Each Tattoo is a Story!
Tattooing my body has always been about the story! About the things that were happening for me in my life at the time I sat down in the chair. I mean it is art right most great pieces should have a story! Well I have thought so since recklessly deciding to make my first piece a purple butterfly on my ankle. Almost as tragic as the 80’s trend to get the rose on the cleavage. Close, but not quite.
My Very First Tattoo
So the story starts with a few of us from high school who had decided that we were going to watch one friend get her first tattoo. The shop was located down in what is now known as the West Queen West area. I believe the artists name was Tobi. She was maybe about 10 yrs older than we were at the time. She had also inked up many of our favourite hair metal heroes on their travels through Toronto!!! The walls of her shop were adorned with the gratitude and autographs from the likes of Nikki Sixx, Sebastian Bach, Rachel Bolan and so many more etc.
We ventured down there because our friend Kate had decided it was time to get her first piece. I would then be the only one without and to be honest was not yet sold on the idea. At the shop, the walls adorned with flash from cute little birds and animals to hard core sailor Jerry as well as custom work. Kate selected a yellowish orange butterfly. She seemed pensive to sit in the chair, asking if anyone else was going to get one so she could watch first. It was I who stepped up.
Scanning the wall feeling the pressure not to get a rose on my chest like others before me, I took out my last $60.00 bucks and selected a purple butterfly! Yep, it was small within my budget and 100% spontaneous. (All the best things in life are). Not intending to get a tattoo, I blew my hard earned beer money on a tattoo I never wanted. But it left me wanting more.
I must have imagined it would be more painful. A needle rapidly going in and out of your flesh like that. (I am crazy afraid of needles - don’t ask)However, I was in the chair, the gun was running, her halfway through the outline when I finally asked when she was going to get started anytime soon. From that point forward tattoos have been relaxing and easy for me! Almost meditative. Like I go into a zen zone and just let the artist do their work.
Sure there are pinches and ouches now and then but it also really depends on the artist. There are those I have experienced who just drill the ink into your flesh. Tobi was really good at her craft, easy and gentle. Maybe because the whole time we were there she would take breaks in the back to do a few bumps. Several years later we heard she died of an overdose. RIP Tobi, thank you for the story of my first tattoo!!
Early on looking at this butterfly I began to see something different, a purple rabbit… like from the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole. This rabbit sits in an old organic antique chair! I often ponder if there really is a rabbit or if I make it up. Often others miss the rabbit, few see it. I still tell the story of what I see.
The Last Flash Piece
Years would pass before I would venture into a tattooo shop for my second piece. This one would also be the last time I picked a piece from the flash on the shop wall. Though I still browse the books when they are present. books! While this is the only other tattoo on my body I did not conceptualize and draw myself, it still had important meaning to myself. So here goes the story.
One night while out at a club with friends one of the group members suggested she catch a ride home with me. Little did I know it would commence a sexual entanglement that would last several months and basically not leaving me feeling anything good about myself. I felt weak.
She was part of our group of friends. The first night it happened we were all out dancing on a Friday night at Buddies and Bad Times Theatre on Alexander. My Jeep was parked across the street and when I left she was catching the express. The next night at a party, before the woman arrived I was hearing tales of the night before. I was so embarrassed. Yet, we continued to hookup until it got complicated. She started living with me as a room mate but we would still hook up, even when she had a new girlfriend. I knew I needed to be peace out.
One night while walking home with my best mate on Queen West, we passed by the local ink shop and I felt the pull. Something needed to go on my body, immediately. We walked through the doors and a symbol from the wall called to me. I had picked the kanji symbol for strength… so I got the symbol. I was also able to ask her to leave and reclaim my space!!
The Tribal Trend
Everyone who was getting ink in the late 90s early 2000s were getting tribal armbands or leg piece. Either way, I swear it was like the rose on the chest in the 80’s. Not on trend with the rose, I was complete opposite with tribal work. I wanted an armband so bad, but I wanted to draw it myself. The next tattoo was designed long before it became a part of the hieroglyphs of my life’s story. I could draw, why was I relying on others to create artwork for me. I really wanted something that was my own. The design evolved over several intoxicated adventures with a heartache companion whom I was strangely connected/attracted to. We never were involved, over the years our antics and adventures were often raw vulnerable and troublesome. Far too often I was willing to blur the lines of my own integrity.
During our time in heartbreak together, her partner and my partner, the four of us closely entwined, left us in the midst of some crazy drama created by a 3rd party who wanted to date both our partners. Alone together, after the bars, she would often lay naked in the bed we shared while I used my art pens to draw designs across her curves. Later, somewhat more sober, I would recreate the drawings in my sketchbook. She ended up getting one done on her body during this period. It was beautiful. I wish I had a picture of it. It would be several years after the Kanji tattoo before I would get the tribal armband.
