Lifestyle
Needlemania
Tattoos are almost respectable these days, which is why they’re generating so much positive ink. But getting one still hurts like crazy.
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In 1976 Yurkew decided to throw the first tattoo convention in Houston to encourage solidarity in the industry. It was more than a sudden friendly gesture. Tattooing was under fire and even outlawed in some states because of concerns about hepatitis B. Back then, unlike now, tattoo needles were often used more than once, contributing to the spread of the disease. Yurkew figured the artists needed health-related information; at the least, they needed to know how to deal with the authorities. “Probably a hundred and thirty-five artists showed up down here in Texas,” Tuttle said with a laugh. “They were brave souls.”
In the years since, the number of tattoo shops in Houston alone has grown from three to fifteen, and there have also been changes in technique, equipment, and the precautions taken by artists. “It’s space-age technology now,” said Stuckey. “In the old days, we thought the deeper you put in the ink, the better it would last. We didn’t realize that medically that meant getting into larger capillaries, which moves the ink around. Now it’s probably half as painful as then.” And, because of AIDS awareness, quite a bit safer. Yes, HIV can be transmitted through shared needles, and yes, tattooing is all about needles, but these days few tattoo artists take chances: Disposable needles are the industry standard. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, there has never been a documented instance of HIV transmission through tattooing.
Not that there aren’t other health risks associated with skin art. “People can have what is called a vasovagal response to the process of tattooing,” says Donovan Sigerfoos, an Austin internist who has treated his share of tattooed patients in the past five years. “It is sort of a reaction of your involuntary nervous system to pain, and there is a lot of pain and a lot of nerve stimulation going on with a tattoo. The reaction is not the same as shock, but it does make people feel woozy and can cause them to faint.”
Though Sigerfoos isn’t aware of anyone dying from a reaction to a tattoo, he does report other risks: “There have been cases where people have had delayed allergic reactions to the ink. This can lead to chronic skin irritation, blistering, or flaking.” Hepatitis also remains a possibility. “There is a lot of risk for hepatitis C, which can be very aggressive and life threatening,” says Sigerfoos, who offers this warning for would-be tattooees: “You need to pick a place that can verify that they use disposable products and that they’re not recycling inks and needles even if they advertise that they sterilize them. Make sure it looks like a nice clean shop.”
Another potential problem is skin cancer, or melanoma, which is extremely difficult to diagnose when it occurs on a tattooed area. “If a doctor biopsies a mole with tattoo ink in it, he’s not going to be able to tell much about it,” says Sigerfoos. “Microscopic examination involves staining cells, and skin that has been inked will not pick those stains up.” If you are genetically susceptible to melanoma, he advises, it might be a good idea to consider tattoo removal. It can take as many as six rounds of laser surgery to fade your tattoos to the point of being practically invisible. “People need to consider that tattoos are, for the most part, for good,” he says. “Removal is quite expensive”—the going rate is $200 to $500 per treatment—“and your average insurance policy does not cover it. Also, it takes a lot of time and is at least as painful as getting a tattoo to begin with.”
All that was going through my mind when I finally resolved to get a second tattoo. The artist everyone in Austin recommended was 27-year-old Chris Treviño of Perfection Tattoo. I told Treviño I wanted another cow, and though he scoffed at first—not his style, he said—he eventually came around as long as I agreed to let him design the tattoo.
Treviño, like Tuttle and Stuckey and most every artist I’ve met, learned his trade through an apprenticeship. “I started hanging out in Bob Moreau’s shop in San Antonio,” he says. “The best artists learn by getting tattooed—by watching and asking questions. That’s what I did.” Yet while Treviño, who gave his first tattoo at age eighteen, was lucky enough to get hands-on training, he has no intention of passing on his knowledge. “I never will apprentice anyone,” he says. “I don’t want to create my own competition. If you train someone, then they have to be better than you—unless you’re a poor teacher.”
Before Treviño went to work on me, I took a painkiller left over from some dental work I’d had. It was my idea, but he agreed that the drug might help me to relax. It didn’t. I knew in advance that the small of the back is one of the most painful places to be tattooed (others, according to Treviño, are the rib cage, collarbone, sternum, and backs of the knees), but that’s where I wanted it. I also remembered the fear-inducing equipment. Think of bunches of cactus needles dipped in steel and soldered to the end of an electric toothbrush handle. Then imagine a low, constant buzzing emanating as needles dipped in ink pierce your skin continuously—for hours.
I have suffered all kinds of pain in my life, including a wicked root canal, but only childbirth came close to the pain of receiving this tattoo. It fluctuated from the ouch! of the outline (heavy pressure) to the yowch! of the shading (less pressure but bigger bunches of needles over a broader area). If houses could feel pain, I would now know how a wall feels upon being stripped of its paper and sanded relentlessly: My back seemed to be on fire. Speaking of childbirth, I was more than once reminded of that experience because Treviño sometimes took breaks during the process. He said he needed to focus, though to me it seemed like he was stopping for a leisurely lunch with his girlfriend and a long chat on the phone. Each time he quit, for anywhere from ten to thirty minutes, it was like a contraction had just stopped. My body tricked itself into thinking it was over. Then, like a worse, more intense contraction, he returned, starting up the machine again. My body could not believe I was just going to lie there and take it. There was a mirror to my left, but as in childbirth I chose to use it sparingly. The few times I looked I saw the swollen skin and the connect-the-drop blood patterns. After more than three hours of this, I took another painkiller, again to little avail.
Once Treviño had completed my tattoo—a cow’s head above a banner proclaiming “Holy Cow!”—he applied a salve and told me to expect some pain, followed in a week by a scab and then some itching. The tattoo was much larger than I had originally envisioned it; it was even larger than the stencil he had applied in advance. Yet while it might seem strange to some people, Treviño told me it was hardly the most unusual tattoo he has done: Once, he inked a Disney character engaged in a lewd act, though the person has since had it covered with another tattoo.
I asked Treviño how he feels about the newfound respectability of tattoos. He replied that he hasn’t changed the way he works. He’ll still do any design “unless it’s racist.” There are still only two areas of the body he won’t tattoo: genitalia and faces. “I don’t need the money that bad,” he insists. But he admits to being a little sorry that the stereotype of the tattooed rebel has faded a bit. “I don’t want everyone to have a tattoo,” he says. “I don’t think everyone needs one. Besides, if everyone had one, they wouldn’t be that special anymore.”
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