White, black and red all over

By: CADE GRUNST

Posted: 3/7/08

As with all my favorite stories, this one starts with me naked. Since I always strive for honesty, however, I should clarify by mentioning that I was alone. Bummer. I should also mention that I was bleeding, though not profusely, from a shiny new self-inflicted wound. Shaving your legs in the shower is harder than it looks.

I'm not the shaggiest dude around, but I still went through three of those little $2 razor heads as I hacked a circular path around my calf. Fortunately, by that point I was done, so I dried off, dressed and wandered into the living room. My buddy Kyle was there to deride me. "Why not do the whole leg?" he asked.

I'd thought that one through in the shower. "If I did one leg, I'd have to shave the other. Then I'd have to shave my hobbit feet, which seems like more trouble than it's worth. More importantly, I wouldn't know what to do in the other direction. Where would I stop? Mid thigh? Junk height? At that point I might as well go for it and get some bikini work done. In short, I'm stopping at this ridiculous ring to avoid waxing my ass, so leave me alone. Besides, this loop's all I need.

When all you're getting is a tattoo on your leg, there's no reason to shave the rest.

The decision to get inked was one of the harder calls I've made in life, right up there with picking a college or boxers vs. briefs. The number of terrible tattoos I've seen is astronomical, including such gems as a shoe-shaped ankle shamrock, illegible Bible verse and the classic "Daddys Girl" [sic] tramp stamp drawn by an artist too cool for English class. These God-awful designs pale before the unparalleled champion, "HATE" in massive block letters across the forehead of one of Ozzfest's many skin-headed success stories. His mother must be proud.

I wish I could say these are isolated incidents, but then I remember the straight-laced gentleman who rode my bus Wednesdays last summer. I don't recall his face, but the calligraphy on his "P U N K" knuckles was striking. Both hands. Imagine that guy trying to get a job interview. "Well Fred, your credentials are excellent, but I'm afraid your poor life choices don't mix well with that $60,000 degree. Shame."

As a fairly tame white-collared product of suburbia, I never figured myself the tattoo type. The tradeoff isn't great; on one hand you get some lovely social stigma and snap judgments, on the other... black ink imbedded in your skin. But peer pressure is a powerful tool, which is how Kyle and I found ourselves once again in seedy San Francisco prepped and ready for our first tats.

We had appointments for three consecutive days at Black and Blue Tattooing, an establishment recommended by a conspicuous number of awards. Our artist Siri made us feel astonishingly welcome, no mean feat for two pale dudes lost in a body-mod shop run largely by lesbians in an out-of-the-way corner of the craziest city in the state. We left a combined $1,000 poorer, but now I've got a DNA plasmid wrapped around my calf and Kyle's sporting an outrageously large bird on his back.

I think tattooing gets a bad rap. When all was said and done, the process wasn't nearly as sordid as TV had led me to expect. I arrived with conjured visions of needles and blacklights and piercings and smoke and grunge. Honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised by bats. I was almost dissatisfied by the clean, well-lit atmosphere punctuated by wall-hangings and, well, needles. I'd also always heard that tattoos were painful, and I wasn't disappointed on that count. My leg left an unsettlingly bloody double-helix imprint on its towel.

Still, it's worth it every time someone validates my life decisions. Sitting in class a few weeks ago I idly eavesdropped on this gem: "I saw an awesome tattoo yesterday. Some guy had, get this, DNA on his leg!" Yeah, that's me, Cade Grunst: Nerdcore to the max.

CADE GRUNST will show you his if you show him yours. Send him links to your ink at cade@ucdavis.edu.