The design itself is pretty simplistic. I clean tribal design that is met in the centre with a stylized Pisces symbol capped by the moon. I have always felt the pull of the moon in my life. Especially being a water sign. The way the tides change during a full moon, how the world seems to pull just slightly off kilter for me during the full moon phase. If there ever was a a person more prone to be a Pisces, I would say it is me, but that bodes the question, what came first the person or the pisces.
It took me much longer to get the tribal armband I designed during those dark periods. See back then I was always a pay check to pay check guy. I did not really work that hard, just enough to skate by, instead I was focused on playing hard. A few years later, when the haze cleared, I had some disposable income and encouraged by my ex wife, on one of our first dates together, I got this armband done down on Church Street at a shop called Passage.
Getting a Tattoo Is Cathartic
No new tattoos occurred until a few months after my marriage ended and I connected with the same woman from the tribal band and her then new partner who was training to be a tattoo artist. I drove 3 hours in the direction of Sauble Beach to get the words Rock and Roll tattoo'ed across my back between my shoulders and a star on my left shoulder.
I know I wanted the ink I wanted to feel the sting of the tattoo gun pressing the ink into my flesh. I wanted to do something that was completely 180 degrees from the last 4 years married to Melanie. I had a desire to remember who I was and be authentic to myself. I also new sitting under the gun, letting the ink pierce into my skin, adding another glyph would help me heal. In many ways in that moment I was creating a right of passage that I would carry into the future honouring many relationships and family connections.
I chose to put rock and roll across my back because I love Rock ‘N Roll!! Sure, I have listened to other music, but I always come back to that good ol’ rock and roll! From the moment I was first introduced to music I gravitated towards to big energy of rock. My first album was Billy Joel’s Glass Houses and Genesis’ Misunderstanding. From the guys in my Dad’s pipe and drum band introducing me to Q107 Rock to discovering the hair metal of the 80s grunge of the 90s and so on. I often felt out of place in the queer community as I felt I was a lone rocker.
Music has always woven a vicarious path through my emotional being. My stories have songs and the songs words have meaning to my life or what I felt. It’s not always obvious, not always written in the stars. Which slides right into the star, now hidden by the family crest I designed. I wanted to say to myself that I was my own rock star. Despite the heartache despite the pain, I shone brightly in the sky. My life went on to be so much different than what my ex and I had planned. It was for the better.
The LA Ink
In the summer of 2007 I moved to LA after a few months of debauchery in Port Elgin with the same friend from the Rock and Roll ink. Getting to LA was a struggle. I was given two weeks or the job would be gone. That time line may have been more self imposed than a hardline, but I was slipping down a dangerous slope and I wanted a change. Actually I needed a change. If it did not come I would surely break. I was getting into trouble going to strip clubs and doing drugs.
So when that call came I did everything to get myself there, including selling my Cherokee and nearly all my possessions to go and start new in Los Angeles at Double Click Marketing. I am still friends on Facebook to that former employer. I don’t know if she realizes her role in rescuing me from going further down the rabbit hole, but Thank you!
During this time I started to redesign the star on my shoulder. It was empty and I wanted to fill it with something that represented who I was in that moment. Something that told my story in a way I understood. First and foremost I was Gardner and Marilyn Bell’s first born. The child they wanted for 11 years before I came to be. Shortly after learning she was pregnant, my grandfather passed away and it is said I was his legacy. Its funny because my brother was the spitting image of this man.
First in the heart of the piece is the “ying yang” symbol. I am forever that Pisces swimming in different directions constantly at odds with my own internal compass. The light and the dark, the mystic and the scientist. Chaotic but good! That is encompassed by a star because well, I am after all always that rock star in my own universe. I have to be. Now I strive to also be that star in my nieces eyes. The star is spilling with waves from the ocean. I am always and will forever be connected to the water, to the ocean to the waves. A Canadian surf board for my mother. A “tartan” (they never understood there) surf board for my father and his Scottish roots.
The total tattoo as I mentioned represents who I am. It represents my duplicity, the kind gentle empath and that darker guy who emerges every so often to throw my life into chaos. The Pisces soul swimming in both directions. grounded by the best of life around me. Opposites and yet the same. While I may seem an open book, I assure you there is more that lurks just beneath the surface. the ocean is often deeper than we first realize.
A woman I was spending time with when I first moved to LA took me to this shop in Venice Beach. It was so fitting. I mean one of the reasons I loved California and Los Angeles was for Venice Beach and the meaning I got from learning about Jim Morrison and the Doors. I spent a great deal of time over the years in the Venice Beach area.
