Tattoo Review
Biker Billy was leaned up against the chrome of Johnny Banshee’s old Hudson showing the boys from the Flatheads, our vintage car club, his newest tattoo. Most of the boys don’t sport body art, figuring, I guess, customizing an old automobile is artistic expression enough. Billy had some heart with the knife in it, dripping drops of blood, and under that the words BORN TO OOZE. “Kind of Old School, isn’t it?” Ronnie asked, risking Billy’s ire which, trust me, no one wants to do. Billy isn’t in an Outlaw Club now, but once a biker, always a biker.
Billy grinned, showing his two missing teeth which none of us ever asked how they got missing. He looked like a pirate gone to seed prematurely. I helped Bill and his girlfriend who was an old bus driver friend of mine from our city days build their cabin too many years ago to count. I like Billy okay, at least when he ran solo or he was sober or he was rehabbing. I didn’t like him much when a few of his biker buddies rolled in with bottles of cheap wine and six packs of beer they’d swill down in record time. Wouldn’t take long until you were the odd man out in their gang and if they were looking for a victim, they didn’t have to draw straws.
Billy’s a tattoo parlor’s wet dream. He went for the clichéd stuff and the Needleman could do skulls and crossbones, snarling dogs and the business end of .38’s in his sleep. Billy was practically covered and running out of room. Once I asked him why he didn’t get a tattoo that was, oh, more artsy fartsy. He glared at me like I was some idiot making fun of his Harley. “Just a thought,” I mumbled and dropped the subject.
I never got the attraction for body art. For one thing, it seems like tourist shop art to me. Butterflies and dragons, Celtic crosses and rainbows, sappy slogans and cornball cartoonery. I figured if I had to look at something dyed onto my skin for the rest of my natural life, I’d want something interesting, something arty, something that maybe I didn’t get sick of in about six months. But then, I’m an old geezer now and that explains a lot.
I had a pal, Norm, who walked up to my artist buddy Prof. Jim one summer day when Jim’s tats were exposed out of his short sleeves and asked him, thinking he was being funny, how drunk was he? This was back in the ‘70’s, before tattoos were all the rage. Jim gave Norm the stink-eye and asked what he meant. “The tattoos. You must’ve been drunk on your ass, right?”
Jim pretty much gave Norm an education that day and I learned not to ask much about folks’ body art. It’s their body, as the women’s rights advocates say, to do with as they please. And if you’re thinking of questioning guys like Billy, he’ll do what he wants with yours too. Beauty, worst case, is in the blackeye of the beholder.
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