The lure of tattoos

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The lure of tattoos
July 31, 2010
MARYROSE CUSKELLY
The Sidney Morning Herald



There's no gain without pain, especially when it comes to having a mermaid or centaur inked onto your body. A wary MaryRose Cuskelly investigates the lure of the tattoo.

There's no gain without pain, especially when it comes to having a mermaid or centaur inked onto your body. A wary MARYROSE CUSKELLY investigates the lure of the tattoo.

They are everywhere. My hairdresser has at least one. So does the girl at the Myer make-up counter: the eye on her wrist squints at me as she brushes over-priced foundation on my face. The buff young baker at the fashionable cafe has tiger stripes the length of one arm, and they look so impressive I let my mind wander as to where he may have more.

Two of my three sisters have them. Celebrities are lousy with them. The Australian army, in 2007, lifted its restrictions on enlisting people with them. They wink at you from above waistbands, brazenly drawing attention to the skin below the belly button and beyond. They peep seductively from the neckline of a low-cut top. They dally beneath the straps of young mothers' floral sundresses, or boldly declare the name of a loved one in a profusion of flowers and hearts.

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On the tram, a pretty young woman has "BABY DOLL" etched in ornate lettering across the knuckles of both hands, prompting the shrew in me to think, "You look sensational now, Baby Doll, but will the irony be intended when you're a tired 45?"

I will declare myself now: I am no tattoo aficionado. Most tattoos strike me as garish and, forgive me, ugly. Cliches abound and elegance is largely absent. And tattoos leave such room for regret; it doesn't really matter who dumped whom, you're still left with their name under your skin.

Only once have I seen a tattoo that I coveted - a mermaid on the upper arm of a young woman in St Kilda, Melbourne. A whimsical creature, half-woman, half-fish, she hovered on the girl's arm: a blue, curved line for her belly, waves of parallel lines for her sea-swept hair; a series of small arcs for the shimmer of iridescent scales. She had a feminine mystique that was unsullied by the fuggy fantasies of fishermen. What clinched the appeal was the way the tattoo artist had incorporated a small red nevus on the woman's arm into the design to form the mermaid's navel. The tattoo had become enmeshed with her skin.

It was in St Kilda, too, that I saw a tattooed number on the forearm of an elderly man. I was a naive girl from Queensland and I still remember the quiet jolt of shock when I recognised its import.

For a short time, I tantalised myself with the idea that I might get a tattoo. Saying it out loud gave me a thrill at my own daring. Should I get the copyright symbol of a c in a circle inked onto the inside of my forearm? (I'm a writer - get it?) Or perhaps, like an Arabian woman from an earlier time, three dots tattooed in a triangle on the palm of my right hand to ensure the continuing love of my husband. The thought of a needle puncturing the underside of my paw was enough to make me twitchy, but I liked the simplicity of the design with its nod to the arcane.

In search of a tattoo that I could bear to have, I scoured books celebrating the art form. But, in the end, I found they just depressed me. Even the glossy volumes with high production values were unable to elevate ink-on-skin for me. The designs were gar ish and the colours bilious. Gothic images of blood and hearts abounded, as did tired, humourless portrayals of big-breasted women and empty, hyperbolic statements rank with bravado, such as "death before dishonour". Several times I saw the "classic" hunt scene of dogs and scarlet-coated horseman weaving across the landscape of someone's back in pursuit of a fox disappearing into the cleft of the buttocks. Hilarious - once.

In one memorable photo (oh, how I wish it wasn't), a man lay naked on his stomach, his rear end towards the camera. His legs were spread wide, so that the view was of his buttocks and scrotum; a snake emerged out of his anus and curled over his backside. He must weary of having to assume this position every time someone says, "Go on, show us your tattoo."

In Western urban society, what once was the mark of the criminal and the outcast is now the badge of the young and the hip. Recently, "arse antlers" - referring to a tattoo just above the buttocks with a curving extension on each side - received its own entry in the Macquarie Dictionary.

No longer confined to men of the working classes, tattoos are now found on doctors and lawyers of both sexes. As a symbol of rebellion and individuality, the tattoo has been well and truly devalued - Lachlan Murdoch has one, for God's sake - although there are still ways to use a tattoo to outrage and discomfort.

Facial tattoos, for example, will most likely ensure you have a seat to yourself on public transport and most tattooists refuse to do them. Tattoos on the face inevitably impose themselves in between personal interactions. Chopper Read's bodyguard, Tony "the Face" Cronin, works the tough-guy thing as far as it will go with a full facial tattoo. His dark sunglasses, close-cropped hair, black clothing and flint-faced demeanour amp up the intimidation stakes, but it is his full-face tattoo that signals "hard man" more than anything else.

Tattoos on the hands also transgress the shifting boundary of what is objectionable. Like facial tattoos, they are hard to conceal and play a significant role in social interactions. Ever since Robert Mitchum played the murderous preacher in Night of the Hunter with "LOVE" and "HATE" inked across his knuckles (prefacing "BABY DOLL" by half a century), the motif has been echoed in films and television from The Blues Brothers to an episode of The Simpsons. There is something about letters on the knuckles, perhaps because they are displayed most effectively when the hand is curled into a fist, that signals violence and anarchy.

