 How many times have proud young people, all excited about their first tattoo, with the ink still fresh on their skin, gone home and had their enthusiasm crushed when they were given a harsh telling off by their parents, laughed at by their friends or picked on by their teachers or colleagues? Thousands or millions, it makes no difference, I'm sure it has happened to just about everyone with some kind of body art. it happened to me too, several times, way back when. When I was younger, my piercings and tattoos were always the cause of long faces, tellings off and a little (or a lot of) animosity. But I was a punk, I was absolutely fearless and I didn't need to be part of the system, I didn't need anyone's approval, I didn't need anything, especially my parents.
Time has flown by since then, I have found my way in life regardless of my parents and their idea of existence, which definitely wasn't mine. My relationship with them, which was volatile for years, has slowly mellowed over the years. Now that I'm well over 30 and have a life of my own, without being supported by my folks for more than 15 years now, the tribal decorations on my body are (and have always been) part of who I am and something I'm proud of. They express my personality and I want to keep them with me until my soul is released into the unknown, after my body has ceased to live.
Mum, here's a tattoo for you
My parents lived their life parallel to mine, without ever showing any particular interest in the things I did, my activities or my attitude to life, until there was a chance turnaround a few years ago. For my mum's birthday I decided to give her a rather unusual present, a gift that to my surprise she accepted. I gave her a tattoo, a gift for life, forever, much more so than a diamond. I asked her what liked, showed her a few designs and we soon arrived at the final choice, a rose. We went to my tattoo artist friend, who was very excited to be tattooing an average, fifty-plus woman who ran a grocery store. While the rose was making its indelible mark on my mum's wrist, I asked her if she was excited, if it hurt and so on. She was the most relaxed I had ever seen her, she didn't feel any pain, worry or nerves. In fact her expression showed enthusiasm and a sense of joy. Once the rose was in place on her wrist, the tattoo artist went through the checks and precautions for the scars to heal properly, then, almost silently, I took her home.
Justice for all
I had clearly created a monster. My mother was on such a high that after just a few weeks she already wanted another one. She kept on at me to take her back and get another tattoo but it was my father's turn next. After years of dillydallying, he had decided to get a tattoo on his bicep depicting the Metallica album cover "And Justice For All", with the marble statue of Justice with good and bad in her scales, a euphemism that has always attracted my father, not least because he is a Libra.
My parents kept on at me so we soon went back to the tattoo artist for my father and at the same time my now unstoppable mother, who got two more tattoos that evening. She went for tribal designs that time: an armband on her right bicep and a classic tribal on her left calf. It was a long night for my tattoo artist friend, my mother was unstoppable and if there had been more time she would have got another. My father on the other hand stopped after the scales of justice, although he hadn't suffered too much with his first tattoo experience.
As for myself, with my many tattoos collected over twenty years, after suffering the lectures and animosity of my parents for my way of life and my love of tattoos and piercings throughout my adolescence, now I well and truly got my own back. I had made sacrifices (like many others), as a pioneer of these art-forms, suffering oppression and injustice from the outside world (that my parents were a part of) until, one day, they also had the chance to become proud, tattooed members of society, without suffering (too much) absurd and unjustified discrimination.
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