What The World Is Saying About Your Tattoo Designs

For some people there is much speculation as to why anyone would get tattooed. Some of that curiosity is due to a few religions, I won’t name them, but a few of them do believe that it is actually a sacrilegious act. Though I think even the most quiet of us would freely protest if someone accused us getting a piece of art solely for a sacrilegious reason, we do however all admit that getting a tattoo is sort of an outlaw thing to do still. Sure, you can deny that if you want, but in my already short lifetime, I’d have to fairly guess that 90% of the people I’ve watched get inked have been thumbing their nose at SOMEONES rule by doing so.

I’ve watched a grieving mother pay a couple thousand dollars to have a picture created by a professional FBI sketch artist turn her son who died so young into the man he would have been and tattoo that face on her back. Than again, I’ve also watched immature boys in men’s bodies have swastikas and symbols of true hate and ferocity their young blood selves could never really understand, emblazoned upon themselves in permanent ink, even much to the artist dismay at times.

After one particularly nasty client I remember turning to my friend and mentor Matty and asking, “Why would someone do that?” A guy who was 21 at the most, military of all things, came into the shop and had a hitler (no I didn’t typo, I just won’t cap it) and a swastika tattooed on his shoulder. After he left and I asked my question and Matty turned to me and replied thoughtfully. I believe I was around 16 at the time.

“Do you know why people get tattoos?”

Since I had just conned another artist in the shop to give me my first one (without permission of my mother or Matty)  and seen hundreds done by then, I felt expert when I said yes I do.

Matty scrunched his face up and kind of smiled when he said, “Do you mean what you can see? Or what is under the ink that even causes it to be created in the first place?”

I won’t lie, I was 16, I did get pretty tired of his melancholy old man stories, how I referred to them even to him, but I knew he never wasted his time talking about unimportant things. I had literally spent days where I would come in at the start of his shift, sit in a chair behind him while he worked, and in 8 or 10 hours the most we spoke was the, whats up, when I walked in. And then he told me.

What is Under Your Ink?

Matty shared with me many stories of the many tattoos he had refused early on in his career. He didn’t tattoo hate messages or symbols, he didn’t tattoo the abusive husbands name on a woman who was clearly being ordered to submit to it. He knew the husband may have taken her elsewhere, may even had beaten her for his refusal to ink her, and he was sorry for that, but he was afraid to sell his soul he said. As he rambled on in my teenage fed up kind of way I asked him, “And my actual question was why the marine guy would ink it, not why you didn’t used to. So why do you now?”

He shared with me that the sad day came when he began to notice a distinct pattern. He didn’t like classifying people, and he sure as hell wasn’t the profiling type. Matty himself was an example of someones opinion of man gone wrong I’m sure of it. But he said he wasn’t judging them for their ink, it was their souls that were tainted or tortured and twisted somehow. He explained to me how someones skin art is an extension of their true selves. That was why we couldn’t always look at a guy or gals tattoo and figure out what the hell it was or what it meant.

He explained that he had inked people with whimsical souls who loved to get cartoons and quirky tattoos, he said those people were the ones we knew who forever remained children at heart. Who never forgot to play, get dirty or get down on one knee when talking to a kid.

He said he had always felt his own heart strings tug as he was inevitably shared the story of a grieving person having a rest in peace tattoo inked. But he also said that those people were the wise men and women on this earth. That their lot in life was often to be sure theirs or other loved ones memories were never sullied or dishonored. They remembered the lessons behind their deaths too and shared them, that was the most important duty they had.

And then he explained the followers, because it was those who he shared the biggest concern for and fear of. He said he thought he had tattooed leaders before, gang leaders, leaders of companies, leaders of immense responsibilities. And for the most part those guys and gals weren’t disturbing deep down. Egotistical, maybe, but not incredibly frightening or even intimidating people. But their followers, those who came in for their appointed gang symbol, those who came in to get someone else’s idea of right or wrong, good or bad printed on them, seemed the most lost souls of all.

Well hell, I can’t lie, I may have been listening to his ramblings but all this convo from a one word per day guy was a little much even for me. So I asked again, “So what does this have to freakin do with me asking why someone would get a tattoo like that.”

He said, “I dunno kid, just shut the hell up and listen, what I’m tryin to tell ya is to not worry your head over what under that guys ink, you just worry about whats under your own.”

Damn I was so mad!

And I actually counted after that, it was another four days after that convo that he asked me to ‘hand him a paper towel’ which was a lot of extra words for him already.

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