Tattooist Tim Dywelska works out of a studio in an inner-city Melbourne suburb. The soft edges of his Canadian accent and his neat, if adolescent, style of dress are somewhat at odds with his heavily tattooed arms. He's business-like, gallant, hip and nerdy in quick succession, and sometimes all at once.

Dywelska's studio is humming at 11am on a weekday. Clients are seated in the waiting room, the phone is ringing, young tattooists are having "consults" with clients, music is playing - it looks like a fun place to work.

Dywelska is brisk and efficient, apologising for making me wait while he talks to a client about a proposed tattoo. You can't just walk in here, pick a design and walk out with a tattoo half an hour later. It's a custom studio; for the most part, clients bring in their ideas or an image they've sourced from somewhere. The tattooists then draw the tattoo so it not only fits their client's taste but also the site on their body they've chosen for it. They do a lot of large pieces here: whole arms, legs and backs. So, with the time it takes to design and draw the individual tattoo, and because of the demand, it might be three months before you find yourself lying on a pristine bench feeling the repeated bee stings of the tattooing needle. The wait has its upsides, however; because of the time and care taken, clients are rarely dissatisfied.

Dywelska admits to having tattoos that represent heartbreak and emotional attachment, but also "souvenirs" - tattoos done by friends or by tattooists so famous that, when he found himself in their presence, he could not let the opportunity pass without getting them to leave their mark upon him.

This morning, Dywelska is tattooing "a young lady", Emily, with a flamingo. It's a florid design, lush with flowers and a tropical sunset that's to be positioned on the back of her right calf. It will stretch from just above her heel and end just below the back of her knee. He'll spend three or four hours on it today, by the end of which time she'll probably feel as though she's been "hit by a truck". Completion of the tattoo will require at least two more sessions of a similar length.

"I'm actually heavily tattooed myself," Dywelska says. "I wouldn't do it to someone else if I didn't think I could get through it." It "pains" him, he says, to see tattooists who are not heavily tattooed themselves, because they "obviously don't love this the way I do". How could anyone tattoo someone with "a big rib piece from here [he gestures to a point halfway down his leg] to here [he marks a place beneath his armpit] and not have gone through it yourself?" It's beyond him.

For the first time, seduced by Dywelska's enthusiasm for his art, I get the feeling that I am missing out on something. I can almost imagine commissioning Dywelska to tattoo me, except I'm sure the modest vision of ink on skin that I entertain wouldn't capture his imagination.

It's personal for Dywelska. For all his protestations that he is "a commercial artist" who has to sell his skills to whoever is buying, he also admits he is in an enviable position for a tattooist. "I can pretty much pick and choose what I'd like to tattoo. But it comes down to, 'Do I want to work today or do I want to sit on my hands?' I can tell you, there's stuff I'd rather not do; but, in the end, I can do a good job and that's what a person wants."

Today, though, he is excited about the piece he will do for Emily. "I really, really like this design. I know exactly how I'm going to do it. It's got this element of being quite complicated and busy, but when it comes down to it, it's quite loose and lovely. I'm really excited about it. You're really giving me, if I could be so bold," he says to Emily, his gallantry coming to the fore, "the chance to really do something artistic."

I ask about the pain. "There's no doubt that Emily here can feel it," he says, as he works the needle across her skin, inking in the outline of the design.

"I'm a woman," Emily says. "I can handle it."

Not long after Dywelska begins the outline of the flamingo, the young woman who has been taking calls at the front desk comes into his booth. She's holding an image of a centaur that's been downloaded from the internet: all airbrushed, glossy flanks, rippled abs and extravagant, wind-tossed hair, mane and tail. A young man has just walked into the shop with it; he wants a tattoo based on the image. "He's with his mum," the receptionist says, half whispering. "He's in detox; he's out today."

It's not Dywelska's thing. "Tell the kid he's going to have to wait and come in [to the shop] in a couple of months, and ask Owen if he'll do it. It's just not my forte." He executes a flourish of the tattooing needle in the air over Emily's leg. "Flamingos are my forte."

The receptionist is reluctant to leave without having something more definite for the young man, but Dywelska is unmoved. "Owen's our go-to-fantasy-portraiture kind of guy. I can do it, it's just not my trip." He pauses for emphasis. "It would hurt me to do it," he says with finality, and then relents a little, suggesting the name of another studio that she could recommend to him.

After saying goodbye to Dywelska and Emily, I find myself on the footpath outside the shop with the young man out of detox for the day and his mother. He looks sullen and twitchy; she looks like she wants to hug him, but knows better and stands just outside the roiling current of his agitation. It's not the soothing touch of skin on skin that he craves, but the burn and sting of the tattoo needle.

I feel for both of them: for her, forced to babysit her adult son as he tries to wrestle his life back; and for him, struggling with addiction and having to go through this rite of passage with the indignity of having his mum beside him. His frustration is palpable. I can almost feel his ache for the stab of the needle; the desire to endure a pain that is only physical and to have his skin indelibly marked with the image of a mythic figure symbolising virility and eminence in battle.

The lure of the tattoo; I'm beginning to understand it.