My 85th appointment with Horizakura was two hours of tebori shading around the jewel on the inside of my left leg. For this area, I once again had to assume my least favorite position: on my back, legs spread, with one leg held straight up. After about 15 minutes or so, he moved to an area that required my leg to be up and out to the side more. Here, he used one of the support stands he has in the shop and raised it all the way up so my leg could rest on it. That was a major game changer for me. Not having to focus on both managing the pain and keeping my leg up was helpful and relaxing. Generally, this area isn’t too terrible for me, except for where he gets really close to my crotch. That part felt very sharp. Other than that, mostly a dull pain throughout the night.
At the end of the appointment, Horizakura mentioned that he is thinking about something different than a dragon for my left arm. He thought maybe Fudo-myoo would be good. I like Fudo, but my concern is that my arm just isn’t big enough to accommodate the design. I also didn’t really want any deities in my tattoo when we first got started. As I’ve continued down this road though, I’ve definitely become more open minded to having something other than animals in the suit. I want to take some time to think it over though. Ultimately, I really want this tattoo to be something Horizakura is proud of. I want it to be his design. I just haven’t really digested the idea yet. We’ll see what happens!
I was originally going to write up a wrap up post for the end of 2020, but I didn’t. I don’t really have a good excuse. It just didn’t happen. Instead, I’ll combine it with this post which will also detail my 84th appointment with Horizakura.
2020 was better for me than it was for most people, so I am always hesitant to complain. I had my fair share of heartbreak, I certainly wouldn’t call it a good year, but I came out the other side better than some. NYC was locked down for a few months, so in total we logged about 21.5 hours of tattooing over 14 appointments. These are my lowest tattoo numbers to date, but some of the work has been really exciting which compensates nicely. Moving onto my torso was huge for me. There’s really only a small portion of my suit that isn’t outlined at this point.
Here are front and pack photos of how I look after my last appointment of 2020. You would think that by now I would have been smart enough to be regularly taking full body shots so we could see the progress in a more “macro” sense, but I’ve never claimed to be very smart, so here we are. You get two pictures.
Sorry the legs are a little dark here. I wasn’t evenly lit. Here’s a leg shot since you won’t stop complaining.
Moving on. My 84th appointment was more tebori on my left thigh. The wave that was only half finished was completed and a good chunk of background around the koi was shaded as well. We’re running out of leg here… in fact, we’re running out of background to shade. There is a small strip on my right thigh/hip, the rest of the left thigh, and the area over my pubic bone. After that it might be time for more outlining! I say that with an exclamation because new outlines are exciting, but the process is terrible. Tebori is infinitely better.
My 83rd appointment with Horizakura started off pretty similarly to my 82nd appointment. To his credit, he tried to get me into several different positions to best access the area that needed to be tattooed, but none of them were giving him the space he needed to work. He determined that my least favorite position would be the best solution. Thus I found myself once again laying on my back, holding my left leg over my head. It didn’t last too long, but any amount of time in that position is enough for you to be happy when it’s over. Afterwards, I was in a bit more of a neutral position with my left leg kicked out to one side so he could continue to shade my inner left thigh. My right foot was flat on the table with my knee bent. Quite comfortable. Until the cramping began.
I have a tendency to cramp when I sit motionless for long periods of time. This pretty much only happens when I get tattooed, but my diet/water intake doesn’t seem to ever change it. When I’m getting tattooed, I do my damnedest to not move at all unless I’m asked to. During this particular appointment, somehow, my knee cramped up. I did not know that this was possible, but sure enough, after about an hour of lying there with a bent knee, I could feel a cramp develop under my kneecap. It felt really, really weird. I try to never interrupt the appointment because I consider my time there to be precious, so I just kinda bit the bullet and willed the cramps away. Really, there is probably no need for me to endure that, but when you don’t have anything else to do during a tattoo appointment, any diversion can be a fun one.
Not much else to say here. My next appointment is in two weeks and I’m sure it will be more sweet tebori action. I am perpetually fired up!
Here I have some photos from my 82nd appointment with Horizakura. I’m actually writing/posting this a week after the appointment, Thanksgiving and a very busy work schedule got in the way. This appointment was more shading on the inside of my legs. When we were first getting ready to begin, Horizakura looked over the outlines and noticed that the only remaining unshaded background on my right leg was a small spot very high into my crotch, where my butt cheek meets my thigh. I don’t remember his exact wording, but he basically said something like, “There’s a small spot there…” As if he was asking me if I wanted to work on that spot today. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I later realized the implication was that since it would only take a short while to finish off that spot, he would be tattooing both my legs during the same appointment. My response at the time was, “Do whatever you think is best.” He did. The net result was me hobbling around like I had shit my pants for about two days while both my legs were healing. Whoops.
