One of the things that was set in stone for this trip was a visit to Fat Ram’s Pumpkin Tattoo in Boston to get tattooed by Ram himself. Normally Ram has a long waiting list, but since I took him to the Salt Lick just out side of Austin, we have been fast friends. He knocked out my BOS tattoo in record time, but I wanted something bigger.
So, the night before I hop the plane out of Boston, he has me come down to the shop at closing time, 10pm. We spend a while talking about the concept and he gets to drawing. By 2am and several revisions later we have it. A clock work heart with the genuine auto parts logo across it. Ram likes to take his time in the design stage since that is when it is easiest to make changes to the art. Once it goes down on the body, it really doesn’t change much from there.
Originally the concept was to include a banner that read “Sadness” after the Shambhala concept of the Genuine Heart of Sadness, but looking at it I decided that it would be better for me not to have to bear a banner across my heart that read sadness. That and I didn’t want to have to explain it every time someone saw it.
We shaved my chest, laid out the stencil and were ready to go by 3:00am. What followed were some of the most painful hours of tattooing I have yet to endure. The backs of my knees were bad, but relatively speaking they were quick. Ram was steady and wasn’t drilling for oil, it was just a rough place to get tattooed. I kept breathing and tried not only to keep from sqirming, but to lean into the pain. Just accept it and let it flow. I nearly ground my molars into dust, but I made it through.
I crashed at Ram’s place that night and woke up to his dogs crowding me off the couch:
Adorable.
I then got to meet the kids and then off to the airport on 3 hours of sleep. But what a great tattoo. I ended up shaving the rest of my chest so that the chest hair would at least all grow back similar…
