Page 22 of Tattooed Sweetness

Fortunately, I discover a suitable spot above my left ankle: a palm-sized patch of skin is bare and devoid of any ink as of yet.

“Damnit!” My reflection contorts its face. One of the more unpleasant spots. A 9.5 on my personal pain scale, something I remember all too well from the right leg.But what the heck, special occasions call for special sacrifices…

And off I go, before I change my mind: I go to the kitchen, and wash my hands under warm water, which comes out of the tap after a short time. Back in the tattoo compartment, I catch three pump strokes of disinfectant in my cupped hands. For the prescribed 30 seconds, I rub them into each fold of skin between my fingers. Then I let them air dry briefly and pluck a pair of gloves from the dispenser on the wall.

I cleaned last night, as usual. Now it’s time for preparation.

First, it’s the treatment couch’s turn. I spray it with surface disinfectant, counting the seconds it takes to soak in before wiping it dry with paper towels. Then I roll out about half a meter of cling film on the artificial leather. From one of the drawers, I grab a disinfected pair of scissors, cut two strips, and wrap the TattooButter and Tattoocream jar with it.

Wrapping the workstation with foil is done automatically without thinking: table, couch, and transformer. While I lay out a section of paper towel roll torn to fit exactly on the wrapped tabletop, I hearBig Hammer’s voice in my head:No, Phil, it’s not necessary. But it looks nicer—doesn’t it?

Holy shit.I find myself smirking as broadly as my honorably graying mentor did at his sayings.

With a surprisingly uplifted mood for it being so early in the morning, I grab everything I need for my turning point tattoo from the small cabinet at the front wall of the tattoo compartment. I place the foil-wrapped jars and black, green, and red tattoo ink on the table, ready to hand. I still don’t know the color scheme, let alone the motif.

In addition, I fetch soapy water, skin disinfectant, a wooden spatula, and a disposable razor. Behind it, I put the roll of paper towels, and right to the front, of course, the sanitized tattoo needles. I put the required color pots on the head, so no dust gets in.

I routinely take the handle and the tattoo motor out of the packaging and align both together with the cable for the tattoo machine parallel to the edge of the table.

Bella thinks I am a bit pedantic in this respect.

But I just want to make sure everything is not only clean but also looks clean.

Finally, all that’s missing are the protective cover, a fresh plastic bag for the trash can, and the different colored skin markers. I want to sketch the design directly onto the knuckle.

Only when I have taken off the gloves and disinfected my hands again, it strikes me: Wide-awake as a bell, I don’t need coffee, nor do I need to wait for a client.

“Jackass,” I scold myself jokingly and put on a fresh pair of gloves.

Okay, now it’s getting serious.I feel my pulse quicken as I shave the skin area extensively in front of the mirror. The skin disinfectant not only cools my ankle but also my excitement. To calm myself further, I dry it off with extra emphatic strokes of a ball of paper towels. Now one more, really dense spray on it, then I have to wait until the skin is completely dry.

It takes me a while to find a comfortable sitting position on the treatment couch with my left leg bent. Then I start scribbling away with a red pen because I still can’t think of a suitable motif.

A network of lines emerges almost by itself on my skin, surrounded by an elongated area left blank. My fingers guide the marker, and they condense the strokes, adding depth and highlighting the resulting contour.

Inwardly ready to wipe away a completely unusable sketch with skin disinfectant, I take a careful look. I stumble.Something looks familiar, but what?

Groaning, I heave myself off the couch. I ignore the painful tingling in my lower leg, which has gone dead and stand in front of the mirror.

“Oh my fucking God!”That’s fucking amazing!I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. But my wild scribbling has created something which looks like the striking ensemble of the tower and stepped gable of Mosbach’s town hall…

…and, seen from my perspective, upside down.That’s why I did not recognize the motif at first!

On the ankle of my mirror image, however, the tower rises up the right way.Awesome! No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t imagine anything that would have fit even half as well!

I cap the red marker and grab the blue one to work the outline out of the mazy jumble of lines. But first I relax the muscles in my leg, which went to sleep.

A short time later, the preliminary drawing is finished. No matter how much I twist and turn in front of the mirror, it looks just perfect. No need for improvement.

Like every time I ink myself, my heart sinks to my boots. The blood rushes in my ears as I prepare the machine. I connect the handle to the motor, wrap the cable in the foil sheath, and secure it with a rubber band. But when I finally unpack the needle and place it in the grip piece, my fingers don’t tremble, as they did at the beginning of my career.

With the wooden spatula, I take tattoo butter out of the jar. I spread a little of it as a base for the ink pots. I place the rest on the table with the spatula.

I take another look at the preliminary drawing on my ankle. The wild scribble in red pleases me more than the tidy lines in blue. So, I shake up the red paint well and fill the pots with it.

Finally, I plug in the tattoo gun. I turn it on and off via the foot pedal to test if it works as usual. With a last look, I make sure I’ve put the fine needle bundle into the handle. Fitting for the outlines resembling lines of my wild sketch. Then I dip it into the paint pot with the right speed and needle stroke so it can soak up.

Then comes the bloodbath.

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