Origins of my "Coming Out" Tattoo

My first tattoo incorporated a former lover's tattoo and had an allegorical leather-queer theme. We scanned in his tattoo (laying his shoulder against a flat-bed scanner),

scorpion tattoo from former lover's shoulder

then scanned-in a favorite image from 1970s gay leather erotic art,

Leatherfag original

and reworked both in Photoshop as a mockup. The artist who had done my lover's "scorprion" tattoo was excellent on animals but not the right artist for my more elaborate design with its extensive single-needle fine work. So we both searched for a suitable artist and finally found John Chance in New Hope, PA--a nationally renowned second-generation tattoo artist with a MFA from UCLA. I let John Chance work from the mockup and the two originals to produce the final image. It took several hours design work by John before he began to ink. It took four and a half hours to ink and was done in one setting (including even the white detail work put on top of the black work in the Scorpion). It is all single-needle work, and a fine piece of work.

After a while I began to want balance (not symmetry which tends to result in "kitch" designs) with another similar-sized design on my right shoulder. And I wanted it to be similarly leather-Queer. I have a number of "Tom of Finland" prints, and I thought of them, though none that I had in his various retorspective volumes was quite what I wanted. I also have one print by Etienne (aka Stephen and DOM) who did the murals at the old Chicago "Gold Coast" leather bar (many of which now are up in the new Chicago Eagle leather bar). It was closer to what I wanted, but not quite right. So I went throughj old issues of magazines such as Drummer and Meatman that occasionally contained Etienne's work looking for other works of his. By chance I saw an ad for two out-of-print volumes of Etienne's work, so I sent off for them. One of them contained a figure I found attractive that was incorporated into Etienne's advertising trademark. I toyed with trying to remove the figure and do something with it. The figure was breaking out through paper or something, and my initial thoughts did not involve keeping the "breaking out" aspect either. But, then, looking at some tattoo magazines (for inspiration!) I saw various designs where skin was ripped apart to reveal a cyborg mechanism--a kind of design I had encountered before. Suddently, it hit me: Remove the trademark and keep the "bursting out" aspect. I scanned it in and reworked it that way, getting the following image:

Etienne original with trademark portion removed

It just screamed

"Tattoo!"

and I knew I had the design I had been looking for. I also knew John Chance was the right artist for it (despite the quite different style from my first one--John is a very versatile artist). I called and made an appointment for him to do it several weeks later. In the meanwhile the design continued to evolve. Early on it took on a "coming out" symbolism--a celebration of my various comings-out. One of my graduate students, Steve Norton, suggested it would be better if the figure were actually stepping out. I thought he probably was right and then became convinced when I came across the following image in F. Valentine Hooven II's history Beefcake: The Muscle Magazines of America 1950-1970

While I love the delicate fine work of my first tattoo this one was going to be quite a different artistic style--less single-needle work, more large bold segments, and it seemed to me color might effectively be incorporated into the design. I considered making the guy's torso be flesh-colored and also replacing the gray background with a colored one. I sent John Chance my cleaned up Etienne drawing with all the various changes I was contemplating, raising the question of incorporating color.

The night before he inked me, and part of the next day John and I spent about three hours refining the design till we were satisfied with it. (Making the guy be stepping out required reworking the pattern of the tears and we adapted a characteristic Etienne boot for the protruding leg from another Etienne drawing. We decided to give the guy flesh color and to make the eagle on his cap gold. We also decided to postpone the decision whether to go to a varigated grey background within the tear or go with color until we saw how the design was shaping up on my skin. However, we had decided that if we went with color it would be an explosion of colors in the red/orange/magenta spectrum. (The choice of this color spectrum was dictated artistically by the fact that it was essentially a monochrome design except for the tanned flesh tones. No other color spectrum would have worked.) When it finally came time to make the decision, the following became clear: If we went with color, it would give a 3-D effect, propelling him off my skin; if we went with the varigated grey background, he would be mostly inside just beginning to step out. Since the design by now had become a highly symbolic commemoration of my "Coming Out" in so many ways so many times in a progression from the intial self-admission I was gay to being out leather/SM including two long-term relationships, and since the figure now had come to symbolize me, I went with the color: I wanted my icon to symbolize my being decisively out of my many former closets.

Final design as inked

It took four hours to ink me. When we were done and looked it over, both John and I were ecstatic about the job. John thinks it is an exceptional piece and so do I.

John Chance (aka "Dr.Skins") owns Living Arts Tatto Art Gallery and Studio 12 West Mechanic Street, New Hope, PA 18938; 215-862-3816. He charged $150/hr. He also has a shop in Philadelphia staffed by others, but he works almost exclusively from his New Hope studio. He also is lead singer of the Tattoo Blues Band.

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