For the Love of the Pain

Freshy!

I am tattooed. Quite heavily, actually. Or, at least, heavier than most. I have a complete “sleeve” on each arm, a large piece on my outer left calf, an interesting piece between my shoulder blades, script around my collar line, and, most recently, a large Monarch butterfly on my left pectoral. I never intended to be the “tattooed guy”. As a kid, while I did like to write on myself (my mom used to tell me if I was supposed to do that my skin would be made of paper. I love “momisms”), I never envisioned myself as a guy with lots of tattoos. When I first moved to San Diego in 1996, I answered an ad for a blues band looking for a singer. I have been singing my whole life, and was itching to get back into a band, and learn the city by playing around in it. I had, at the time, two “quarter-sleeves”, basically a couple of good sized tattoos from the shoulder to the elbow on each arm. By chance, the guitar player for the band was a tattoo artist. Not only was he a tattoo artist, come to find out, he’s THE tattoo artist in San Diego. The rest as they say is history. We played music together for a few years, built a friendship forged by common values, common interest, and the bond of mutual creativity. It took about eight years to finish the arms.

I can’t speak for others, but I’m pretty sure anybody with a lot of tattoos will tell you that the more you get tattooed, the less it becomes about the tattoo. I firmly believe that everybody knows what their tattoo looks like. Anybody who doesn’t have a tattoo, has, in their minds eye, in their creative conscious, their first tattoo. Someone might comment on my ink, and I’ll ask if they have any. They’ll say “No.” but that is almost invariably followed by, “But I know what I’d get if I had one…” There's something about the first tattoo. It's alluring. It's dangerous, it's renegade...it's one of those things you wish you could do, but up to now, you haven't. The thing is, as you accumulate the work, it becomes much more about the experience of tattooing. It's about the idea, the creative process, the ritual of preparation, and then, ultimately, the needle. When I say the "Ritual of Preparation", I'm talking about the half hour or so leading up the actual tattooing. The artist prepares his work area; he’ll lay out his hermetically sealed needles, pick out a gun or two (this is the actual machine that drives the needle), He loads the chosen needle assemblies into the guns, securing them in place with the snap of a rubber band. He puts on his surgical gloves, and then sets up his little ink tubs. Small thimble sized plastic cups that the colored inks are put into to be used for the tat. As the individual getting tattooed, there is a sense of anticipation and heightened awareness. Yer adrenaline starts moving, you start to get a little “pre-game” pump going. In fact I get the same feeling I used to get right before a football game. This is intensified by the sound of the tattoo machine buzzing in short staccato bursts as the artist gets the needle set up. You settle into the chair, get comfortable, maybe a glass of water, and you set your mind to 'Endure'.

There is no way that anyone who has a tattoo can adequately explain what the pain sensation of a tattoo needle is really like. Fucking impossible. The sting of the needle is not like, I dunno, regular pain. It’s different. I can’t tell you how, but make no mistake, it is a different pain experience. Don’t get me wrong, it hurts. Some spots hurt more than others, and some spots hurt like a mutherfucker!

I am not sure how many times I’ve been “under the needle”, somewhere between 30-40 times is a fair estimate. More often than not I find myself asking myself what it is that keeps bringing me back…to the pain. This is something that happens over time, not a sudden realization. You keep going back. You love the sound of the gun. The smell of the anticeptic, the medieval look of the hand made needle assemblies. There is something very raw and primal about it. You anticipate the burn of the needle, you wait for any sudden change in sensation, and you most certainly know what it's like to feel and hear the motor slow down as the needle digs in. There’s nothing like the feeling of one long solid well burned-in line.

I love those. I call them "Hot Ones". A single strong stoke of the needle that covers seven or eight inches of flesh in the process. Your nostril’s flair, yer jaw sets, you smell the adrenaline in yer sinus, and you breathe deep and feel the endorphin rush kick in. This is reason number one for the purist. Endorphin means "endogenous morphine". They are, in chemical terms, polypeptides that are able to bind onto the neurotransmitters in the brain and provide relief from pain. They are one of several “morphine-like” chemicals that were discovered in the brain about thirty or so years ago. There are actually about twenty different endorphins that are released within the brain, all having different applications and uses, most of which are, as yet, undiscovered. The strongest of these, or at least the one that seems to have the greatest impact on the brain and the body, is Tyrosine. Its molecular structure is very close to that of morphine itself, hence the related effect and comparison. Let me tell you, in the midst of a serious tattoo session, those babies start firing in bunches. The sensation can be intense, pleasing, and downright sedating. The effect, unfortunately, is short lived, and after about twenty minutes it starts to recede, and yer left with a lot of inflamed, exposed, and hyper–sensitive nerve endings in the skin, that are still being subjected to the sting of the needle. This is where it gets serious, this is the part that separates the herd. As hard to believe as this might be, this is the other reason, I believe, that people come back. From this point on, it becomes a mindset. You focus yourself. You gut it out and endure on sheer will, fortitude, and strength of character. You would love to get up from the chair, but will not until the artist says it’s time. Until it is done. It requires putting yerself, mentally, on a whole different plain. And when it’s finished, there seems to be another rush. This one is a rush of relief, confidence, empowerment and satisfaction, and sometimes it's so intense that's it's down right enlightening, fucking life affirming...you know yer awake and alive!. And that is why you do it. That’s what you’re paying for. That's what you come back for. The actual tattoo, after a while, is just a by-product.

Serious