I have many tattoos and a few that have wandered into the dreaded “Below the Elbow” territory. Having tattoos opens a new realm of conversations you can have with total strangers from simple inquires to astonishment to looks of fear and loathing. I get asked about them a lot and I am always open to showing them off or explaining why I get tattoos. For as long as I can remember I have always wanted a tattoo I used to look at friends of my Dads and Grandfathers arms and dreamed of the day I could wear one on my arm. I recall quite clearly a friend of my Grandfathers named Val who had a large dancing woman on his right forearm. It was old the lines were terribly thick but it held years of fascination in my eyes. Below the woman he had a large solid blue square and below that his wife’s name. I would later learn that the large blue square covered another woman’s name, a woman who was not his wife. By today’s standard it was terrible work but back during WWII when he got it I can imagine it was a beautiful piece.
I had told my parents for years that I wanted a tattoo and I always got the standard reply “When you turn 18″ so the day came when I turned 18 and I headed off to the “Parlor”. I skipped school that day just to get a tattoo and I kept it a total secret, no one, not even my girlfriend knew I was getting it. I had chosen a meat cleaver symbolic of my last name (and no my last name is not Cleaver) before I knew it I was in the “Chair” having ink permanently added to my skin. It didn’t hurt as bad as I had been told or it could have been the fact that about 10 years of wanting and dreaming had blocked out the pain. When the artist was done I got my first look in the mirror, I was in love. I liked the way it looked on my skin, the way it moved when my flesh moved, the way it made my skin just a little more perfect that it was prior.
You will hear people say that tattoos are addictive and I am here to tell you they are, I now have 9. Each one holds an incredibly personal meaning to me. You can find a record of many milestones in my life on my skin; a dragon clutching a Maltese Cross aka the Firefighters cross with the number 171 in one of the wings of the Cross which I got when I graduated the Fire Academy down south and the 171 was my badge number, the dragon a symbol of protection. My kids names surrounded by Irish art and symbols. I have the Patron Saint of Fire Fighters on my forearm and the Legend of Lir circling my right bicep as it was depicted in the “Book of Kells”which is symbolic of leaving something you can never return to. Each one means something to me and tells a story of where I was in my life at that time. I can tell you which artist put what on me and why I wanted it that way. I never got one because it was the “cool thing” to do I got each one because I wanted in someway to make my skin more appealing to me, I think many hundreds of hours of therapy could explain this.
My mom always asks when am I going to stop getting tattoos and I always tell her, when I run out of skin to put them on.
Saint Florian on my Right Forearm
