by Ian Heller

Created on: May 19, 2008   Last Updated: May 20, 2008

WHO NEEDS VERSACE WHEN YOU HAVE BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD STYLE

I have 15 tattoos. I expect to get my sixteenth this summer and 17 is fomenting in my brain. People do not believe I have tattoos. Many assume that because I did not grow up in a subway tunnel amidst the overgrown rats, raw sewage and collective filth that called itself lower Manhattan in the seventies and eighties that I cannot want a tattoo.

I have a tattoo on my hand and four on my wrists which ooze out my shirts-sleeves. None of my tattoos are dramatic, like those on my tattoo-artist, whose name is Big Steve. He is covered from head to butt-crack in ink. He looks like something Mike Judge thought up. You know, Beavis, Butthead and Big Steve.

Still, my candy-stripe Brooks Brothers button-down is more real to many people than the large black tattoo around my wrist which states, "fast cheap out of control." Or the equally compelling tattoos on the other wrist which state "misfit toy" and "Painted Bird". Go figure.

I'm trying real hard to be a hoodlum. But it's not working. Before the tattoos, I was a preppy. Now, I am a preppy with tattoos. The only things the tattoos have done is to advance the preppy art-form. I have stopped telling people I was reared in the Bronx. Nobody believes me. Like Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "I get no respect."

CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS

My tattoo artist, Fun City's Big Steve, is all Beavis and Butthead Style until its time to tattoo. Then, he is all business. He wears rubber gloves and a face-mask. His workspace is continually being cleaned with a cleaning solution that smells more than faintly of Clorox. And his equipment is sterilized in a machine that looks like a microwave. Nothing is hidden. The current Health Department license is in the front of the store for customers to review.

I was a defense attorney once. I handled several cases of botched tattoos, in which patrons allegedly contracted hepatitis from dirty needles. All the plaintiffs were probably correct in their allegations. Not that it mattered. None of the parlors had the assets or insurance coverage necessary to protect themselves. The sick patron was therefore SOL.

Think twice before going someplace that is not scrupulously clean. You only have one body. Treat it like a temple. You cannot fix it once it contracts a chronic illness, no matter glib the personal injury attorney you hire once it is too late.

How do you know if a parlor is clean? How do you know anything, really? Use your eyes. Listen. Engage

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