HONEY' S TAT

I was still in grad. school when I began recruiting people to have my designs tattooed on their person, recieving the "bloodprint" as my object. Tattoos were not accepted into pop culture, like they are today. Sailors, criminals, and some adventurous hippies with butterflies and dragons on their butts, were about all you saw of ink. Lyle Tuttle was one of the few tattoo artists in the city. He also had a little museum filled with flashes and crazy prison machines collected over his career. I got him to do my two small tattoos and we hit it off. When I started bringing him other customers he promised to teach me how to tattoo.
Honey was a student in a class I TA'd at the art institute. She was 5''5" and 110lbs of exotic beauty. I'd been single less than a year, but in twentysomething years it seemed like a lifetime. New Wave was rearing it's chicky yellow head. The times were mutating into a kind of punk-lite. At 25 I felt old and out of step with hair cuts and fashion. Honey took care of that. In no time she'd dyed my hair and got me a thrift store sharkskin suit and pointy boots. Honey worked at a trendy Berkeley boutique filled with "Sinbad pants" and slutty dresses. I was her passive manikin, standing still while she dressed me up like Tom Waits on a three day bender.
It seemed only right that Honey recieved one of my tattoos. I'd tried doing a tattoo myself, but found i didn't have the touch. My hand shook and I couldn't tell how deep I was digging into the skin. Thank goodness my subject was a bit of a masochist, who didn't seem to mind the pain. Lyle did Honey's circular tattoo on her smooth shoulder, as I readied the big sheet of rice paper for the print. By the dawn of the 80's I was about half way through the project and was now out of school, working carpentry, dealing a little coke and living in Berkeley. Dan White and Jim Jones were household names and that sharkskin suit was in need of a good drycleaning. LOOK OUT! Here comes that left hook.