Over the next several years I would draw up ideas with the perfect places to put the pieces. During this time I started a type of “ship” not a relationship… not a friendship… maybe a cruise ship. I dont know but it was intense. We met shortly after her 21st birthday and carried on and off through the next 5 yrs or so. Our time together embodied the ideologies around sex drugs and rock and roll.
During the first iteration of our “ship” we would hang out late in my room, in the shared house I lived in, on some substance, listening to music, bumping or tripping and well… we totally connected intensely on a physical level. It was during these nights we started planning some tattoos. One was a huge piece we put on her back. Specifically driving to San Fransisco to get it her branded by an artist in the Castro at the time.
The next piece to be added to my body also derived from our intoxicated nights together. She was always a little jaded! And I was never really open. Neither of us really knew throughout our experience whether we were being truthful or just lying to the other. My truth is there was lost of truth amongst the sprinkling of lies. But even then, does truth lie? It was a game we played with each other, for fun, for intensity, for trouble.
We conceived this idea together in those late nights. We were to both get “Truth Lies” the idea is we have truth we have lies and often the truth lies. We were fucked up on something at the time. That I do remember!
The Shop on Burbank
I ended up getting the tattoo a few years later after we both partnered up with other people and fell outta each others orbit for a while. I went to a shop I saw on Burbank in the Valley. I gave the young artist my drawing and he completely changed it. I was way too shy to speak up. It so looks like shit. I let him put it on my body and well today when you see it, this guys inexperience shows.
My next 2 pieces would also be done in this same shop. Not by the same artist. No, the owner would be the guy to give me my next two pieces. He does incredible work. I am not sure he is still working there, or tattooing however, his work was light and stayed in with little bleed. I love that kind of work. He also provided a discount after seeing the shoddy work of the “truth/lies” .
The first piece he did I drew while processing a breakup and listening to Incubus. Often I processed heartache with a song. Im this relationship my entire view on people changed. Specifically within myself and the confines of this specific relationships. The woman helped me understand I needed to stop dating women who were emotionally troubled and significantly younger then I was. Why it was important for me to find women who I were more mature and wiser, someone who was my equal. In this instance the woman was an alcoholic, prone to verbal abuse and anger management issues. Little did I know she was also wanted from the law and would end up in jail shortly after we broke up. I was so glad to be out of that relationship.
Me And My Burdened Black Heart
The day I scheduled the piece to be done, I was also processing something that was happening in the week leading up to that day. My mother had become suddenly ill and on Father’s day was taken to Humber Hospital after having trouble breathing. She was admitted and thus began a series of tests and conversations that were going nowhere good fast!. By the morning of my tattoo my mother was to be removed from life support. In a matter of a week I had gone from the weekly calls with her to saying goodbye.
I still remember our last conversation as if I had it with her yesterday. It’s funny how these things stay with you. I will also never ever forget the friendship I experienced that day up at Neptune’s Net. Thank You Gina! Words wil never express the importance of your friendship that day and everyday since!
The design of this tattoo was about love. About how love has many forms and the heart often can influence how love unfolds. Inspired by the song “Black Heart Inertia” by Incubus. It just resonated how I felt about the heart and love in that moment. Especially the line “me and my burdened black heart“ which in my tattoo sits between an anatomically correct heart. The heart that gives life. From the connection of my mother and father sprung life and this heart keeps beating.
On one side the devil’s wing, on the other side is the angel’s wing. Again the symbolism of opposition. The ying and the yang. Pisces! The transition from the life giving heart to the dark heart. It likens to the words “my black heart pollutes me” central to who I am when it comes to love. Then the transition to the cartoon heart of romance. “You’re a mountain I would like to climb, not to conquer but to share in the view”, it’s all how outlooks and how perspectives can change. How we move forward and survive. Through the music. I added the scroll to represent the loss of my mother… Without you! The love of your mother, the life giver.. that loss.
The second was done again at the shop on Burbank in the Valley. I went with my sister and niece. My sister was getting something to commemorate her and Madisen and I was getting a Samaon styled tribal cuff. This design I had drawn up after seeing some ink on some Samoan friends in Palm Springs area. I began researching meanings and designs and came up with this for my cuff.. To this day it is one of my most favourite pieces of work.
The design features the arrows of a spear, diamond shapes linked together to create the heart of the band. There is some shading in the diamonds as well as around them to create depth. The spear is a symbol of protection, The entire design is encased in waves from the water. The upper waves flowing to the right and a lower wave to the left.
