Body Art

More like body humor to me. Since I've gotten 40 years of amusement out of it, though I've never had a single stab at it myself I've simply never felt any desire for skin graffiti. No matter how bored I've ever been, I've always found something better to do than scribbling on myself. People who do transform themselves into circus freaks often began with a desire to slash their wrists, usually after being abused by police and thrown in a small empty jail cage for long periods.

Another thing that motivates most body scribblers, besides the despair that usually got them started, is their high probability of being attention whores. Also, they are shallow thinkers, unable to see very far into the future, or that the first tiny "art" experiment inevitably grows into larger, or more numerous blotches. One of the primary reasons tattoos grow into denser, uglier blots is because cops, and now guards, record them, forcing the victim to add more tattoos on top of the photographed ones, to foil the cop's cataloguing and identification efforts. The result is easy to see. One need only look across to the person selling his "art." He is the aforementioned circus freak, made unemployable by his craft, which he practices almost exclusively in jails, prisons and tattoo parlors, where legal, and dark, secluded places where not.

The amusing thing, if anything about mutilation can be called amusing, is this: blacks used to unintentionally dodge skin graffiti due to the lack of contrast between their skin and the primitive "inks" concocted in jails and prisons. Over the decades of absorbing many mostly maternal Caucasian genes, however, their skins have whitened considerably. They now have contrast with the inks. Also, the better life they've had since Africa has made them more sedentary, and they crave attention. These characteristics, together with the rise of prison gangs and a desire to create a separate history and culture, made them willing victims of body graffiti. One such person was a rapist intent on hiding from the "slave name" his mother had given him. Creating a new prison identity is easier if the name you want is emblazoned on an arm in big block letters. This way your acquaintances are constantly reminded that you are not "Bill Jones" anymore, but "Ares," god of war. So the guy goes into the dark, smelly, toilet-like cage, pays $50 (75% in promises to pay) for something he could have gotten for free if he hadn't been in such a hurry to ditch his past, and emerge, bleeding and pained, as the formidable "Aires!"

Another of these deep thinkers wanted to be Satan, but came out as smooth and feminine as bed sheets made of satin. The one guy I saw in 40 years who did seem to think it through seemed to face reality with this logic: "The angry American judge took my life for selling marijuana. They will never let me go back to my country. I'm broke. My large family is so poor that they cannot afford to waste resources on me even if I would let them. The best way to squeeze lemonade from this abominable, lawyer-caused situation is to get a huge, high-quality tattoo of a beautiful Spanish seniorita on my back whose vagina corresponds with my rectum and pretend to be gay." His foresight made him "prison rich." He regularly sends money to his mother and daughter in Mexico, and tithes the prison Catholic Church, for the past 19 years.

Despite this "success" story, most tattooed people are rascals, and they do us normal people a favor by marking themselves. Tattoos profile you for us. While you regale us on how your tattoos celebrate important milestones in your life, we see character flaws. E.g. one little runt they stuffed in my cage had gang patch tattoos of "Nazi," crip/blood and the Indian's feather, all blotted out with defacing scribbles. He'd been ejected from each in turn, in that order, once he had demonstrated to each that he is the same kind of thief, conscious less liar and conniver, as they are, who only pretends to be loyal to their "cause." The only reason he remained alive is because the sudden rise in tax profitability of human-ranching made it too dangerous to send gang-newbies to kill him, what with the proliferation of cheap, prison cop cameras everywhere protecting their criminal investments. So the criminal lowlifes turned him to a more profitable purpose. He shaves and plucks his hairy Italian body, puts on feminine mannerisms and pretends to be a young, ignorant, yet sexually experienced girl. He's been at this protective strategy for so many years that he may even continue it when he finally gets free. He plans to get his tattoos burned off then, which would be a nice complement to the "cosmetic" medical procedure he is consistently denied in every prison he has been moved to for his safety; that of burning off his multiple layers of recurring genital warts.

