Ground Xero: Live from L.A.
Tattoo zoo

By Xanadu Xero
RAW STORY COLUMNIST

I knew that the extragalactic ferry was on approach when we passed through the Auto Plaza Dimension. The surrounding rings of corroded suburbia grew blinding, and even more parched.

Large billboards, like hairless leviathans, leered down at our craft, beaming in codes (MOFO BAIL BONDS, DENTISST IN MINI-MALL) that The End Is Near.

“This is gang territory,” said my boyfriend Aap, with his accusatory eyebrow raised.

We were scudding along, fleet of tire, to the L.A. Tattoo Expo on the almost inconceivably depressing 10 Freeway. I hadn’t mentioned to Aap that the Expo poster said, in big letters, NO COLORS, NO PATCHES, but I figured that if ‘1995 Playmate of the Year Julie Cialini!’ was going to appear ‘LIVE!’ as a Body Art Model, we’d be okay.

The parking guys sniggered when I paid an extra three bucks for ‘preferred’ parking. It got us two hundred feet closer to the Expo hangar, which was, in fact, a mile away. The schlep, however, was its own Vision Quest.

First, we swagged through a dank tunnel (rich with metaphor) hot-footing to avoid the spray of humanity shooting towards us. It was a pungent mix of DNA. The pierced and tattooed were a strange hash scrambled in with the most X-treme… geeks?

Post-underpass, sadly, I saw signs for a Computer Expo as well, dashing my hopes of One World Through Pain and Needles.

The Herpes Simplex — I mean, Pomona Fairplex — boasts the aesthetics of an anxiety dream. Acres of concrete, mottled with anguished flora, erupt in fountains sneezing water of mold-toned grey. We wound through a thicket of ominous structures, past a dead Olde Fashioned Western Towne until — hallelujah! — Expo ahoy.

Greeting us was the specter of a living Tarot Card — The Hanged Man. The palest of fat white guys had his tattoos upstaged by his six implanted… hooks. The hooks were anchored inside his pudge shrouded shoulder muscles, three on each side.

The hooks’ outer portions were threaded with black nylon twine, and Fat White hung, beatific, feet off ground, from a rafter above. The tents of skin around each hook were lobster red, like an Englishman’s ‘tan.’ He looked like a bleached side of beef.

Only cash could pay for the entrance tickets, saying a lot for the promoter’s knowledge of his public. It was, as well, a gesture of solidarity. Can you say “tax evasion?”

Once through the Expo portal, thunderous sights and sounds deluged us with their pounding, psychic surf. I’ve always had tsunami nightmares, but I wake up as I drown. I was not so lucky here. I knew I was awake because no brain’s art direction could match the filigree of Aap’s scowl… which I ignored until he forced my hand.

“What a fucking PIT! Look — its Wall Street in reverse. Bad Ink, Inc.“

I like to call men in suits ‘Clones,’ if only to piss off my family. But I’ve rarely seen the supine, pack-like conformity I was witnessing here.

The young males had shaved heads and drifted churlishly, sporting one of three physiques: meth bony, fat or ‘roid ‘cut.’ Home Depot chains draped three-yard jeans, sunk low to flash butt cracks, some even on purpose. The alpha dogs had neck tattoos and dangling chicks. Chicks without bras or chins, accessorized by calf butterflies above six-inch platform shoes. Some toted screaming brats in ‘Born To Lose’ footie sleepers.

The middle-aged guys were mostly sulking, possum-like slobs with lush nose hair, emblems of the serial unemployed. Their ‘old ladies’ — lank tresses an oxidized red — seemed to wish they had listened to Mom, who warned them that the jerk was a loser.

The true freaks of the Expo were the few old bucks, inked from stem to stern, scalps often included. Natty and energetic, they zipped around, shakin’ hands, makin’ friends — speedy bees in a slo-mo garden.

A thick, life-as-art ‘West Side Story’ thing pulsed in the background, adding texture. The gangbangers were easy to spot, even without ‘colors’ or ‘patches’. They circled each other like that tense scene where the rival gangs agree to all go to a dance at the gym (old, old movie!)

Cops-in-bad-disguise scanned the Expo troops. And everyone kept tabs on Aap, whose long (and clean) blonde hair, Afrikaans accent, non-visible tattoo, shrouding clothes and palpable disgust made him a neon sore thumb.

Aap jerked his chin towards a voluminous lardo in a tattoo booth, who belched while getting his gut festooned with the face of Axl Rose. His other tummy tats had barely daubed the abdominal real estate.

“Now there is something useful for the new administration to promise”, Aap said. “Free tattoos for all stupid and obese Americans.” Then, official: “Fellow Citizens… Help the U.S. cover up its halt of Darwinism due to our worship of ease, outsourced technology and the status quo. Smother your body in Freeway Bridge ‘art’ to steer attention away from your rotting brain.”

“I think that the tattoos look more like velvet paintings.” I replied.

What they really looked like, in point of fact, were bruises. Them pesky tats — those mothers spread eventually, kindred to open pens on Kleenex. Colors fade too, but for that hell-hue, Black Eye Green.

The tattoo designs in the scores of booths were almost the same, which, philosophically, is frightening. All had five distinct ilks:

• Skulls’n’Death, trying for lurid yet reminiscent of an eighth grade Halloween.
• Tribal. Castrated, abridged glyphs. (“Tribal-R-Us”, Aap growled)
• Portraits. Drunk school fair ‘sketch artist’ style: Mom, Satan, Sluts, Saddam Hussein (?)
• Girl Crap: Flowers, cute l’il bugs, etc.
• Words: DAMAGED, FUCK YOU FUCKER, PERV, among the poetics.

I went to the Expo to breathe smog with rebels, dammit! Anarchists! Eccentrics off the grid! What I saw was… a new genus of petty bourgeoisie.

‘Tattoo Enthusiasts’, by chance or plan, have lost their mainstream identity. That can be a beautiful thing… but these microchip souls have regrouped in an alternate ‘mainstream’ not even bound by dreams, or creed.

They’re bound by the fact that they paid a stranger to force ink, sub-epidermis, with a needle.

“So Xan — how come you don’t have a tattoo?” some actor asked me Nyah Nyah Nyah while wondering how to hit on my boyfriend.

“Because I… am a nonconformist,” I said, snotty. “Not a sheep.”

While that is, of course, absolutely, well, pretty true, I, uh… I… still kinda sort of want to get one.

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