by Dom Harvey
Melissa
I got ‘yours’ on the lower part of my back (above my crack). I was 14 and it was a home done job haha. 8 years on I’m still mocked for it.
Leilisha
I have the jackass logo (the skull and crutches) on my back and the reason I regret it is because it looks like shit and it’s the bloody jackass logo. Whenever someone points it out it reminds me of how stupid I was. I got it when I was 15 I am now 21. Time to cover up, I think.
Danille
I was at the bus stop on my way to school and accidentally jumped on the bus going the opposite way to town, I was 16 and got a rose on my boob. I’m now in my 30s and I hate it SOOOO much!
Natasha
Just saw a woman on Queen st who had a Pikachu tat behind her right ear . . . Regret that much babe?
Tara
Tweety bird on my stomach! When I was 17!!! DUMB IDEA!! Looks like big bird when I’m pregnant.
Lucie
I made my mind up on a Tuesday and walked in off the street on the Thursday morning to a tattoo place just down the road from my work, Dermagraphics tattoo studio, in Auckland.
Working on the front desk was the heavily tattooed Mel, an attractive girl with an impish, pixyish look. Both her wrists were covered in tattoos of buttons. I mentioned I liked them and she thanked me and explained that ‘Buttons’ was her nickname. Then it occurred to me that people with tattoos must get this all the time—strangers commenting on their work. This sounds like a nuisance to me but I suppose if you get work done on a body part that other people are going to see, suddenly it becomes a bit more public and a bit less personal.
Buttons flicked through the booking diary and said her afternoon was blank. We agreed I’d come back to get the work done at 1.30.
I typed my tattoo subject into Google and ran an image search. I printed off a couple of pages and took them back with me. I thought Buttons would have a good idea of what image would look best permanently dug into human skin.
Mel showed me a photo and told me a story about a lady she had worked on in the morning. ‘She’s fifty-five years old and has wanted a tattoo her whole life but her husband told her she wasn’t allowed. They broke up and her new man is a biker, he’s covered in tats, so he helped her design it.’
It was a big skull on her left bicep with the slogan ‘Born to be Baaad’ and, yes, there were two additional vowels! Seems like this old girl had a fair bit of catching up to do—because apart from the tattoo informing the reader that she was baaad, you would never have guessed.
We went into the studio where my work would be done. I took my shirt off and perched myself on the white leather bed, my legs dangling over the side and my back facing Mel.
I had no idea what to expect. The week had been busy, so I hadn’t really given any thought to it. I knew it would be painful, everyone says it is, but because so many people have them these days I reasoned that it couldn’t be that painful. Lots of real weedy-looking little guys have them—my pain tolerance has gotta be higher than those guys!
Boy, was I wrong about that. More on the pain soon.
As Mel was stencilling my lower back and getting her needle and colours sorted, we got talking. She told me she was an artist who had stumbled into this line of work three years earlier. She was always into art and claims she could draw before she could even talk. She got her first tattoo when she was nineteen, ‘and it was all downhill from there’.
I asked her about the very first tattoo she gave. As far as first day on the job nerves go, this would have to be right up there with being a surgeon, I reckon.
I don’t know about you but there is NO WAY I would want the honour of being the first-ever client of a tattoo artist. Inexperience plus nerves are a dangerous combo for something so permanent.
Her first piece was a pair of wings on the feet of a young man.
‘He was an exchange student who lived at my parent’s house. He didn’t have any tattoos and I hadn’t tattooed anyone so we were both freaking out a bit. It was real funny, too, because I started and it wasn’t leaving much of a mark and he was like, “Oh wow, this doesn’t hurt a bit,” and he was a real wimp. And the guy who I apprenticed under, he went, “Okay, I need to show you something,” so he sat down and did one little line and the kid was like, “Holy shit! That hurts! That hurts,” then my mentor handed me the gear back and said, “Don’t be afraid to get right in there.”’
What a story to hear just minutes before the work on my back was to commence. I don’t know which quote made me more nervous—the ‘Don’t be afraid to get right in there,’ or the ‘Holy shit, that hurts, that hurts.’
Her tutor essentially told her that if it doesn’t hurt you ain’t doing it right.
I asked Buttons if she makes many stuff-ups these days.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever made a big enough mistake for anyone but me to notice, you know? Every mistake I’ve ever made has always been fixable.’
This was a reassuring answer.
‘What are the most common tattoos people get in this spot?’ I asked her. I was getting my tattoo right at the bottom of my back, just an inch or two up from my bum. Tattoos in this location are commonly referred to as ‘tramp stamps’.
‘Not many guys get that area done,’ Buttons said, telling me what I already knew. ‘It’s usually women and the most common things are butterflies or tribal designs.’
I was surprised I didn’t even get a chance to back out, just a casual ‘Now, are you SURE you want to do this?’ I would have thought something like this would be covered by some sort of code of conduct or rulebook. Maybe it is just something tattooists with a conscience say to younger clients. Buttons probably thought, and rightly so, that this client was old enough and ugly enough to get a tattoo without a lecture.
