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Tattoo Tales
From Mike Malone |
When Crash came to me with an invitation to do some sort of regular piece for his new rag, I thought of friends who had attempted the same. In every case, it worked a short while then fell back to earth, sometimes in flames.
This ol' badger isn't going to follow the rest. "MAYDAY! MAYDAY! WE'RE GOIN' IN!" I hate the smell of napalm. So I've decided to pull a Tom Sawyer and drag the work out of my pals in the biz.
TATTOO TALES is an idea I've been sitting on for years, so now we shall see what hatches out of it. One of the best things about tattooing - besides lifting the average art student out of the gutter up onto the curb - is that the nature of tattooing and people who get tattooed is far from any normal endeavor.
I've often said that just the word "tattoo" is like flypaper for nuts. On any normal day, the average shop can suddenly and without warning erupt in nearly any manner of high jinks. I began tattooing just as the Sixties were drawing to a close. The Sixties had tested the limits of radical behavior, everyone believed. I was lucky enough to see beyond that point and realize the stage was set for the high water mark in a bastard art form that had been lurking in the carnivals and arcades of America for nearly a century.
When that wave started to build, I wanted to be on it. It cost me a total lifestyle change, and all that went with it. Friends fell away, first just a few but in the end, all of them drifted out of my life. It was just too strange for most of them, and my gung-ho attitude out my new interest drove the last of them off for good.
By July of '73, I was at the wheel of China Sea Tattoo in Honolulu's Chinatown. China Sea came to me after Sailor Jerry Collins' death. Jerry was a famous tattooer in the days before tattooers even got famous. Talk about tattoo tales, Jerry had the greatest I'd ever heard. I was lucky enough to have seen him in action.
So begins my first Tattoo Tale...
THE GOOD PURPLE
In 1972, Ed Hardy and I went to Honolulu to visit Sailor Jerry.
It was a mini-summit, of sorts: Des Connelly from Australia and Kazuo Oguri [Hori Hide] from Japan were also aboard for the fun. We were kind of honoring the ol' man. Jerry was our Rembrandt, Babe Ruth, and Blackbeard all rolled into one grizzly ol' tattooer. Jerry's family - his wife, young son, and infant daughter - were on the mainland to introduce the new baby to her grandparents. The house was empty and we were all staying at Jerry's. We were thrilled to have 24-hour access to our hero.
At that time, the tattoo world was much smaller. I'd say less than 300 people were pushing the pins in the U.S.A. but to those who were watching, Jerry was standing that little world on its ear. Jerry was not just a great artist but also a wizard in the technical and mechanical aspects of tattooing.
Some of Jerry's most important discoveries were in the realm of tattoo color. Color technology had come a long way by the Seventies but it took a certain kind of personality to sift through all the technical stuff pertaining to new pigments. Some were safe as milk and some were radical compounds that would cause all manner of skin eruptions. The information that came with these pigments was beyond the average person's understanding.
Jerry wasn't cowed by technical stuff. What he didn't get, he would find out about, some by reading, some by using himself as a test monkey. Jerry once showed me places where he had tested colors that had left nasty-looking scars or lumps that swelled and itched off and on, depending on how much sun they got or what he had eaten that day.
In the Sixties, Jerry's competition was a tattooer named Lou Normand. Lou was a guy who had a glad eye for the spotlight. He would jump at the chance to do a TV interview. While blabbing to the press, Lou would never fail to mention that purple was a color you would never see in a tattoo. "Much too poisonous", he'd say. "It can't be tattooed without an awful skin reaction," Lou would crow until Jerry finally blew.
Jerry would never stoop to pander to the media, but he had healthy ego. Normand shooting off his mouth to the press drove Jerry nuts. The purple thing really stuck in Jerry's craw, and he felt Lou was just making noise to impress people with his vast knowledge of tattooing.
This set Jerry to work. He started writing all the pigment manufactures for samples of purple pigments. Jerry told me it took a long time to finally find a purple that would heal into the skin, really look purple, and not cause any skin reactions.
He took his revenge on Lou Normand by tattooing a purple dragon on a sailor's arm. When the tattoo was healed, Jerry sent the kid over to Lou's shop. The young sailor asked Lou if he could make him a purple dragon tattoo. Lou, of course, goes into his rant on the impossibility of purple tattoos until the kid rolls up his sleeve and shows him Sailor Jerry's discovery.
