written by lou paradise
whenever i get my blood drawn, the nurse always clocks me turning my head away while they fasten the tourniquet and size up my veins. they’ll laugh at me and say something like, “you’re covered in tattoos and you’re afraid of this little needle?”
i usually tell them, “well when i get a tattoo, i leave with a tattoo.” there’s novelty, there’s evidence of alchemy. each one is a painful ceremony, however small––a funeral and a baptism in one. getting tattooed feels like that to me: heavy and intimate and ultimately mundane. like receiving a sacrament.
there’s novelty, there’s evidence of alchemy. each one is a painful ceremony, however small––a funeral and a baptism in one.
and it’s not the needle i’m afraid of anyway––but i don’t usually flesh this distinction out with my phlebotomist. the most i offer up is that tattoo pain is a different kind of pain.
i’m not loyal to one artist or style of work. i’ve got soft red handpoked calligraphy wrapping my wrist, a fine-line hand tattoo, thick filled lines up my forearm and a bold american traditional design down my leg. i’ve been tattooed in shops, cozy loft studios between williamsburg and east new york, a living room folding chair setup, at an art show, in my bed.
every artist’s touch is different. some are heavy-handed and getting their work feels like a punishment you asked for. and then there are some like the person who marked my knuckles with the word “pure” in old english lettering, who was so gentle i felt like i could’ve fallen asleep with her needle in me.
every artist’s touch is different. some are heavy-handed and getting their work feels like a punishment you asked for. and then there are some like the person who marked my knuckles with the word “pure” in old english lettering, who was so gentle i felt like i could’ve fallen asleep with her needle in me.
and this particular breadth of experiences getting tattooed in new york wouldn’t be possible any time before now. what was a rampant boys club has really shifted over the past few years, with easy access to self-promotion becoming ubiquitous through instagram.
where 10 years ago an unpaid apprenticeship at a traditional shop was by and large the only way to build up a clientele, instagram has become the much-needed loophole. the people the tattoo world disproportionately discriminates against, who can’t easily get a gig at a white male-dominated shop (which is still most of them) or just can’t swing a full-time unpaid apprenticeship, actually stand a chance at building a career without having to navigate those hostile spaces now. and that opening ripples out into the culture.
at the very least, i appreciate that i can save myself the energy of masking and guarding against weird prejudice by just booking with a vetted artist who won’t misgender me or make me feel extra for asking questions––no need to tolerate an inhospitable, haze-y vibe as part of the experience anymore. and at best, i get to share in the creation process and live into a more nuanced experience of alchemical pain. one that’s more complicated than just white-knuckling through.
…
i got my last tattoo pretty soon after finally getting top surgery.
post-op i was living in my body in a new way almost immediately. i’d stopped drinking for surgery, and even in the dim of thrice daily painkillers and residual anesthetics, a fog in me was lifting.
i was starting to make sense. and as i started to see myself, this incessant low-grade numbness i didn’t know i’d been living with was wearing off. getting my chest taken apart and re-fastened the way it looked when i was a kid reanimated me. i shed a stagnant, protective layer that had calcified in me, somewhere in the breast tissue, and i was suddenly lucid in a way i couldn’t have anticipated.
i shed a stagnant, protective layer that had calcified in me, somewhere in the breast tissue, and i was suddenly lucid in a way i couldn’t have anticipated.
…
the studio reminded me of this one sitting area at berghain, where morning light shines in through a stained glass window and dyes the floor a bleeding orange. i remembered smoking there the summer prior, drunk with the sunrise, and feeling like i was back at church as a kid, a church that wouldn’t avert its gaze from the dark in me.
it was this red vinyl curtain diffusing the sunlight in the studio that took me there. my artist set up his station far away across the loft while i sat on a leather couch behind the red and swiped through his flash on an ipad. he played german techno over the speakers and for awhile it was just us in this vast, echoing space, like a dreamscape.
he joined me on the couch and we talked through designs, settling on these delicate, thick filled scribbles up my arm. they’d blast over a handpoked name i wanted gone, another piece of my old life flaking away.
i stood at his table and he kneeled and shaved my forearm. when he placed the stencil and pulled his head away to examine, i looked down and asked him if he liked it. he smiled and looked up at me and said “yeah, i like it.” i walked over to the mirror on the wall to yell back to him that it was perfect.
while he prepped his supplies i told him all about my nascent bodywork practice, and how i’d watched this dumb french movie the night before, that it reminded me that i still really want to learn french.
he sat me down in a folding chair beside the table with the underside of my arm twisted and propped up to face him. when he held the needle to my wrist he said, “es-tu prêt?” and i laughed, and said yeah, and we went.