tattoos & civil rights

i want to thank bill cohen for running a long article (with photos by katie cronin) about my tats on his great tattoosday blog. and, in honor of national poetry month, each tattoo feature is paired with a poem by the subject on billyblog. poetry & tattoos…who’da thunk?

bill did more than just post the photos along with my narrative of the inked life, he also did some research around the details, such as the fact that tattooing didn’t become legal in NYC until 1997. of course i knew it was illegal, you practically needed a code word to get into the ink parlors back in the day, but i didn’t know when it was decriminalized.

ink wasn’t always illegal in NYC, it was made so during the psychedelic 60s, when all the new dope-shooters shared their needles in drowsy bursts of hippie love and tattoo parlors shared in the blame for the Great Hepatitis Epidemic of 1961.

i won’t go on and on about the government outlawing everything that might hurt you. motorcycling without a helmet, driving without a seatbelt, smoking a joint, getting a tattoo… more people die on operating tables than just about anywhere else, should we outlaw hospitals? of course that’s a stupid statement, but it’s simply taking governmental logic to its illogical end.

i’m glad to have bill’s post to talk about and “for-your-own-good” safety laws to rant about today because the thing that’s really bothering me is SO big and SO awful that, yes, once again my head is about to explode. and i don’t think i can bear to write about it quite yet: too upset, too fucking disappointed in president obama, to go there right now.

so i’ll let my boyfriend keith say it all for me.