WARNING – This Post is Gay
…. and will contain at least one expletive.
If this kind of thing disturbs you – please go away now.
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Alright.
There is a certain type of customer. They are always male, but beyond that there is no way to know about this particular predilection ahead of time. Sometimes due to the nature of the tattoo they are receiving it will never even come up. Sometimes a client may have had several tattoos from one artist and the artist is never aware of the situation. Once it happens it is a pretty standard sequence of events.
Because I have been having fun making up names for these we are going to call this guy Kyle. Kyle has several tattoos, one on his shoulder, one on his arm and today he is getting a snarling tiger on his calf (incidentally at least half of the snarling, roaring animals that I have tattooed in my career were actually yawning. people are convinced that tiger they brought me is vicious – and they don’t want to hear anything differently… but I digress…) So Kyle and I are chatting while I am setting up. His stencil has been applied and approved and while it is drying I am putting out the colors that I will use for his tattoo. He looks over and makes the face. It is a pretty distinctive face. A combination or horror and terror which would be perfectly appropriate if I had just put a blood encrusted chisel and hammer onto my workstation. He screws up the courage to speak and in a only semi-controlled panic asks “What is the PINK for?”.
I sigh internally. We are going to have THAT conversation again. “The pink is for his nose.” This never helps. They always come back with “Can’t you use another color?!?”
Since I do not understand this freaky horrible terror of the color pink, I will try to explain that this is the color of his nose. Here – you can see it in the photo. I try to rationally explain that there is nothing wrong with any color. They always try to explain back to me that is “gay”. Now I could write a much longer blog (or probably a full “paper”) on what I personally think of people who are this afraid of things that are “gay”, so I won’t get into it here.
Sometimes I have been able to convince them that no one will notice, sometimes I have to explain that it is the only way to make the image look right and other times I have been reduced to having to throw out the cap full of pink and put out a red and a light beige and explain to them that I will not put any pink in their tattoo – I will only use a light red.
Really. That works. Of course now that I talked about it here, it probably won’t anymore… I’m willing to take the risk.
Now most of you who know me know Joey as well. Joey has worked with me for a really long time and is slightly less tolerant of the Pink Fearing Client. Not the least of this is because Joe has pink (even pink flowers) tattooed on him and he knows that he prefers women.
So I am tattooing away one day listening to Joe have The Conversation with the client in his chair.
He is having a particularly hard time with this guy. The client is adamant that he can not have pink in his tattoo “it’s gay!”. Joey is getting more and more irritated and asking the guy “Do you think that I am gay?”. For those of you who don’t know Joey, I will let you know that he is not only definitely straight but also has a very large collection of exceptionally sharp objects around him at all times. While he can be one of the most entertaining people you will ever meet in person – he is also not a guy you want to directly insult.
The “discussion” is escalating and while the rest of us are still working – we are also listening very very intently to this conversation.
About the point where I am wondering if Joe is going to swing on this guy or just tell him to get the hell out of the shop… Joe stands up and yells at the guy “I don’t know about the pink – but I do know that if you wake up tomorrow morning with a COCK in your mouth, it WASN”T BECAUSE OF THE PINK IN YOUR TATTOO!!!!”
Beautiful. Perfect. I don’t know the rest of the story – if you want to know if the guy actually got the pink or not, you will have to ask Joey. All I know is….
You Can’t Make This Shit Up.
Snarling Tiger Photo lifted from All Posters
Just TeeJay's Blog 
I love Joey. That being said … well, I’m at a loss. I have no idea how you deal with that level of blatant color-phobia. People are idiots.
COLOR-PHOBIA!!! Lisa, that is brilliant! Thank you so much. That is such a great way to describe it.
Like ” Oh, I’m sorry… I didn’t realize that you were a color-phobe.”
that was precious… I will forever be waiting for the opportunity to retell it….”If you wake up tomorrow…”
color-phobic = priceless
cock in mouth from pink flowers = priceless
because I like the way it tastes = should never follow that previous sentence…
LMAO in deepest gratitude
And the friggin’ amazing stupid thing is, pink used to be considered a masculine color! Associated with blood and guts and all that crap. Go figure…
This is a bloody brilliant post.