Ink

Ink

By

Leo de Natale

I was shopping at a Star Market store the other day. It was unusually hot and humid. As I exited a masked, sweaty, obese, gray-haired lady wearing thick eyeglasses was entering. She was probably in her 70’s or 80’s and dressed in a grandmotherly v-neck dress. She wouldn’t be confused with a sex symbol but there it was: in the middle of her wrinkled, senescent bosom was a new, multi-colored rose tattoo. I stopped, stared and said to myself, “What is wrong with this world?”

          Each generation has its trademark visual identity.  In the 50’s it was the greaser, doo wop look.  Cool guys wore funky suits.  Hip girls wore hoop skirts, white socks and saddle shoes.  It was the era of the malt shop and Ozzie and Harriet. Along came the 60’s and war protests, long hair, free love and lack of personal hygiene.  The 70’s witnessed the Watergate era numbskulls Gerald Ford and peanut farmer Jimmy Carter.  It was a comparatively dull decade.  The cold war, however, still existed.

Then there were the 80’s and 90’s decades. Tattooing one’s body was slowly becoming mainstream. By 2020, the act of being tattooed by “artists” has now become a rite of passage. Most adults between ages 18 and 30 undergo the painful process of social acceptance. The location of ink is literally anywhere on the human body. Today’s generation have neck tattoos, leg and ankle tattoos, hand tattoos and the physically disturbing “sleeve” tattoos where entire arms and legs have so much ink the bare skin underneath is many times invisible.

Tattoos have also migrated to the human face. As part of this bodily desecration young men and women sprinkle their faces with body piercings above the eyebrows, around the lips, along ears or nose piercings and rings. Observing this from an older generation, I ask what these people are doing to themselves? Perhaps among their contemporaries it’s considered a normal expression of what they call “body art”, expressing “how they feel” in a graphic, visible medium. To me it is anatomical graffiti and no different from the aerosol “tagging” seen on bridge overpasses, abandoned buildings, and, lately, statues and buildings that were once considered sacrosanct. The heavily tattooed are walking billboards of the grotesque.

A friend recently noted that men and women who tattoo their necks and faces should also have the word “LOSER” inked on to their foreheads.  What employer  would hire someone who will be dealing with the public?  Bodily disfigurement may have peer acceptance but many non-tattooed folk find it difficult to look at these freaks.

Like supermarket Granny, many older persons have been seduced by the alleged hipness of ink. Go to any mall or and you’ll see middle-aged men and women with freshly-inked tattoos. Most lack the slim, trim bodies of the young. There’s nothing worse than watching a woman in her 50’s with dragon tattoos located on cellulite-laden thighs or sagging biceps. And a pot-bellied man wearing knee high black support stockings with a clawing panther tattoo along a bicep. Not a sexy look.

If you delve deeper into the subject, there’s a long history of human beings covering themselves with tattoos. Egyptian archeologists have unearthed tattooed mummies. The Japanese have been tattooing for more than 5,000 years. Many of these are full body tattoos that exclude only the neck, hand, and feet from inking. The tattooing in some cultures had mystical meaning. Japan banned the practice in the 19^th Century but is still exists. Other cultures in Asia and Indonesia have similarly long histories of body inking.

Certain Native American tribes also practiced tattooing.  This assault on the beauty  human bodies has occurred since we were cave dwellers.  The practice has always appealed to various segments of society, some very rich, many very poor.  British Royalty in the 19^th Century sported “discreet” tattoos. Today, the fad has increased in  popularity, especially among the young.

The essential question is why inking has become incredibly popular.  According to New Age writer Sloane Solomon claims depression is a psychological component to tattooing. “Tattoos remind us of what we’ve already been through… as well as the continued strength and hope that the future brings”.

Inked magazine concurs, but a more overwhelming reason factor is fashion.  I think it is more a generation’s decision to embrace conformity– “I’ll do it because everyone else is doing it”.  Classic peer pressure.  There are examples of such behavior.

