I’ve tattooed over 10,000 people and there’s been lots of regrettable tattoo stories.

There’s a general feeling I have that if you don’t feel strongly enough about a sentiment to get it tattooed on you in English, then you probably don’t feel all that strongly about it. I certainly haven’t noticed an excess of wisdom in all the people I’ve tattooed the Chinese character for “Wisdom” on. Anyway, one of my favourite bad idea tattoo stories is about Jake. Jake was a pudgy, dishevelled, little Jewish man with glasses and a very unappetising aura. He had a cube van he’d drive around looking for old crap to sell, mostly sporting goods and boom-boxes. He was friends with Tapeworm. Jake decided he wanted to get Tapeworm to tattoo the words “Kosher for Passover” in Hebrew on the head of his cock. So Jake went to an off licence he used to work at and had the boss, who was Jewish, circle the phrase on a bottle of Kosher wine that meant “Kosher for Passover”.

Jake and Tapeworm went into the privacy room at the tattoo shop to do the job, and I was sitting at the desk looking at a Chiquita banana label through an eye-loupe to do a drawing for a customer. A few minutes after they started, and I could hear the machine buzzing, the phone rang. It was for Jake. I told the caller that Jake was busy, but the caller said it was important, so I yelled out to Jake that there was a phone call for him. Jake yelled back to tell them to call back later, I told the guy, the guy said to tell Jake it was Manny, I told Jake, Jake said to have him call back, Manny said it was really important, I told Jake to pick up the phone because the guy wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

They must have just finished the job, so Jake picked up the cordless phone in the privacy room. Tapeworm called me into the room to check out his handiwork. Jake was sitting there on the edge of the massage table with his pants around his ankles. His cock was small and greasy and the Hebrew letters were barely recognisable through oozing drops of blood. Jake looked up sheepishly and said, “It gets to be seven inches when it’s hard”. It turned out that Manny was the owner of the off licence, and he was calling to tell Jake that he had made a mistake, the phrase he had circled actually just meant “boiled”.

SCOTT HARRISON
Scott Harrison is an internationally-renowned tattoo artist from Oklahoma who’s tattooed everyone from Jimmy Gestapo to Master P. We met him at Frith Street tattoos in London where he occasionally has a residency. For more, check www.headbandbrothers.com