“So, you guys got any tattoos?” said Carl, my Navy bestie’s dad.
“No?” he said. “How come?” As if a tat was something issued with your seabag.
“Never saw a tattooist I saw who I thought did good work,” I said. I figured that was as conciliatory an answer as it got.
“Never wanted one,” Dale said, in his usual laconic manner.
Ignoring both our reactions, Carl plowed on.
“I got this one in Karachi,” he said, pointing at his left forearm.
“These are the wings,” he said and tapped a spot. “And this is the star.” He tapped another spot under the first.
“This says USAAF,” he said (five more taps). “Stands for United States Army Air Forces. Wasn’t called the Air Force ‘til AFTER World War Two.”
Not that they needed the name change to be shot out of the skies aplenty, I thought, though I said nothing.
I looked at his tattoo. It existed in name only. In reality it was just a big blue blob. To label it a specific shape would’ve been fanciful, at best. It looked to me that Kushroo, of Kushroo’s Tattoos Ltd., had copied it from his favorite book — The Idiot’s Guide to Rorschach Tests.
If Carl had asked Kushroo what went wrong, he probably woulda said, “Nothing personal. Just business.”
And guess what? He would’ve been right.
Almost all those early-to-mid 20th-century tats looked like hell after a bunch of years. Tattooists could’ve made mistakes that caused tats to screw up. For example, not put them in deep enough, in which case they faded; or put them in too deep, in which case they blurred like crazy. But mostly they were at the mercy of their equipment and the lack of tattooing knowledge at the time.
Often, the ink’s pigments were huge, which caused the body’s immune system to attack them and break them down. Or they were not commercial-grade tat inks, but something like India ink, which blurred in short order. There was no enlightened aftercare, and people never wore sunblock, thus inviting Old Sol to make tats vanish like mist o’er the moor. And I’m sure there were other reasons I don’t know, but after a couple of decades almost all those tats had aged as bad as the rest of us.
While tattoos were a rare sight ‘til very recently, when I was in the Navy, they were fairly common. Still, it was nothing like now. For example, the average freshman gal in my class had more tattoos than almost anyone I ever even saw in the Navy. Most of the guys who had one, had just that — one. And most guys had none at all. They were more prevalent among the lifers because the tats shouted “Sailor,” which of course was how the lifers defined themselves.
Because the rest of us were in for one hitch and gone, that drive to identify wasn’t as strong. But while most Navy personnel were young kids who’d never left home, before long, they became very independent. And while their peeps back home might have disapproved of tattoos, that held little sway. Plus I think even if parents didn’t want their sailor to get a tat, if he did, they’d let it go as either part of the experience or the folly of youth. Or as was more likely the case, both.
I’m doubt my mother would’ve been so lenient. In fact, I know it. Her response would’ve been something to the effect of (if not EXACTLY): “You can come in my house … but your tattoo can’t. Or if you really want your tattoo in my house, YOU stay out!” Period. She did not negotiate with terrorists.
Along those lines, was my pal Wally’s girlfriend’s reaction: He told her he wanted to get a tat; she absolutely forbade it.
Now a note about Wally. He was about my height, stocky and had a pixyish look and a puckish sense of humor, and between the two I never knew when he was serious. He was one of those rare guys who knew who he was and didn’t care a tiddly-doo what anyone thought about him. He got along with everyone, did his job well, didn’t aspire to either getting approval or making rank, and just toodled along in his own Wally way. So when he said he was getting a tattoo, it meant he was getting a tattoo. As for his g.f.? Well, according to him, that was HER issue.
Of course, things are rarely so simple in the World of High-Flung Romance. And they sure weren’t in this case, since Wally and his girl were getting married in four months, after he finished A school. While Wally came from a blue-collar family from Brooklyn and was about as down-to-earth and non-materialistic as they come, his girlfriend’s family wasn’t. They had big bucks, lived in one of the tonier sections of Long Island, and had planned a wedding that would’ve rivaled Scarlett and Brett’s.
You know the bit: First, the bride, in a hand-sewn silk gown, flower girl and ring boy ahead; a 20-foot train with more adorable children behind, descending a three-story spiral staircase, with a cage of doves released at each. The groom and the groomsmen in Confederate army costumes; the happy couple leaving the church under an arch of crossed swords, whisked away in a vintage Rolls to some club that would’ve made Gatsby look like a putz and a piker. After that, a honeymoon in Bermuda.
Complicating this scene was a real fly in the ointment. Or in this case, TWO flies: Wally’s girl was six months pregnant — with twins!
We talked about this the weekend before Wally was getting his tattoo.
“So,” I asked, “what’s the latest with the wedding?”
“Dunno,” he said. “I guess it’s moving right along?”
“You don’t know?” I said.
“Naw,” he said. “Listen, none of this is being done for me or my family’s sake, so I let hers worry about it.”
“So are you still gonna get the tattoo?” I said.
“Barnum and Bailey got clowns?” he said.
“You know any Yiddish?” I asked.
“I’m from Brooklyn,” he said, as if that answered it.
“Well, Wally,” I said, “If there’s one thing I can say about you, it’s that you got some serious chutzpah.”
He shrugged, signaling I’d just told him what he’d always known.
Finally, T-Day arrived. Wally went off base in the early afternoon and came back a couple hours later sporting a jaunty fouled anchor on his left bicep.
“Well, how ya like it?” I said.
“It looks good to me,” I said. “But whattaya think your girlfriend’ll say?”
“I’m about to find out,” he said, as he shook a ditty bag full of coins and headed off to the pay phones. He was back in a few minutes, an almost undetectable smile on his face.
“So what’d she say?” I said.
“Just that there’d never be a tattooed arm in her bed,” he said.
“You say anything back?
“Yeah,” he said. “I said it’d be a hassle sleeping night after night with my arm over the side of the bed, but if any man can do it, it’s me.”
Good old Wally — ever the diplomat.
We stayed pals through A school and wrote for a while afterward, but then lost touch. Decades later, after the internet became a way of life, on a winter night whim, I tried to find him. It took a while, but I finally found his address and phone number and called him up. It was like Old Home Week, shooting the breeze about this and that from our barracks days. Then he brought me up to date. He and his instant family had moved to Louisiana, as far away from his in-laws as he could; he got work in the oil industry and he’d done well for himself.
He told me he was a grandfather, and was still married to the same woman. It was an opening I couldn’t resist.
“Still got the same wife? “ I said. “And still got the same tattoo?”
“Yup,” he said. “Smartest thing I ever did.”
“The wife or the tattoo?” I teased.
There was a sizable pause; then he spoke.
“What’re you doing next week?” he said.
“Same as this week,” I said. “Nothing.”
“Good,” he said. “So how about doing me a favor?”
“What’s that?” he said.
“Call me then and ask.”