You will notice there a lot of symbolism in my pieces ink. As I believe the ink must tell my story and represent who I am. The symbols of water and of the duality within myself and in life. We are not always running in harmony with ourselves or the universe and it is important to recognize this. I love bringing symbolism into the drawings I do. Even if ever so subtle. Not every message or lesson has to be glaring or in your face. Like that beautiful curve on a woman that runs from the small of her back gently falling over her hips and over the curve of her ass then down to her thigh! One of the sexiest spots on a woman, but that is another story!
When I was there in the chair getting this piece done. I had time to reflect on these symbols and what it meant to me to tell my story this way. What it may mean to the many people who get inked up. As I have said, our bodies are our own personal canvas and we shoudl be choosing the designs that truly fit who we are. That tell a part of our story. Like how parents will get their childrens names, or animals
The Island Ink
Once again, there is a long break between the ink above and the next pieces I will get. Notice this is a trend. I get tattooed like I have relationships. Good stuff when its on but lots of time in between. In 2012 I moved back to Toronto from LA for a few years before life yet again took me elsewhere. This time to Isla Mujeres, Mexico in late 2015. My boy Jackson, the incredible yellow Lab I got with my ex wife in 2002 passed away in February of 2016. A few months before that I got an apartment on ISla Mujeres! For those 14 yrs that dog was my absolute best friend. No matter how many women came and went, no matter where my travels took me, whether long road trips or flights across countries., that brave and trusted old friend was there. He was always a great listener. I can recall with a deep fondness thinking when my ex wife picked him out… this guy is not the dog, he is hiding under the table ad there are all these rompers at my feet. Nope she wanted the guy hiding under the table.
As much as we picked him together, that dog right from the start was all mine. We had a bond that transcended space and time. A companion by my side from that moment through a huge break up, a move to and back from Los Angels. Jackson was my best mate ever, We shared meals, a friendship and so much love! I will never forget that by and have his full name in my personal History tays are!
Jackson of Longmourn
The Duggos! Jacksonian institute of dogology! My boy!!! Jax! August 10th 2002 - feb 26 2016. What a long and fantastic ride it was my friend!!! Thank you for your gentle eyes and kind soul!!! I will cherish our memories and our friendship for all my days to come! I have still not been able to let another puppy into my heart as you were. Forever you are on my arm.
The Whale Shark
Later that first summer, my OG friend Shannon and her daughter Taryn came to visit Isla and we went on a whale shark tour. I was absolutely changed after this experience. I have this profound love of sharks and the depths of the ocean and life that lives there. The bellena tiburon or the whale sharkis absolutely magical. When you live or visit Mexico during the summer moths from June through September, there are ample opportunities to see these creatures up close in the open ocean. They migrate to the area in the summer months specifically during the full moon. Boats leave from the island daily and take you out 20kms to where they are feeding! They are just magnificent!
Three New Tattoos
In the last year I have adorned my body with 3 new tattoos. The first is a replica of a curated piece my ex requested for her previous apartment here on Isla. The specific request was, 2 crows in top hats resting on a skull that is in a bird nest. I nailed it and we got a print made of it at the Costco in Cancun. She hung it in different places around her place. I have never really seen my own artwork on anyone other then my own wall before.
I recall I would look at the drawing and think, “WOW what a great piece of black and white ink!” As she knew my body consisted of other pieces from my past, memories of women and people in my life, she once asked what piece of ink I would add to my arm should we break up! Funny, I should have thought on that more at the time. She always expected to break up permanently. I always hoped for happily ever after.
The second piece is one again drawn for the same ex.This one she specifically wanted drawn as a tattoo. Incorporate her favorite flower, the peonies, a world compass only the slightest hint of color. She loved the drawing but promised her mother to never get another piece of ink.
Anyways, I changed a few things. First I removed the color, added the coordinates of where we met to the compass.
I chose these two pieces because they were both were special requests from her, thus they were meaningful to the relationship. I feel the peony/compass symbolizes the relationship over the skull and crows. Don’t get me wrong, both are a part of the story, and her. However the peony just is more her.
It is funny, I knew she would never get the tattoo, despite how much time and effort I put into it. Even when I finished she loved it and the location on her body it best fit. Yet I just knew she could never get another tattoo after a promise she would not break. Thanks for leaving it for me, I absolutely love it on my body,
The last tattoo I placed on my body was fun. Almost perfect. It is a raptor scratch that reveals a panda eating from a bamboo tree. The scratch represents my ex Jamie (I did say most involve a woman, right) and myself. I am the panda bear and she was the raptor.
So the videos in this section represent the beginning and the end of our relationship. At the beginning she shared this Bishop Briggs song to describe how she felt being close to me. We often in the beginning used music to define our feelings and courtship.
View the Full Video Playlist on Youtube
