Recollections and And Ounce of Prevention

Reminiscing about tattoos, tattooing and getting tattooed brings to mind a lot of different things for me. I have a huge flash of memories and emotions when I think back. Here's some "Stream of Consciousness" recollections of mine. Comment back with your own.

Drawing on myself with old felt tip pens. Those things had this really vinegar tinged, weird smell and the way the felt running across your half dirty kid skin after they had started to dry out and the tip was turning into like a miniature cotton ball afro on the end was electric. It tickled and kinda scratched at the same time. I remember using Crayola markers. Those things got all over everything. In kindergarten I got sent home for drawing all over my hands and arms with a poster marker. I believe it was blue and it soaked into my skin like crazy. I did these crazy twisty designs that were like tribal mixed with that decorative henna stuff. Or like the background on an old psychedelic rock poster. The teacher freaked most heavily because the decorations on the top of my hands looked like swastikas. I was 5 years old and it was the late 70's, I had no idea about tattooing, tribal, henna or swastikas. I just needed to decorate myself. I remember sitting with a needle and a bottle of stolen India Ink trying to poke tattoos into my legs a few years later. Also cutting designs into my skin with razors and rubbing ink over the cuttings. These rudimentary tattoos would stay for a week or two, sometimes a couple months before they faded to nothing. A few still remain. I got sent to the office constantly in Junior High School. 7th and 8th grade for drawing fake tattoos on other students. It wasn't a problem until it was on the female students breasts. I used a black Sharpie to draw on the outlines, usually roses or other flowers, sometimes hearts and banners, keys and bats. I would then color the designs with watercolor markers and would use a bit of powder from one of the girls' makeup kits in her purse. We also tried to set a few of the tattoos with Aqua Net. Back then, every self respecting hair metal chick had a large pink can in her enormous white denim, fringed purse. Hell, I had a can in my locker for my blow dried and feathered mullet. A year or two later we graduated to punk rock and machines we fashioned from a Stomper Truck rotary motor, a toothbrush, a hollowed out bic pen and a guitar string. We had a battery hook up and were mobile enough to tattoo in cars, bedroom floors, warehouses and on picnic tables in community parks. While Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat and The Misfits blared away on cheap boomboxes we tattooed girlfriends' names, anarchy signs, rat bones, peace signs and pentagrams all over each other. I remember the smell from the leather jackets, hair dye, dirt, model paint on skateboard grip tape, patchouli oil, Camel cigarettes and stale beer. I remember not cleaning the needle between tattoos because we were like blood brothers and would never be apart. I don't see any of those guys anymore and my disregard for health sickens me now but I was 14 and 15 years old and was... Well, I was a dumbass. I remember watching homeless, runaway punk rockers getting spiders and skulls and anarchy signs tattooed on the side of their crusty mohawked heads at a warehouse space in Dayton where one of the older guys I ran around with had a makeshift tattoo shop in his illegal living space in the warehouse. I remember breaking bottles in the parking lot there and rolling in the glass to try to "out punk" my buddies. I'm surprised I never got Hepatitis or something equally horrific. I remember walking into the first professional shops I had ever entered. They were dark and smokey and seedy and the people who worked there looked like they could kill you if they didn't like you. I remember tasting green soap during my apprenticeship just because it smelled so strong I had to taste it. I remember scrubbing tubes with no gloves on and breathing soldering flux while I made needles and watched out the front window of the shop while the hooker across the street get beat with a payphone receiver by her pimp and the tattoo on my head itched and the tattoo on my knee scabbed like hell and the outline on my back would welt up and itch like hell at random times and I'd itch it with the arm of the tattooed mannequin in the lobby. Then I'd smear more Neosporin all over the side of my head again.

Memories like these are bitter sweet. It was a great experience to have lived through on one hand but on the other hand, I put myself at such constant health risk and for what? To be worried forever about what harm I may have done? Thank the world for the spread of knowledge in the tattoo industry in recent years. I am grateful to have the knowledge I have today about cleanliness and prevention of disease. I only wish I knew it then. Artists, I hope you're always reviewing your processes to make certain you're doing the absolute best job you can to protect yourself and your customers and Collectors, please choose to educate yourself on the matters that can effect your health. Don't worry about what kind of machine or needles your artist is using. Don't worry about your artist's outside activities and what a neat job they have. Worry about whether or not they use a properly tested Autoclave and throw away needles and gloves and they aren't just some schmuck spreading disease tattooing out of a dirty garage with homemade gear and stuff stolen from tattoo shop trash cans. An ounce of prevention, as they say, is worth a pound of cures.

?Rev. Dr. Chad Wells
?http://www.wellstattoo.com