Anyway! Not much more of note from this appointment. In order to access the small spot, I once again had to lay on my back and hold my leg up in the air. Super cool tattoo guy pose! It’s pretty exhausting holding your leg over your head for like 45 minutes. The only good to come from that was once he finished with that area and moved over to my left leg, it was so relaxing that I dozed off for a bit. Of course, that’s after the initial shock of crossing over to the other side of my body went away. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere on this blog, but whatever natural pain management systems your body has, it doesn’t work moving across the center line of the body. It’s basically like starting the appointment from the beginning again. Inner thigh is a pretty easy area to get tebori though (for me), so no real drama there. Afterwards we grabbed a couple beers like usual. It’s getting cold in NY though, so I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to keep that up!
I have another appointment coming up next week, but before that, I’m hoping to get up a post or two about some of the books I’ve received in the past few weeks.
Session 80 with Horizakura brought more shading of the water and waves of my right leg. Not a bad appointment at all. We chatted a bit about seasonal tattoos like sakura fubuki, momiji chirashi, and kikusui. Mostly, I’m putting that here so I have a place to reference it if I forget later. I got nothin’ else! These pics will have to do:
My 79th appointment with Horizakura marked a return to shading all the outline that has been added since we were able to start up again in July. My dream of finishing the outline of the tattoo was left to die on the vine as Horizakura still wants to consider the elements of my left arm and ribs/chest. My instinct is to charge forward and his is to slow down and hold back. That’s pretty much how it has always gone with us, and it’s worked out pretty well so far. Who am I to get in the way of the process?!
ANYWAY. All that preamble was just to say that for the next 8-10 appointments (I’m totally guessing here), this will be the All Tebori, All the Time Blog. No particular notes here. He spent an hour and a half shading the background of my right inner thigh. Not a bad area to be tattooed in my opinion. It’s nice to be back to the quiet sounds of tebori. I know for a lot of people the sound of a tattoo machine fills them with excitement, but having experienced a fair amount of both, I have to say the peace and quiet of tebori is far superior.
There have been parts of this tattoo process that I have to admit I had never really considered when I decided on this path. One of the most grievously overlooked aspects was the physical requirements of tattooing some of the more “hard to reach” parts of the body. Up until appointment 76, laying down with my leg in the air so Horizakura could tattoo where my thigh meets my butt cheek was the most compromising position I had faced. Turns out it gets worse.
This is the first time lines have been tattooed on me that I can’t fully capture without becoming horrifyingly immodest. You’ll get the jist of it in the pictures below, but the edge of this tattoo on my inner thigh is literally where my leg ends. During this appointment, I considered such questions as “Does having my leg tattooed this close to my twig and berries make me cooler or more committed than others?” and “Where does my leg end and my taint begin?” I may never have the answers to those questions. For educational purposes, I will tell you that the mechanics of giving Horizakura access to that area of my body involved me pulling my fundoshi wrapped junk out of his way while he sat on the table and I had my leg stretched out wide and resting on a stand. It was, without a doubt, the least sexy I have ever felt.
Why is this post entitled, “Are you nervous?” Horizakura put that imposing and foreboding question to me just as he was getting the machine ready to begin. I put that high on the list of questions you don’t want to be asked while you’re laying in the position I was in. I couldn’t help but laugh, but the truth is I wasn’t nervous. It was certainly awkward, but no part of my leg has ever been as painful as the center of my chest or parts of the ass have been. Speaking of which, he also did some more feathers and such around the phoenix. I’m starting to think the chest is worse than the ass. Every line felt like I had intense heart burn.
Appointments like these are the ones that make me glad I started this blog. Many of you, and the whole of social media culture, likely just want to see a picture of the few lines done over this one hour appointment and move on. But this one hour appointment has yielded more laughs and thoughts than some of my longer appointments ever have. I’m glad that I will have a way to go back and remember what this part of the experience was fresh after it had happened to me.
