Kile the WonderBoy!!

I like tattoos.

Strike that. I love tattoos.

 

I am pretty sure I first wanted a tattoo when I was eight or nine. I always thought they were the pinnacle of bad-ass. Remember the temporary tattoos that you could get from the quarter prize machines that they have in front of grocery stores? I loved those. I’d plaster myself with those whenever I could get them, always feeling kind of bummed out when they eventually faded, leaving nothing but my pale, scrawny arms behind.

See, I am what you’d call a slight man. Slender, if you’re nasty. I’ve never been very muscular. Sort-of athletic, but not really. Enough to slightly embarass myself, you know? Smart? Please, who do you think you are talking to? I wrote a story about a man having sex with a table. You think any Johnny Dumbass can do that?

 

 

It’s not that I thought tattoos made, or make, you tough. It wasn’t a rebellious thing either. I mean, look around, everyone has them these days. From the ladies who get them on a whim, to the old-timers with wrinkled skin that feels like old bologna when the artist has to put ink to skin.

No, for me, it’s both an expression of art and as much therapy. It’s an expression of art not just for me, but for the artist I happen to be working with. And, you DO work with them, too. Even if you are going in on that aforementioned whim and picking one off the wall, you still need to work with your artist to discuss placements, additional colors, etc. My personal expression has meant putting images on by body that I feel are indicative of what my inner thoughts are and what I feel gives me a kind of strength. This also falls into the therapy portion of why I love tattoos.

What really sealed the deal for me to actually get one, was the movie Dusk ‘Til Dawn. Yeah, I know. It’s not that great of a movie and certainly hasn’t aged well. (Though, I hear the new TV show is solid). For those who’ve seen the movie, you know what I am talking about: Seth Gecko’s massive sleeve

I wanted a tattoo worse than I ever had before after seeing that one. No, I wanted that tattoo.

As it turned out, I didn’t get that one. My first tattoo was a tribal thorn half wrap around the top of my barely existent bicep. Still looks good today and ended up serving as a nice barrier for my first half sleeve. I wanted to get a barb wire tattoo because, at that time, I was incredibly predictable and cliched. Or, as Saint George would say: (1:58 mark)

 

However, I digress.

Since my writing career has seen some “success” and that I had plenty of extra space on my left arm that was just begging for ink, I decided to head on down to my tattoo artist, a sweet dude named Evan DiPalma, working out of About Time Tattoo and Piercing in my “wonderful” city of the Nash. To this point, Evan had done two smaller-ish tattoos for me, a chest piece from the video game Silent Hill:

And a smaller one from the movie “The Lords of Salem”, which I got before even seeing the movie. I ended up loving the movie, but I would have found it really funny if I hated it, too.

 

Evan had also done my Swamp Thing-themed half sleeve on my other arm. But, this is not about that arm. So, I went in to see Evan with a list of around 12-13 ideas that I wanted to consider for my left arm. All of these ideas where scenes, symbols or images from every story that I’d written to date, published and non. Because of my time with Evan in the chair and on the table, my trust in him as an artist was absolute, thus I told him that I wanted him to take the few word/sentence descriptions I had given him and draw up whatever he wanted to. I didn’t care. Actually, I take that back. I cared, but I was not concerned with what he would come up with as I had/have that trust.

My left arm didn’t have as much room as my right, so we were limited to four separate pieces and some filler. They are, in no particular order:

1: The Plague Monks: From my story ‘The Monastery’

Fun Fact: This story garnered my first, and sole, fan letter.

2: The Soul Eater: From my soon-to-be published story ‘Pipe Dreams of the Soul Eater’ by Sirens Call Publications

 

 

3: The Devil’s Claw Sigil: From my revenge story ‘Four Bullets’ and the soon-to-be published story ‘A Trip to Gehenna’ by NH Pulp Fiction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little background on The Devil’s Claw. It is a gun like no other in the version of the Wild West that I’ve created. It is large, far too large for a single man to wield with one hand. But, my protagonist, Drake Travis, wields it as if it were a feather. On the handle, is the images you see above, as imagined by Evan DiPalma.

4: Decomposed Skull with LadyBugs: From my story ‘Jesus Saves’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun Fact: The ladybugs are the only bit of color on my left arm. The idea was to counter-balance the Swamp Thing half-sleeve, which is vibrant with wonderful greens, blues, oranges, purples, pinks, etc, with gray scale. But, when Evan and I looked it over, we decided that the ladybugs needed to red. If you look closely, you can see the white dots of their eyes, too.

 

Where do I go from here? Well, I keep writing, of course. And, I do still have two legs ready to go. The plan is to hopefully attend the Boston Tattoo Convention in August, where I will sit for Evan while he takes another one of my ideas from “my fucked up imagination” and get it done on my calf. Very excited. Check out my Links section for more information for Evan DiPalma.

And, as I leave you, if you’ve actually read this far, remember my children, stay sassy!