BodiArt

Shivering. Not so much from the cold as simply from standing there in line, exposed, my white briefs hanging loosely on my skinny seven-year-old body. I stood with my nose almost touching the boy in front of me, his shoulder blades protruding like freakish wings. The doctor quietly repeated his mantra as each boy stepped to the front of the line: “turn your head and cough”.

I knew the routine. 

The school gave us these physical exams every year in the auxiliary room next to the principal’s office at Franklin Elementary. It wasn't that I minded so much, it was usually over quickly, but this time was different. I had taken my mother's indelible ink pen that she used to write my name on clothes prior to my going off to Camp Waywayyonda, and had been channeling all things Popeye. I drew a large, black anchor on my chest. Having worn it for weeks, a secret emblem of manly seafaring men with forearms the size of Virginia hams, I didn't want to draw attention to it now. Then, with one more step forward, it was my time to turn my head and cough. The doctor looked at me as I stepped up close, dropping his eyes to my tattoo. He smiled briefly, tapped my anchor with his forefinger and gave me a conspiratorial wink before handling my shriveled scrotum as I coughed to one side.

I loved my tattoo, loved knowing it was right there under my shirt...a bold testament to my exotic secret life away from my hood, the white bread streets of a bedroom community, flanked by manicured lawns that were themselves a reflection of my own exterior, manicured, generic, and safe.

Ink transfer tattoos started showing up as prizes in Cracker Jack boxes around that time as well, but they smeared and looked cheap. An indelible ink pen was the way to go.

Fast forward 10 years to the mid 1960's when David Carradine's character in Kung Fu, sported a tattoo Tiger on one forearm and a Dragon on the other. Just cool as hell to me. But they were burn scars from the time Kwai Chang Caine was at his company picnic and picked up the hibachi with his forearms when he saw the hot dogs starting to burn. He had beers in each hand and improvised. Mainly he was trying to impress sweet young Heather Harvey but she just thought he was an idiot.

I had no plans to burn anything, much less myself, but I loved the images.

In college, I asked my roommate, an art major, to use markers to design an elaborate “tattoo” on my left forearm. I really liked that body art and wore it for weeks, washing everything but my forearm when I took a shower. That was in the late 1960's. Little did either of us know that an inked forearm, a “sleeve” would become quite common 45 years later.

In another 10 years, the late 1980's, I started a company called BodiArt Removable Tattoos. We were the first company in the USA to package and sell removable tattoos in retail stores. Up until that time, a guy in Chicago imported removable tattoos from Japan and sold them to vendors who set up tattoo parlors, application stands on boardwalks and at fairs. My partner and I paid a private detective in Chicago $2,000 to find the source. Our guy jumped into the  dumpster of the American distributer and found the contact information for the Japanese manufacturer. Several expensive phone calls and a translator took us one step to the next. Soon, we were in the wholesale business of selling removable tattoos to stores for retail use. In our first month, a motorcycle accessory shop on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, sold over $9,000. of those suckers. But life, and my primary business, took me off in another direction and that was that. For about a year there, my family my friends, my kids and I wore the leftover stock.

My kids looked like circus people.

In the picture here with Ruth, I'm sporting BodiArt tats in an homage to David Carridene's alter ego, Kwai Chang Caine, while Ruth has a lipstick kiss on her cheek. Hannah was only about 4 then, but just as hard headed as now, insisting on wearing the same black ink, big boobed, biker girl sporting a high 80's mop of black hair, every day.

In 1992 I finally got my first real tattoos, two actually, an ant on my forearm and a circular cuff on the right arm. I had seen a surfer wearing a cuff as I was running Manhattan Beach while visiting my sister in Malibu. I thought it was about the coolest thing ever and immediately designed my own and went for it. That tattoo was a real conversation starter back then. Within 7 years, they were popping up all over. Now, they are simply a prerequisite for employment of any kind. At work, no one could see the cuff, but the ant stuck out. Whenever we had a sit down meeting or I met with clients, I wore a long-sleeved shirt. The first time my boss saw it she said: “You'll always have to wear a long sleeve shirt or you'll never be able to get a job in the future.

Now, of course, tattoos are mainstream, and being an average American guy, I have a bunch. Just like more than 30% of all adults in this country. But in my case, I use the term “adult” very loosely...mostly I just think they're cool.

Skin art. And after all, art is art, regardless of the canvas. It’s may be a little painful to produce, but worth it, even if you have to be use a magic marker to make it happen.