It’s virtually impossible that I have kept your attention this long. Just look at the pictures and be on your way:
I’ve been excited to write this post for a long time. If you’ve been reading this blog for the last year or two, you may remember that Horizakura had a few different ideas for what would go on my stomach. I was receptive to most of them, but nothing really seemed like the perfect fit. He said it needed to be something big that would stand out. It wasn’t until after an appointment in July of last year that we discovered the perfect idea. As I alluded in that appointment’s blog post, I was telling Horizakura a story about my visit to Obuse and the Hokusai Museum there. It’s a great little museum and one of the paintings on display there is a smaller version of a painting Hokusai did on the ceiling of a temple. It is called “Ho-O Staring in Eight Directions” and depicts a phoenix and some leaves. The painting is designed in such a way that no matter where you stand, it appears to be looking at you. After looking over the painting, I moved on and didn’t really think much more of it for the rest of my time in the museum.
Ho-O Staring in Eight Directions painted on the ceiling of Ganshoin Temple by Hokusai
After I left the museum, I still had a whole day to kill by myself, so I did what I always do in Japan. Looked for the nearest temple and took a walk over there. When I entered, I walked over to the main prayer area where there were benches set up. I took a seat and noticed another painting of the phoenix from the museum, propped up on an easel in the corner of the room. Next to it was a sign that asked guests to not lay down on the benches or the ground. I was a little hungover and, for a split second, I was mystified by this. In all my temple visits throughout my three trips to Japan, there had never been a sign like this. “Look up you idiot.” I turned my eyes up and you guessed it. I was sitting underneath “Ho-O Staring in Eight Directions.” I had, by complete accident, wandered into Ganshoin Temple, where Hokusai painted the work in the 1840’s. I was blown away, not only by the coincidence, but by the imposing nature of seeing the work in person. It was a really amazing experience. The cherry on top was that as I looked over the rest of the carvings and art in that room, I noticed the archway leading to the main altar was adorned in part with the same dragon turtle that is tattooed on my right leg.
I left Ganshoin amused that I had unknowingly created a great memory for myself. After telling Horizakura about this experience, he suggested that we use that phoenix as the main subject of my stomach. He said, “It will be my collaboration with Hokusai.” I instantly knew we had made the right choice, and I have been waiting months to see it come to life.
Session 71
For this appointment, Horizakura tattooed the first part of the phoenix across my upper stomach. Pain is different for everyone, and for me, this was just absolutely terrible. Specifically, where the feathers begin to go over my sternum and follow the rib under my pec was just brutal. It certainly didn’t help that I was pretty sick for two days prior to the tattoo, but if you took the time to read the back story above, you may have figured out there was no way I was going to cancel this appointment. In terms of design, you may notice that he has made some changes to the original. I assume this is to make it a little more tattoo friendly, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask him. That’s enough words for one post (indeed too many words, but I’m sure you skipped all of them to look at the pictures).
That title is stupid, but I don’t care. With last nights appointment (number 70 for those keeping track at home), Horizakura has wrapped up shading on my legs for the foreseeable future. In light of this completely arbitrary milestone, I thought I would take some extra photos to give us all a sense of where we are at now.
Looking ahead, the plan is to start my torso outline in two weeks. My excitement outweighs my concern for the amount of pain staring at me from the horizon. If starting my torso wasn’t enough, we also discussed the possibility of just outlining the rest of the body suit over the coming appointments. In the past I think we have rotated between shading and outline so we (I say we, but it’s mostly him. I just sit there and nod vigorously.) can figure out what content should be added to other parts of the suit. Besides a couple details, I think we are mostly set for the rest of the content though. It’s possible that 2020 will be all outline… but we’ll see. Plans change all the time and getting a bodysuit is no exception. This has been a very exciting way to begin the New Year, but for now I am back to my usual activity: Eagerly awaiting my next appointment.
My leg is different now!
And here is a more all-encompassing look at both of my legs:
For my sixty-ninth appointment, Horizakura continued shading the background on my right leg. I’m not sure how common this is with heavily tattooed people (this might sound crazy, but I don’t really consider myself heavily tattooed), but I’ve noticed that any tattooed area that I can’t see daily often becomes a bit of a mystery to me. When he began working on the side of my leg just above my knee… well I could have sworn that area was already shaded. It wasn’t. Then he moved on to the back of my knee which I knew had some unshaded spots, but I really couldn’t remember how much. It wasn’t until after the wrap came off and I was able to compare these pictures with pictures from previous weeks that I realized what he worked on. Our next appointment isn’t until mid January and should be the last appointment on my leg before we move to my stomach. Time will tell!
Since this is my last appointment of 2019, I thought I would also include some photos that show where the year started.
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