cleaning off the lymph and applying Aquaphor was always a one-man operation.  A large portion of my back, however, is simply un-reachable which makes me very happy to have a wonderful, loving girlfriend who knows a thing or twelve about tattoo aftercare.  Quite honestly, I'm not sure how people care for their backpieces without a significant other or a very compassionate roommate (though, I suppose a rubber bowl scraper could be employed with a fair amount of success and some jockeying with a hand-mirror).

After the first sitting (and a few celebratory martinis afterwards), our bathroom became a scene from Oz. There I was: standing in the shower, whimpering with my hands against the wall as she stood behind me whispering "just relax, I'm almost done." As I watched the blood and lymph spiral down the drain, I made a (half-hearted) pledge that this would be my last tattoo and a (full-blown) promise to myself that I would never wind up in prison.

As could be expected, sleeping is really the hardest part of the healing process.  I'm an admittedly restless sleeper so rolling over in the middle of the night can/will jolt me out of a deep slumber numerous times over the course of the evening (I also despise sleeping on my stomach).  Not being able to sleep on my back, however, is a blessing as far as my girlfriend is concerned - my snoring has drastically decreased since we started the piece.

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My next sitting will be at the Bowery location of Kings Ave: a gorgeous, open-layout shop that I've visited but have never been tattooed in.  Should be interesting to have my bare-ass hanging out for everyone in the shop to see...