Nigel tattoos anywhere you want it

Nigel Joseph’s tattoo parlour located at Suite #8, upstairs Bournes Road Pharmacy in St James is brand new, but that doesn’t mean he’s a neophyte to the art form. Twelve years ago he did his first machine-designed tattoo, using equipment imported from New York and Miami. Before the machines, his intricate and colourful designs were done by hand in a special sanitised room at home. Fifteen years ago he was carving glass at his own company in Quamina Street, St James, debt however, forced him to make the switch to doing tattoos for a living. “Let’s just say the class of people that had money, had no class,” he said cheekily.

“I realised that I had to do something and soon, otherwise I would be out in the street with my family. But tattooing is an interest I always had since I was a boy. The body art thing had just started to mushroom and I got in through a friend, who in the beginning couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler (laughter). Now he is a big tattoo man in Florida. He hooked me up with the right machines and made sure I met the right people. I just took it from there.” Godhead Designs is the name of his parlour where inside, the walls are a soothing blue, punctuated with pictures of Tattoo Flash, the name given to the artwork. My timing was indeed fortunate, for Joseph was in the middle of working on good friend and customer Aaron Jay Williams, whose back was covered with an intricately twisting colourful dragon that he wore like a close fitting vest. And Williams wasn’t making a sound. “It’s about 50-50,” Joseph said in response to my question about how much pain a person goes through to get one. “There are certain parts of the body that are more painful than others, like the collarbone, ankle or rib area. Men always want one either on the arm or the back. Women tend to take them on the lower waist or the ankle. But women are blessed with the gift of giving birth, so they take it (the pain) more over the guys,” he laughed. His many designs have run the gamut from traditional to contemporary, his most difficult being Celtic interwoven knotwork, which is like a lattice weave.

“I swear I was getting cokey-eye after a while,” he quipped, with a chuckle. “But it was really making me see double in truth! All those criss crossing lines... pressure!” He explained how the machine or “tattoo gun” works, dispelling the myth that the machine regulates how deep the needle goes into the skin; it’s the artist who does that. The machine itself is made up of two magnetic coils with a contact point. When the electricity is hooked up, there is a little foot pedal that closes that point and makes the circuit, which makes it run, making a buzzing noise, moving with 3,000 passes at one stroke. A rubber band keeps it secure in the bottom of the tube so it doesn’t give a crooked line. “You’re dealing with something sharp, so you want to keep it precise so it doesn’t tear up the flesh. That’s how you get scarring, which is what I see a lot of in Trinidad. Tattooing is not done in the flesh, it’s the top layer of skin. I mean, we could fix the design, but not the scar.”

Scarring is the result of the “back room” tattoo artists and hustlers who were in it for fast money. Joseph’s tattoos start at $300 for a two to four inch design, depending on detail and colours used. Covering an entire forearm can cost $8,000. If it’s a really huge piece of art then you pay by sessions, where you sit for 3 hours at a time, paying until it’s complete. “There’s no layaway plan with tattoos. They might ‘go away’ instead! Then some come and want discount one time. I tell them to go somewhere else. Often a customer will take the risk of going to the “back room” tattoo hustler, just to save a few dollars. He will say, ‘What! That tattoo costing $400? Come, I go do it for a $100.’ Now you thinking, ‘That sounding good!’ But there are health risks. “He doing that tattoo for you under the mango tree in the back yard and smoking a ‘spliff’. He might be using old ink that could have the previous customer’s blood in it. He might take the same needle he used before and just boil it or rub a little alcohol on it and tattoo you. And that man might be a victim (HIV). With so many blood borne diseases being so prevalent in society today you cannot take chances. This is why I say sterilisation is important.

“When people come here I always tell them wherever you go, always make sure that the person has sterile equipment, that they put on surgical gloves, break the needle pack open in front of you and you see everything is clean and the ink caps are brand new. Make sure they have a sterilising machine in their parlour. If you don’t see one, run! Forget it! If you can, stay there to watch him clean up. See that they throw those used ink caps and needles into the dustbin. He must not take that ink and throw it back into the bottle to save a drop, which is how a lot of the hustlers do it. They are none the wiser about disease.” After-care of your design is equally important, because a tattoo is essentially a huge cut on the first layer of skin, so it must be kept clean at all times. A fresh tattoo should be kept out of the sun for a least a couple of months, especially if it has soft colours, like yellow. You must use a good antibiotic skin cream for the first four weeks, then use a good skin cream with aloe vera and vitamin E to help the skin heal. A good tattoo is supposed to peel like a sunburn during the healing process without a scab. On the whole, getting a tattoo should never be a rash decision because it can have a lasting impact on a person. Many get them for different reasons.

“People use it like a talisman, a mark for remembrance or something commemorative, a good luck charm, a mark of strength or to ward off evil. At the same time there are people who will take a religious tattoo or evil tattoo, which is very big right now. A man might take an angel on the arm and say, ‘That is to remind me to stay on the right path’. A fella might put some skulls or demons on his arm and say, ‘this is to remind me to stay off this path’. Some use it as a rite of passage for themselves, like a female customer I had once. She took a fairly large tattoo in a very sensitive spot. She said her mother and father had raised her to be so soft that she wanted to break out of that mould, and it was her way of coming into womanhood. “I thought it was a very nice way of thinking for getting a tattoo, as opposed to so many young people who want to get them just to make a fashion statement. They get a tattoo and a few weeks later, they are sick of it. They are bad for business. They watch MTV and see Britney and 50 Cent and want to copy. I really try to help people make a decision outside the fashion statement, so let it be a little signature of your soul. If you come with something off the Internet and want that, is no problem, but I try to change it a bit, so it will be an original.”

Joseph only tattoos customers from age 18 up and will tattoo someone younger only if they bring their parents in. He’s had cases where youngsters have tried to pass off other people as their parent or guardian, but he has found them out. But the genuine ones make his day. “I also remember a father who came with his 15-year-old son. I asked the father, ‘You sure you want your son doing this?’ But the father insisted and after I set up, he told his son, ‘Look, son, this is to prepare you for life, which isn’t a bed of roses. When you feel that needle biting into your skin, that is what life is about plenty pain and loss. And remember why you’re getting this tattoo.’ Afterwards, you could see the marked difference in him, especially after his father had spoken to him on such a level. It was amazing to see.” It’s his wish that the health department would get involved in making sure that there are safe places for doing tattoo art.

“The same way how the health sector goes to the food places and make sure they run things properly, that’s my wish for tattoo parlours. The health department would go around to men who do tattoos and say ‘Well, alright, you have a separate room, your sanitising machine, etc. Some fellas doing tattoos in the gallery or in the backyard under the mango tree, with a spliff in their mouth! They saying ‘Wait, wait, de smoke in meh eye, just now, just now’... flies buzzing and resting on the tattoo! Madness! “Years ago there was a tattoo artist in the East. When he was asked about sterilisation he said, ‘Oh, I just take a little methylated spirit and I wipe the needle and I good to go again.’ More madness! We have to educate them as well, tell them ‘Ay, that is not how you do things.’ Personally, I would like to see the good artists come together under a positive head. I’d like for them to get rid of some of that serious ego that they have, and come down like big men and talk shop. Let’s work to keep the industry a good, clean one.”