Published!

The current president of GMSMA requested that I pose in the buff to show off my ink for that august organization's publication, Newslink.

Let's see a show of hands... How many of you thought for one second that I'd say no?

Ergo, if'n you are a member of GMSMA, more photos of me in the buff are gracing your mailbox about now.

If'n, sadly, you're not, you'll just have to track down a member to get a look at them. However, I can reprint here the text of the piece I wrote to accompany the photos. (Which, by the way, made the cover. My second Newslink cover.)

So, without further ado, I give you Tattoo Journey.

I was in college when I saw the movie La Bamba, in which Lou Diamond Phillips portrayed Richie Valens, who died in the same plane crash that ended the life of Buddy Holly. One scene in the movie that jumped out at me was when Richie/Lou wakes up after a tequila fueled night in Mexico to discover that he now has a tattoo on his right arm.

I knew right then and there I was going to get a tattoo.

Something about that seemed profoundly masculine, accepting whatever life throws at you with grace and forebearance, taking it, sucking it up. Those were qualities that the boy I was hoped the man I would become would have.

This was before tattoos hit big. None of my friends had tattoos. No movie stars had tattoos. Madonna didn’t have any tattoos. Professional athletes didn’t have tattoos. When I told people about wanting to have a tattoo, I was cautioned that it would “hold me back.” (“Before we offer you a corporate vice-presidency, Mr. Kramer, we need you to take off your shirt so we can examine your arms and torso.”)

A couple of years later, I decided enough time had gone by. I would be inked. Tattooing was still illegal in New York City, so I took a train down to Philadelphia. The plan was that I’d go out, get drunk, stumble into a tattoo parlor, stand in line with sailors and marines, and get my first tattoo. It didn’t go as planned. I found out that when the bars closed, so did the tattoo parlors. And so the deed was done not on a beery, bleary Saturday night, but on a clear and sober Sunday morning. I went in, picked a design off the wall, and an hour later walked out with my first tattoo. It was the head of a wolf, over a legend reading “Stand Alone.” The design had read “Lone Wolf,” but I thought this was a little hackneyed.

I knew then there would be more. But it took me almost fifteen years to come up with a design I could commit to. My cherry had been busted, and the next time around, I wanted it to be meaningful.

I would daydream about what images had meaning for me. For the most part, they spoke to me of things and people I love. My sister, whips, welding, words like ‘Conviction.’ And this lead me to think about love. Sweet sweet love. So much more than hearts and roses. When you open your heart to love, at the same time, you’re binding yourself to the heartache that will inevitably follow. Fervent passion grows cold. Frail creatures that we are, we break our vows and promises. Your beloved will surely sicken and die. Your heart will be broken, and the more you love, the more painful it will be. But the important thing is to make sure your heart does not grow cold. When love knocks on your door, be ready to open it and welcome love across your threshold. Especially when it’s crazy, passionate, stupid, inconvenient, and you fear it will overwhelm you completely.

At some point, I thought about Jacob Marley. In Dickens’ Christmas Carol, he was Ebenezer Scrooge’s equally miserly partner, who appears in spectral form to warn Scrooge to change his ways. In the afterlife, he is weighed down with chains, explaining that they were forged, link by link, by his stinginess in when he walked the earth.

Chains have different associations for me. After whipping, my favorite scene to do is chain bondage. I’m all thumbs with rope. The results are laughable. But something wonderful happens when I lay my chains on a man. I have over two hundred pounds at this point, and I patiently work to put them all on the helpless, struggling man who has submitted to me. There is a romance to steel chain that I just don’t find in rope.

So it would be chains. Chains of love. If love binds us all together, let those bonds be of eternal steel.

Once I found an artist to do the work--no mean feat--the journey began. I would sit in my jeep, take a few deep breaths, steel myself with a latté from the local Starbucks, and head to the studio of Joe Rose, the only tattoo artist I had met who got truly excited when he I explained what I was after. Inevitably, Joe would make me wait. Walk-ins were his bread and butter, and he couldn’t turn them away. So I’d chain smoke to calm my nerves while he inked Chinese characters onto teenagers.

The work took about fifteen sessions, stretching from May through December. During this time, I broke my ankle playing softball, whipped two wonderful men, was declared Employee of the Month at the woodshop where I work, visited San Francisco for the first time, and turned forty. Whatever was happening to me, I would come, bear whatever portion of my flesh we would be working on, and put everything else aside.

And it hurt. Oh man, did it hurt. I wanted to start at my right ankle, and end at my left wrist, but I gave Joe discretion in how we got there. If there was a sensitive part of my body that he missed, I can’t guess what it would be. My shin bone, kneecap, inner thigh, pelvis, spine, rib cage, collar bone, armpit, elbow... I started to wonder what was going on. Was the man a sadist? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m a sadist myself.)

One night, I just couldn’t get it together. I wasn’t processing the pain. It was agony. I didn’t know if I could take it. In fact, I was sure I couldn’t. I was howling away, holding back the tears.

Joe let up on the needle. He put his hand on my chest, looked me in the eyes, and asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah I’m okay,” I answered, but not very convincingly.

Joe smiled. “You know what? You’re earning it.”

And then he went back to work.

But then and there, it all made sense to me. I was earning it. The best things in life come hard. Often at the cost of some of your blood. But a man takes it. No complaints. No whining. Just suck it up. Because you’re earning it.

And now, the journey is over. A scene that endured for eight months.

I’m really happy with the results. I’ll strip and show it off at the least provocation. And the best part is, I earned it.

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