tattoo, adventure, fun, malevich, owwwww

Typ­i­cal­ly, my birth­day sucks.

Not for the reg­u­lar rea­sons – my wife usu­al­ly goes all out – I just seem to have bad luck on the day. And with it a lot of shit­ty memories.
 

SO WHAT THE HELL should I do for my birth­day? Which hap­pened this past Sat­ur­day. With a ZERO in the year. I mean, I ac­tu­al­ly tried to make plans.

Do I want to meet friends at a bar? How bout just hang out with flom­mists, or just my wife, daugh­ter, or old friends that found me on Facebook?

Eat some­where I like – or go to SF­MO­MA and point at things, try to take fo­tos of their ‘no cam­eras al­lowed’ mod­ern art col­lec­tion with­out get­ting caught?
 

Been there done that.

What I haven’t done yet is get inked.

And it seemed just im­pul­sive enough.
 

“If you want a tat­too, draw it out on a piece of pa­per – leave it on your fridge for about six months. If you’re okay with it, then get it.”
—Gary Nether­ton
 

Gary told me that about ten years ago. And along the way, I start­ed draw­ing on my arms. A lot. And in one of my class­es, when tat­toos came up, Ter­ran and Sarah – who drew on their arms too – even said they’d pay for my ink.

I would just lose in­ter­est in what I was drawing. 

Or I’d change my mind. I change my mind a lot = the FLOMM ex­pect change thing. Al­ways into some­thing else.

Not great for ink.
 

At one point, I had lunch with my moth­er – who dis­gust­ed­ly let me HAVE IT for HAV­ING A TAT­TOO. “Your fa­ther was a sailor in World War II and he nev­er got a tat­too. They’re so disgusting!”

“But this isn’t a tat­too, I just drew on my arms …”

“Why would you do some­thing so dis­gust­ing? It’s as hor­ri­ble as the real thing …”

“YEAH,” said the woman from the OTH­ER table –

SUD­DEN­LY I was be­ing at­tacked by TWO OLD­ER WOMEN with the same hair­style. And they were RELENTLESS.
 

A LIT­TLE WHILE lat­er I’m on the phone with my wife:

“I just got in trub­ble for hav­ing a tattoo.”

“You don’t have a tattoo.”

“YOU tell THEM that. There were TWO OF THEM. COM­ING AT ME with BOTH BAR­RELS. NOW I have to GET A TAT­TOO cause I’m in trub­ble for it.”
 

SO THIS PAST FRI­DAY NIGHT I start­ed mes­sag­ing peo­ple. A whole bunch.

WHERE could I get this done?

WHO could do it?

HOW busy do tat­too places get?

THEN I START­ED call­ing around noon on SAT­UR­DAY – birth day – and my wife and I hit the road by noon thirty.

I got a cool rec­om­men­da­tion from flom­mist Erin – tho it was cash only, and guess what? Not enough cash till my next pay cheque.

And no cash avail­able through oth­er means, which in­clud­ed a few phone calls to cus­tomer ser­vice, a cou­ple ATM vis­its and me just whin­ing a whole bunch about how teach­ers are paid.
 

I’ve been show­ing Kaz­imir Male­vich’s work in my his­to­ry class since 2003.

And I now teach a BAU course (much re­lat­ed) – AND the FLOMM game is tied into all this. 

Malevich’s Sen­sa­tion of Flight (1914–15, above) HAS to be the tat­too. Only prob­lem: Get­ting those lines as per­fect a match as possible.

EVEN THOUGH them Male­vich rec­tan­gles seem sim­ple, they are NOT. His work isn’t just some ran­dom box­es in a square.

Luck­i­ly, there IS a flom­mist for that. 

Tat­too artist Kim­ber­ly Stone was talk­ing shop at our 4.23 event last year.

BUT she’s been hard to get a hold of late­ly. LONG STO­RY there.

She WAS the first per­son I texted. But no word yet so we kept look­ing at oth­er options.
 

An­oth­er flom­mist rec­om­mend­ed a tat­too par­lor that takes cred­it cards. 

But their BEST ARTIST wasn’t in on my birth­day. Tho ac­cord­ing to the bro on the fone, there were “a bunch of oth­er artists on site who could eas­i­ly do any­thing you want. Any­thing at all, man.”

Not ac­cord­ing to Yelp.
 

Was just about to GIVE UP when Kim­ber­ly texted back. WE FOUND HER. Said she’d do it.

Just had to fig­ure out where she was. WHAT TOWN SHE WAS IN. AND this was not go­ing to be easy. And she isn’t work­ing out of a shop right now. And her phone wasn’t hold­ing a charge.

BUT she gets what Male­vich is about, ‘Male­vich has every­thing im­bal­anced, he IS still fuck­ing with everyone.”

Kim­ber­ly is also a for­mer stu­dent of mine – so she learned some ty­pog­ra­phy and work habits from me. And de­tail. She’s ex­cep­tion­al at pre­cise detail.

Which in­clud­ed us hav­ing to find THE RIGHT NEE­DLES for this job. Which was ALSO not go­ing to be easy.

BUT it would mean a lot to have a tat­too done by a real flommist.

And about an hour in, we fig­ured out where she was. Sort of. It didn’t help that our car was filled with ma­te­ri­als for an art show. AND Kim­ber­ly came with her own gi­ant bags of supplies.
 

She fit, but barely.

Up next was get­ting new nee­dles – at a store that was closed. BUT we found the own­er just a few blocks away and bribed him with smokes.
 

THEN af­ter a bot­tle of BLUE SODA, the mis­sion to FIND A PLACE TO WORK was an­oth­er thing. That went on for hours. 

And in­volved a McDonald’s de­signed to keep peo­ple from charg­ing their de­vices. No elec­tri­cal out­lets, but got to try the new MAC Jr™ (bleh!) and use a re­stroom where all the mir­rors had been removed.
 

We end­ed up at a small place – not even sure where. No one knew the ad­dress. But we got to watch Tom Han­ks in Bridge of Spies (2015) and point at Al­fred Moli­na (what­ev­er hap­pened to him?) in Se­cret in Their Eyes (2015) on a GI­ANT tee vee with two of the nicest peo­ple ever.

And there was a bro out­side look­ing to hire a new prostitute.

So this ad­ven­ture start­ed at a half hour – but that turned into an hour – then two hours – even­tu­al­ly we hit 8 hours.
 

Kim­ber­ly made a few tem­plates, and ex­plained how hard it is to ac­tu­al­ly get the edges right – and how the sten­cil used can trick out where the ink is – mean­ing, in a few days, a be­gin­ning artist could have the cus­tomer com­ing back won­der­ing why chunks of the tat­too sort of washed away.
 

“Do you have a razor?”

I gave a blank stare. 

“You have to shave your arm.”

My wife had a ra­zor in her purse.

What is my wife do­ing with a ra­zor in her purse??
 

Kimberly’s been at it for six years. And her work just keeps get­ting better.

And I’m lov­ing the re­sults. Pre­ci­sion. With a lit­tle pain.
 

And lots of ad­vice for heal­ing – “Thin lay­er of Aquaphor for the first two days; usu­al­ly every­one puts too much on, thin lay­er. And give it lots of air, air is what works.”
 

So what’d you do on your birthday?
 
 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM! Fo­tos by Steve and Jeanne Mehal­lo, book fea­tured in some of the im­ages: The Na­ture and Art of Mo­tion, edit­ed by Gy­or­gy Kepes, 1965. HUGE FLOMM thanks to all par­ties involved.

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