The good purple was now Jerry's new secret. Jerry kept his secret for years and would dole out the purple only to his special pals. It became a sign that you were part of Jerry's inner circle if you had some of the good purple.
During our stay in the islands, we all spent as much time at Jerry's shop as we could. Just outside was a tropical paradise but we were where we wanted to be: Jammed into this tiny tattoo shop in the worst honky-tonk area in Honolulu, sitting at the feet of our hero, listening to stories, watching the old man tattoo, and trying to learn as much as we could.
Jerry had a local fanbase as well, kids who would drift in and out during the day. Among them was a young sailor who wanted to become a tattoo artist. He had some tattoo equipment and was doing some amateur work on his shipmates. He really wanted to get next to Jerry, but his outlaw tattooing and his general attitude pissed Jerry off. He thought the way to Jerry's heart was to try to be as much of a tough guy as Jerry. His mistake was that Jerry really was a tough guy and saw right through his act.
At least once a day, the sailor kid came by the shop. Every time Jerry would give him a real hard time, not to the point of tossing him out of the shop but just tease this kid to no end and delight in making him the butt of jokes. One of the reasons the kid hung in was that he really wanted some of Jerry's purple. During every one of his visits, he would at some point make mention of the purple. He tried everything and offered Jerry any price. When he couldn't buy some, he tried to shame Jerry into giving him some; he would even beg Jerry for just enough to do this or that job. As I remember he went so far as to offer one of us money for a taste of the purple Jerry had given us. Problem was, he just didn't know how to be humble. When the cool tough-guy act didn't work, he would just turn it up and ultimately defeated himself.
Des Connelly, the visiting Australian, brought Jerry some violet crystals. The Aussies were using violet crystals to make stencils. These crystals were a powdered form of the stuff that hectograph pencils were made out of, the active ingredient in today's hectograph stencils. The crystals were a beautiful, deep purple and they would sparkle in the light. They would also release a powerful purple dye when mixed with alcohol.
One afternoon, Jerry was showing us these crystals and snickering about something he had planned for the young sailor, who by this time had Jerry really annoyed. Late that day, the young sailor came strolling in, full of wisecracks as usual.
Sailor Jerry played his cards well; he stayed calm and joked with the kid, drawing him out. We were all super curious about what Jerry had planned. I'd heard plenty of stories about Jerry's practical jokes, but now I was about to see one. Finally, Jerry's moment came. The young sailor made mention of Jerry's purple.
"Oh Christ," said Jerry. "I've got a new purple that makes that old stuff look sick!" Jerry brought out a plastic bag of the violet crystals, got a tongue depressor, and scooped out a good tablespoon of the stuff.
"Come here," he said to the kid, inviting him into the work area of the shop for the first time. The kid broke into a big smile - it was a big deal to be allowed into the work area. Jerry beckoned him closer, holding the pile of purple powder up to the light. The kid came forward.
"Gimme your hand," said Jerry. The kid's hand automatically shot forward; he was totally in the old spider's spell. I wanted to yell, "Look out, kid, it's a trick!" but I didn't have the guts to ruin the old man's joke.
Jerry dumped the pile of powder into the kid's hand. "Now, hold it up to the light," Jerry commanded. The sailor kid held his hand up to the light as Jerry talked to him. "See how it sparkles? It does that in the skin!" And as the kid examined the stuff under the light, Jerry's hand snaked to the alcohol bottle on his work stand.
Jerry struck like a cobra. The spray bottle of alcohol was set on full stream and in a flash; Jerry pumped about three good shots of alcohol into the pile of purple stuff the kid was holding. The alcohol instantly turned the powder into a super-strong dye that covered the kid's hand and ran down his arm. The purple slop was spreading fast and starting to drip on the floor.
Jerry reared back and in a loud, angry voice hissed, "Jesus Christ, you're getting that shit all over my floor!" He handed the kid one paper towel and ran him out of the shop, cursing him for a dummy. The kid exited the shop followed by a hail of cruel laughter. Jerry was so proud of himself he laughed about it all night.
The kid didn't return that evening. The next day, however, while walking to the shop, I saw the kid in an arcade playing a pinball machine.
His right hand was still light purple.
The End
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