I asked her if she had ever talked anyone out of getting something done.
‘Yeah, I always try to talk people out of getting their significant others’ names on them,’ she confessed. She seemed quite proud of this sensible stance of hers.
I was quite pleased to hear that, too. If you must get a name on your body, get your kids’ names. They will be part of your life forever, even if they grow up and only call twice a year (sorry, Dad). But your lover’s name?
I have always thought that was a really bad relationship jinx.
When I was still at school I had a part-time job packing groceries at Foodtown. This was back when there were two people on each checkout—an operator and a packer. There was an older woman who I would work with some days who had her husband’s name tattooed on her right bosom. His name was Eugene. I know this because during a quiet spell one day she told me this titbit about her, well, tit bit. Then she unzipped the front of her smock and showed me, right there at aisle 13. I warned her that if they ever split up she would have a hard time replacing him, because there are not too many men by that name in the Eugene pool. She didn’t laugh. I explained the wordplay to her. She still didn’t laugh. After that she went out of her way to avoid working with me. Bit rude—she was the one who flashed me in the workplace.
I asked Buttons if she had ever been successful in talking someone out of getting a name done.
‘Yes. And I felt really bad about it too, because he was a younger guy. He was like twenty-two or twenty-three or something. He came in and he wanted to get his girlfriend’s name on his ring finger.’ I liked this story already. Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson exchanged ring-tattoos when they got married. The tattoos survived. Their marriage? Not so successful.
‘He set the appointment without discussing what he wanted and he came in and I started talking to him and he’s like, “Yeah, I’m proposing to her this weekend,” and I was like, listen, she’s your girlfriend and she hasn’t said yes yet? Maybe wait ten years or fifteen years down the line then look at doing that. At least wait until after she says yes! And he laughed and was like, “Yeah, you’re right. She hasn’t said yes yet,” and when he left he was like, “Wow, what if she doesn
’t even say yes?” And I felt bad because I made him question his relationship.’
She did the right thing. Some of us guys often confuse really romantic gestures with really stalkerish gestures. We mean well but just miss hitting the target sometimes.
Romantic gestures:
Picnics in secluded spots
Hot air balloon rides
A boat ride on a lagoon (like in The Notebook)
Romantic gestures (that can seem a bit stalky) :
Getting her name tattooed as a surprise
Breaking into her apartment and sprinkling rose petals everywhere the day after your first date
Buying her a big bunch of sunflowers on a first date because you checked out her Facebook page and found out that was her favourite flower
It can be a fine line, but most girls will let you know if they really want something. So it’s a brave man who makes assumptions as bold as getting her name inked.
Button was ready. She started and so did the pain. IT WAS INTENSE!
She warned me that the outline would be pretty uncomfortable but the colouring-in bit would be a bit more manageable. All up it should take about forty minutes or so, she estimated. Fortunately we were done and dusted in exactly thirty-two minutes.
I am a self-confessed wuss and my pain threshold is ultra-low, so this was a gruelling half-hour. I mean, I wasn’t crying or begging Buttons to stop, but it did hurt like hell. I am not a particularly sweaty person but beads of the salty stuff were dripping down my arms and onto my jeans from my armpits.
Tattoo face. The face of a man in extreme discomfort.
To describe the pain I would say it probably feels like someone getting a ballpoint and digging the nib deep into your skin then slowly slicing down and around. I’ve never done that with a pen but I can’t imagine it’d be much fun.
My whole body felt like it was about to combust, especially the area that was being tattooed—that was throbbing.
Courageously, I got through it and made a promise to myself that I would have a new-found respect for any person who has a tattoo.
The respect would be limited only to their pain tolerance though. I couldn’t promise myself that I would refrain from taking the piss out of their design.
Buttons covered up her artwork with glad wrap, charged me $160 for my very first tattoo—a tramp stamp—and sent me on my way.
Mum came over that evening. I showed her and her response was not all that favourable. She was laughing but she didn’t really seem amused: ‘For goodness sake. Yuck. At least it’s in a place where you can cover it.’
Here I was thirty-eight, practically a middle-aged man, and I felt Mum’s disapproval. I half expected her to get the scrubbing brush from the laundry and attempt to scrub it off, like she did with the Dukes of Hazzard tattoo I’d given myself thirty years earlier.
‘Do you get the joke?’ I asked her. She shook her head.
I explained the joke to her.
The comedy value of a joke is always diminished by at least 50 per cent if it needs to be explained by the teller.
Even then I didn’t get the desired reaction. Nope. Even when the old lady had been told the thinking behind the work, there was still no laugh. Fuck me. The visual joke which I was now committed to for life might not even be a good one. Maybe I should have sounded out a few trusted friends first, like trying material out on a test audience.
I showed a few workmates. The reactions were mixed. It seemed the joke was way more subtle than I had thought.
Fortunately, my real friends—people on Facebook who I have never met—they seemed to like it:
So freaking awesome. How can you regret
that?
Alana
O for awesome!
Fran
So funny and such a random thing to get!
haha
Hope
There is nothing to regret about that
that’s so funny and SO kiwi.