Tattoos aren't just for professional scalawags. Other curs who get them are jail-terrorized kids who suddenly transform, by necessity, from lazy, dopies and drunks into bible snatching Christians. Between prison church and marathons of prayer and ikon manufacture, one Arkansas farm boy made time to buy a couple of teardrop tattoos. Criminals and cop shows informed him that only scary "killahs" could get teardrop tattoos, so he had to get some to scare real criminals away from his sex-able orifices. His crime was getting drunk and mindlessly scrounging in unlocked cars one night, until he found a judo costume to steal. Despite all the highly paid cop experts on tracking and cataloging crime gang ink and spray-paint scribbling, and their media tools making docu-tainment extravaganzas out of it, any buffoon with a candy bar can get any kind of tattoo. Every time you make up your own "gang" sign, you're feeding the cops' "intelligence" bureaus, who then promptly puke this nonsense into scurrilous video crap that gets broadcast to the gullible, terrified public on propaganda sites that pretend to have integrity, such as the history twisting channel or A & E. Arkansas farm boy told us his killah teardrops represented Christian sadness over Jesus' murder by Jews. Soon as he left that story went in the trash and he became Sammy serial killer for the next 3 years.

Ignorant, jail-terrorized children will always be victimized by conniving prison opportunists, so 1 alert them to some of the tattoo traps that I've uncovered over the years. (Also, see my essay, "The Tattoo Trap" on my net site, www.jamesbauhaus.org)

1. When you're forced out of any scummy gang, never let their resident scribbler "remove" (deface) the gang tattoo with which you were branded. He will often make ink that is designed to infect you, their now hated enemy, or at least raise an itchy rash or allergic reaction by using blood, urine, saliva, soap or other corrosives or irritants

2. Graffiti-artists are like any other merchants who are adept at selling their services. They love repeat business, and employ various ruses to provoke traffic in tattoos. Some people get expert work that brings in young kids who think they can get the same quality of customers who can enforce good quality. Kids get a lot of "mistakes" that have to be "corrected," such as backward swastikas, "swaslticas," deliberate "typos" or inappropriate symbolism. Tattoo artists change tattoo folklore to increase business.

3. People with big money and little sense, who can't command respect, get outlandish designs, often pornographic, that they later find need expensive additions and overlays such as panties and bras. Some get talked into designs stolen from other artists and have to pay twice. Some get tattoos that contain secret, rival gang signs that, when discovered, must be covered up. Others find they have been branded with marks and symbols that mean queer. The game of skin scribbling has as many "hobo marks" as all of its practitioners can invent.

4. One of the most common tattoo-artist ruses involves great artists who sell Cadillac ink jobs to everyone they can. He scribbles huge outlines on many people. He smokes their dope, drinks their coffee, eats their candy and always has long lines of people waiting for service in and near his cage. They beg for him to finish their art, but he is too busy to finish. He inks only people who bring money, tires easily, quits too soon, and then collects from someone else. In a few weeks, he disappears with all he can carry, assisted in his rip off and get away by the many prison guard pals he depends on for his craft. (How do you think he dodges all the snitches? Everyone knows what he's doing. Even though prison tattooing is outlawed, the Cops all want you to mark yourself. Your tattooed ass is money in the bank for them and job security for their little law industry children!) All his little ink addicts are left with empty outlines and barely started mammoth projects begging for any artist poseur to cut himself in on your "action."

5. All prison ink slingers jab the crap in too deep. If you ever manage to exit the legal slavery treadmill and afford the laser treatment to bum the ink out of your skin, you will find that trash ink jabbed too deep vastly increases the already exorbitant cost of removal. Some prison crap-inks cannot be completely removed by lasers. Some jail ink concretions can only be removed by re-tattooing with bleaching corrosives, such as the phosphorous from match heads. This often trades ugly ink for slightly less noticeable ugly, tattoo shaped scars. Persons craving tattoos should insist on the least penetration possible.

There are thousands of such scams in each of the thousands of America's prisons, jails and secret detention centers. These listed here are just a representative sample that applies only to tatoos. All captives should be alert for anything new or different, as the prison environment of depravity and deprivation necessitates extreme inventiveness..