I remember my very first tattoo — a crude rendition of the word “baby” on my right bicep. I got this done in my senior year of high school. My buddy Cameron had been tattooing a lot of our friends ever since he bought some sewing needles and India ink. I kept seeing people I knew showing off their small new tats, usually small doodles of things like birds, clouds or crescent moons. After seeing that none of them got infected, I decided it was high time for my own.
Cameron’s bedroom had poor ventilation and a floor of solid concrete; he tore out the carpeting that had been infused with vomit from some drunken night months ago. I sat on the hard floor and coughed on thick white smoke from his dirty plastic water-bottle bong. Then it was time to get started. He put on the Pixies’ “Doolittle” and sat down next to me.
“What do you want?”
I had the idea of getting the word “baby” tattooed on me since I had first heard Jim Croce’s “Rapid Roy,” a song about a vagabond driving an old ’57 Chevrolet around America, running from police in different states, speeding down lonesome highway strips and making fast cash off of drag racing. I really admired this character, who, as revealed in the chorus of the song, “got a tattoo on his arm that say ‘baby.’”
I was stoned and getting my arm stabbed by an old sewing needle dipped in black ink. Cameron sweat and worked methodically without a stencil. After an hour the tattoo was complete, a crummy rendition of the word in sloppy lettering.
I did a good job of keeping the tattoo hidden from my parents for about a year. I was sure to only wear T-shirts that covered my bicep and not to walk around the house shirtless anymore. It wasn’t until I got my second and third stick-and-poke tattoos (a heart around “baby” and a lightning bolt on the inside of my other bicep) that I decided it was pointless to keep them hidden. I showed my parents the tattoos, and they were understandably upset.
My dad is still in denial about the tattoos. Every time I wear something around him that reveals my tattoos, he says something like “I didn’t know you had tattoos.” This has happened several times since first revealing the tattoos.
My mom wanted to know why I chose to get the tattoos I did, not why I got tattoos in the first place. Moreover, why did I let my friends do it? Why didn’t I go to a professional? Why didn’t I get tattoos with deeper meanings than song references and notebook doodles?
To be honest, I don’t know exactly why I like stick-and-poke tattoos. Maybe I’m just cheap and refuse to pay for something my friends can do in their bedrooms. Maybe it’s because I enjoy the intimate pain involved with a close friend jamming a thin needle repeatedly into my flesh. Maybe I just think they’re more unique than the run-of-the-mill koi fish, dragon and tribal lettering that I see on many of my peers. I am often asked if I think I will regret these tattoos later in life. Hell, I already regret a few of them. The “bad boy blues” tattoo my girlfriend gave me became infected within a week, and it’s now faded as a result. The Smiths’ song title “Still Ill” jammed into my rib cage done by my friend Anna put me through a pain I never thought my body was capable of handling. All for some song lyrics I will probably grow tired of in a year or so.
But these tattoos serve as reminders of my fun and reckless youth. Each tattoo comes with a vivid memory of a backseat, a hot bedroom, a vacant parking lot. These tattoos represent a portion of my life I cannot deny.
Jeremy Haas is a UF English junior. His column appears on Wednesdays.
