The Writer's Guide to Tattooing (And Other Body Modification)
Hello, and welcome to a very niche essay! As someone who spends a ridiculous amount of time researching various obscure (or not) topics for stories, I am hoping to give a little back, in my own way. I've read many stories featuring various tattooing, piercing and so forth. Most have been excellent. Some have made me sigh, and wonder, and thus this little essay. I'm writing it as an unusual reference guide, as inspiration perhaps, and because I think this is one of those things in which, unless you have immediate experience, it's more difficult than usual to find accurate answers. Because of this, I'm not going to go into what tattooing actually is, but rather some of the little oddities I've noticed over the years, and things that you all, as writers and readers, may not automatically think of.
My qualifications are not what you'd call legion. I've got several tattoos and have or had multiple piercings of several sizes over the years. All of this information is very much based on my experiences getting tattooed, healing them, and what is and isn't possible. As I know less about piercing, that will be more of a postscript, along with various other methods that we've come up with, as humans, to change how we look. If you've got any more questions, or just want to chat about body modification, please feel free to drop me a line on my blog -- obviously, I love this kind of stuff! For further information from people who have much, much more experience than I do, I've found the Body Modification Ezine (BME) invaluable. (I should note here that BME is not what you'd call safe for work.)
Tattoos: Can I put one...you know...there?
Let's start off with some good news. You can put a tattoo on your character anywhere your heart so desires. Anywhere. As long as there is skin to take the ink, you can put a design there – possibly a very, very simple design, but it'll stay for a few years at least. (Yes, some tattoos are impermanent! Those done on the inside of the mouth or the hands tend to fade very quickly, due to their location.)
Bearing in mind that the chosen body part will have one or several very fine needles being poked into it at very high speeds...well, there's always topical anesthetic!
Oh, and yes, scarred skin can be tattooed, although some artists may choose not to, depending on the extent of keloiding. (That's when the scar tissue is lumpy and stands proud of the surrounding skin.)
Any color can be tattooed, though white ink can be iffy, particularly on Caucasian skin. There's even UV ink now!
It hurts, right?
Yes. Yes, it hurts a lot. I have a matched set of swallows on my ribs, and I can assure you that the next time I feel pain like that, I will probably be giving birth. The tops of the feet are the other horrible place – basically, anywhere that the gun might go over skin that's stretched right over bone. (This does lead to a very neat, but very startling sensation when you can feel the entire bone vibrate, incidentally.)
That said, it doesn't hurt that much. With the exception of the tenderest bits, your body starts releasing endorphins, and the pain turns into an uncomfortable vibration. I've had work done that actually felt quite nice at points, thanks to those endorphins and several layers of muscles and fat. There's a period of about ten minutes at the beginning that is pure hell, and then everything settles down – for awhile, anyway. This is why small tattoos hurt so damn much, incidentally! Your body doesn't have time to adjust to the pain.
So, dude can get his back done and then go out cruising, right?
Er, no. Well, probably not, anyway. I wouldn't say that no one ever managed that, but it relies on a level of pain tolerance and ignoring aftercare that most mortals do not reach.
Remember when I said that after that first ten minutes, the hurting goes away for awhile? Well, at some point it comes back – for me, this is at about the one-hour mark, or thereabouts. At that point, everything hurts and you're getting reasonably tired and muddle-headed from the pain. Usually a 10- or 15-minute break (and a cigarette and/or candy bar) will put one back to rights, but not indefinitely. One of my tattoos was around 3 hours, off and on, and I do not recommend that.
For very large pieces, usually the outline is done first, generally with a single needle inking a black line. Color ink can be added at the next session, or in the same session after the outline is done. If you are thinking right now that it sounds awfully painful to tattoo skin that's already oversensitive and a bit abused from the outlining, you would be entirely correct. Again, though – after awhile your body's pain response kicks in, and you get more or less used to the pain.
And, in the most practical of answers, any artist worth his or her salt will bandage the tattoo, because really, you are dealing with an open wound. I, personally, bleed like a stuck pig while I'm getting inked. Open wounds and going out cruising aren't particularly good bedfellows, I have to say.
Also, don't forget that being in pain is actually quite exhausting. You're dealing with an adrenaline crash, possibly plummeting blood sugar, and all the various other effects. That said, I once got some work done, then followed it up with some fairly physical carpentry for a few hours, so take my warning as you will.
Okay, but can he go out in a few days?
Yes! You heal a scratch in a few days, right? Same with ink. Although various other healing factors come into play, my favorite being when the skin starts to peel.
Because – and I think this is always pretty cool – it's a thin, colored layer of skin that peels off, usually around a week into the healing process. It looks completely gross, I'm afraid, and is rather itchy, but once the skin is gone, everything is all healed up, and hands, mouths, etc. can go to town.
I should note that it's possible to get true scars, which can lead to variable results. I was quite bad with aftercare on a pair of tattoos I got a few years back, and they healed with what looked like tiny lightening bolts running through them – scars, where the ink hadn't taken. I was lucky in that the end product was lovely in its own way, but this isn't always the case. (I did wind up getting the tattoos re-done, which is always a possibility.)
Ink shmink. I wanna put holes in him.
Piercing! It's quick, it's painful, it's shiny. What's not to love?
Getting piercings done is fairly straightforward, so this section will be a bit short, because there's frankly not a lot of mystery around sticking needles in various bits, followed by rings, barbells, or other shaped bits of the inert metal or plastic of your choice.
That which I most did not expect was how very sensitive to temperature changes nipple piercings can be. Think about it: what happens when you walk into a very cold place from a very warm place? Now add what it essentially an open wound and put some metal in it! This is exactly as strange, horrible and wonderful as it sounds.
Aftercare also seems to be magically ignored. I feel odd harping on about this because these are stories, after all, and I'm not giving you all real-life instructions. But if you're married to realism, I have some bad news for your characters. While a piercing heals, for anywhere from three to four weeks, no hands that haven't been scrubbed, and no mouths on it. The healing time varies, of course, depending on the piercing; I had some that hadn't actually healed in two years when I gave in and took them out, but things like a Prince Albert generally heal very quickly and cleanly. But, really – you don't want your mouth on a healing bit of body, so get creative!
I've covered the two most common body modifications, but there are, of course, others: implants, stretching, cutting, tongue splitting, voluntary amputation...people are infinitely creative, is what I'm trying to say. And I hope I've helped add a bit to our collective creativity with this!
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