ALL OUR VICES
Article by Ryan Pangilinan, Artwork by Renee Nault (reneenault.com)
I don’t think it’s too far off to suggest that most kids who go to college tend to experiment. Vices most often include drugs, alcohol, and sex. But my vice was slightly different. Because I went to a conservative Christian college, there weren’t too many people who shared my delight in getting poked with a needle on a monthly basis. My vice was getting tattooed.
It started with writing an article like this one, which involved interviewing a tattoo artist who frequented my video store. As if writing it wasn’t enough, I wanted to be a part of the story. I went down to his shop after the interview to feel the pain that was to be “a thousand bee stings at the same time.” Months after the interview followed, I kept going back and filling up my left arm.
“My first tattoo turned out to be a gateway drug and now I’m addicted,” wrote Alexis Davidson, via e-mail. Davidson is a 22-year-old student at the University of Washington, as well as an ink fan.
“...I started looking at tattoos on the internet when I was bored and saw a number of tattoos that appealed to me,” Davidson explained. “There were a lot of people writing about what their tattoos meant to them and how they got them not for the sake of fashion, but for themselves.”
Davidson’s sentiment echoed my mixed feelings of the desire for a personal statement and general dismay. As I would head towards a class where we’d discuss about the workings of God sporting a tattoo of a sacred heart bleeding black ink, numerous classmates would give visible looks, and not all of them were positive.
“I remember getting my first really visible tattoo, and I was standing at this bus stop,” recalled David Choe. “Suddenly I realized that something was touching my arm…it happened to be this 2- [or] 3-year-old kid staring at it and poking it with his finger. The kid’s mother was terrified, but I thought it was funny.”
Choe is a tattoo artist at Mark of the Vampire in Kent, WA. A one-time office jock, Choe worked at a litigation copy center and moved to Hawaii for the company. There, he came upon China Sea, a tattoo parlor operated by Michael Malone (the shop had also been in the hands of legendary artist Sailor Jerry). Malone offered to teach Choe how to tattoo, and the rest is history.
His experimentation led to a sudden career change, and now with most of his body covered in tattoos, it may have been for the best. Yet for everyday pedestrians, it’s not always an easy transition.
“I actually have only experienced negative attention to my piercings and tattoos here in Seattle at my work,” said Davidson.
Even those who work in the industry have their stigmas. “Most of the folks I know in the business frown upon facial tattoos,” wrote Choe, also via e-mail. “We even call it the ‘Job Stoppers,’ and the name wasn’t from pristine un-tattooed folks. We named it.”
When even those involved with this form of experimentation have their personal rules, it’s no wonder why Choe likened it to drugs. There are even small bits of fear when getting your first jab with a needle or hiding it from your disapproving family. I can say that coming from an Asian-American home, tattoos are not always the easiest thing for parents to accept. For example, although I’ve been getting tattooed for about four years, my mother only knows of the first two.
Working with contemporary American cultural taboos is one thing, but when you start getting into dealing with family and friends who have an “old world” mentality, then you’re playing in a different league. “I was in a Korean gift store on Aurora where the lady was not saying the most understanding things about my tattoos in Korean, and I totally busted her on it,” said Choe.
Regardless of people and their various prejudices of tattoos and piercings, curious minds will always wonder, “What would it be like if I had a tattoo of that?” or “What if I had a piercing here?” These questions may possibly lead to a lifetime vice of getting poked and prodded with needles. But in a good way, of course.