“I got my first tat when I was 18,” said Charlie “Spike” McCoy. “And that was before I joined the Angels.  “You always get a specific tat when you’re initiated.”

McCoy, now a wizened 45-year-old, is a member of the Hell’s Angels Club of New England. Spike sat with me in a Cambridge bar and chugged several beers during an interview.   The club has an infamous reputation.  It’s been known to  dabble in criminal activity and firearms sales.  Spike is heavily tattooed.  Both arms have the sleeves.  Getting inked, he said, is a tribal ritual. 

His face is craggy and it speaks to sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.  He has a broadly flattened nose  — he’s an ex-amateur boxer.  At 6’1” he is physically fit.  But age has caught up with him.  His fingers are gnarled from numerous fist fights.  He’s bald but vain enough to sport a gray toupee.  Given his involvement with the Angels, I was tempted to ask him if the toupee was bulletproof.  Angels need all available protection.

He said many “brothers” have daytime jobs, mostly blue collar, but once initiated these fellas have fealty to the Club. He admitted he’s done prison time in “The Big House” but wouldn’t name the crimes.

Whether or not they belong to the numerous clubs, many bikers make their annual pilgrimage to the Sturgis, South Dakota Motorcyle Rally and it is a sea of tattoos. Sturgis is considered THE event for biker enthusiasts and exhibitionists. Who has the most chrome? Who has the most bodacious paint job? Many “biker chicks” travel along, glued to the Harley-Davidson’s back seats but Sturgis wreaks of testosterone. It’s macho men on steroids.

A world away in numerous cities across America , men and women visit their local parlors and endure the  painful, expensive process of inking up.  A person can pay $50 for a small tattoo.  Having one’s entire back tattooed can cost up to $5,000.  The experience causes excruciating pain and potential infection. 

At a tattoo parlor in Boston, I spoke with a hair stylist, Renee, a buxom 25-year-old wearing a low-cut  blouse who was undergoing a right arm sleeve tattooing.   The multicolored images included a unicorn, vampire and a profile of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

“It, like, expresses my life and, like, my imagination, ya know?” she said with a voice that contained both verbal “upgliding” and “vocal fry”. “Like, every image has a meaning, ya know?”

She told me most of the co-workers in her trendy salon located in Boston’s Back Bay had similar tattoos. “It’s, like, the thing to do.” Renee also had the obligatory facial piercings and another tattoo at the base of her neck. I presumed there were other bodily locations that were inked.

Her left breast did have snake’s head tattoo peering from the blouse.

Today, body art transcends all socioeconomic lines.  I had a medical  appointment with the 30-something, Harvard Medical School  physician  who had a tat on his upper left bicep.  It was discreet but there.  Even my 59-year-old mailman has a small tattoo located on his right calf.

Body art has indeed become commonplace.  Italo-American comedian Sebastian Maniscalco has a great YouTube video where he mimics someone who has a giant serpent tattooed enveloping  his body as a testament to his late father, he says.  Sebastian apparently doesn’t like tattoos.  His punchline is “Why put a bumper sticker on a Ferrari?”  Every picture tells a story, but not necessarily on someone’s forearm or thigh.

Body tattooing is here to stay. Will it continue to remain a socially acceptable desecration or will it be a fad that loses its cachet? One thing is certain the human body’s skin changes as we age. A 20-something today will discover in his or her 40’s, 50’s and beyond that skin loses its elasticity. Humans develop collagen breakdown leading to wrinkly skin. The dyes used in tattooing diffuse beyond original borders. Eventually the images blur and devolve into colored Rorschach tests. Go to a beach and inspect some 70-year-old ex-sailor’s tats. The ink’s there but the details are unrecognizable.

Hair stylist Renee’s snake’s head will eventually resemble an old Emoji. And the supermarket Granny’s new chest tattoo won’t hide the onion skin beneath the ink.