Belinda
Too funny and Dom I bet that thing hurt,
looking at the pictures with your spine
bone poking out. Bugger that
Jess
LMAO! That’s some funny shit
Suzanne
Love it Dom. I have one in the same area and proud of it, I don’t care if it is called a tramp stamp. Mine has special meaning as most people’s do.
Kerrie
So, was the goal achieved? Did I get a tattoo that I would immediately regret?
I have to say, mission well and truly accomplished.
If I am at a restaurant leaning forward and my shirt lifts up, I feel self-conscious.
When I take my nephew to the swimming pool, I feel self-conscious.
On a hot day if I run without my top on, I feel self-conscious.
Occasionally I forget it is even there, like when I was in line for a Mr Whippy at the beach over summer, shirt off of course. Then you can hear sniggering or whispers from those behind you and it serves as a reminder: ‘That’s right! I have a tattoo on the small of my back, a tramp stamp.’
Will I get it removed? No way. I’ve heard the removal is twice as painful as getting the work done in the first place so that is not an option.
My mum’s big concern was how I would feel about it when I am a seventy-year-old man. I suspect that if I am lucky enough to make it to that number I will probably have far more things to get embarrassed about than a faded old joke tattoo I got in my thirties. While I am in a nursing home having some poor nurse clean me up after I shit my pants during a tense game of housie, it definitely won’t be the tattoo that is the cause of my humiliation!
I present to you . . . (drum roll) . . . the world’s first ever LITERAL TRAMP STAMP!
JUMP OFF THE TALLEST BUILDING IN NEW ZEALAND
I’ve always hated scary theme park rides and all those thrillseeker activities that all New Zealanders are supposed to be right in to. You know, that adventurer spirit of guys like Sir Edmund Hillary and AJ Hackett.
I have parachuted, twice. The jumps were five years apart. I can safely say there will never be a third time.
The first time was in my early thirties. Up to that point there had been numerous opportunities to skydive but I always avoided it because I was absolutely petrified at the thought. But there I was, in Fiji for the filming of a reality TV show, Treasure Island: Couples at War, with my wife, Jay-Jay Feeney, who is even less daring than I am, and we were told by the show’s host, Jon Stevens, that to start the series all contestants would have to parachute onto the deserted island where the show would be filmed. This was bullshit for the telly, of course. Yes, the island was uninhabited but the crew had no trouble getting there by boat. If any of the contestants refused to jump, the team they ended up being on would lose half their rations of rice before the game had even properly started. I really did not want to be ‘that guy’, the dick on a reality TV show who refused to jump, let his team down, then got sent packing in the very first episode and ended up looking like a pathetic loser in front of the entire country.
So Jay-Jay and I both faced one of our greatest fears and went up 10,000 feet in a helicopter and did a tandem skydive, landing on a sandbar on a deserted island. I had done it. I could not believe it. This was something I had been avoiding my whole life and it was nowhere near as frightening as I’d built it up to be—only a tiny bit of wee came out. I would almost go as far to say I enjoyed the experience. I made a pact with myself that day that if I ever had the opportunity to jump again, so long as it was in a place as pretty as Fiji, then I would do so without hesitation, my illogical logic being that if I was going to plummet to a gruesome death I would want the ground I was racing towards to be scenic, something that was easy on the eye.
After that first jump I think I went through the same thing women go through with childbirth (only on a far greater scale than silly old childbirth), where the experience is harrowing, traumatic and excruciatingly painful . . . but afterwards the relief and rush of endorphins
is so great that you somehow block out the memory of how horrible it truly was.
And that is how, five years later, I again found myself inside a rickety old jump plane in the gorgeous South Island resort town of Wanaka, circling up to a height of 10,000 feet (that’s about three kilometres in the sky).
As the plane got higher and the ground got further away from us, I remembered just how much this sort of stuff gives me the absolute shits and decided that if I managed to survive this jump, I would drop the promise I made myself and never ever do it again!
We reached our desired height and then I jumped out with a big Yugoslavian man, my tandem master, strapped behind me, as if we were attempting to join the mile-high-spoon club.
I reckon on both these occasions the only reason I jumped out of the aircraft in the first place was due to the bloke attached to me, breathing onto the back of my head. Abort the jump and I’d be letting someone else down.
As I was falling out of a plane three kilometres up in the air, having an ugly
skydive face was the least of my concerns.
The big Yugoslavian fella informed me he had jumped 9000 times before so my odds of survival seemed pretty good, I reasoned. But for the forty seconds that I plummeted through the air at terminal velocity, with the ground rushing up towards me, I was convinced a gruesome death was imminent. The enjoyment I got from the skydive jump was all relief-based and only came when the chute popped open and jolted me and my Yugoslavian daddy to a glide. That’s the moment you realise you have cheated death.
So, as a general rule of thumb, I avoid all these sorts of activities. I CAN do them—I have proven that to myself—I would just rather not. This seemed to be a good reason to put a new extreme thrillseeking activity on my bucket list —the Sky Jump from the Auckland Sky Tower.
