Tattoo artists have interesting people with a lot of unique ideas that they want to be put on their bodies come into their shops. They take these ideas and create something beautiful. Sometimes though, a person comes in with an idea that surpasses unique and goes straight into the 'absurd' category. The following stories come from artists who had people come into their shops with such absurd requests that made them stop and ask "Are you sure about that?"
A Choice With Some Lifetime Consequences
“Several years ago I tattooed the words ‘Jeffrey Dahmer’ in horrible scratchy writing on a girls neck for her 18th birthday. She had been coming into the shop a lot with her friends as they got tattooed and talking about it. She had the letters drawn up and everything. The answer was always the same, ‘No freaking way.’
When she finally turned 18, she came in with a few friends and asked again. I told her politely to screw off with her shenanigans. A few minutes later her friend told her he could just tattoo it with the tool he got off eBay at home. I made the hard choice to do the tattoo to ensure that it wouldn’t get infected or be all scarred up if she ever decided to have it removed.
It’s been circulating around the internet for several years. I still feel horrible about it, and hope she got it removed.”
Never Forget
“I’d been inking for about five years when this guy swaggered into the shop. I say swaggered because I could tell he’d had a bit to drink that night. Enough to make him feel self-assured but not enough to be completely out of it, which automatically would have gotten him kicked out of my chair. I’m not going to deal with people so out of it they aren’t in control, and no one needs 10 am buyers remorse. Not for something like a tattoo.
So he comes in and I can tell he’s new. So I direct him to my book of options but he doesn’t even look at it. Just sits in my chair and says, ‘I want you to draw a troll. He should be fishing using one of those plumbs to balance the line.’
‘So you want a net?’ I ask, to which he responds with a ‘what?’ I say, ‘A net? Like a trolling net for fishing?’
‘Ha! Is that where it comes from? No, man. I want a troll. Big green under the bridge troll! Make sure he’s got a plumb. That’s really important. I want it on my arm.’
I roll my eyes but start sketching a few things out. I’m halfway through outlining something and I say, ‘So what type of fish is this troll catching?’
‘Fish? Heck no, man. He’s catching an alpaca!’ He says. I ask him to make sure he really means an Alpaca to which he responds with a yes. I then make sure he still wants it in the water with a fishing pole. He says yes and adds, ‘Don’t forget the plumb!’
So, I sketch it out and the guy’s like going bonkers over it. He loves it. I start it up and go for an hour. I get a third of the way through before we stop.
‘What are you doing?’ He asks
‘Stopping man. Large tattoos have to go in pieces. It’ll be better for you.’ The guy slaps down $2,000 in cash and tells me to keep going. I stare at it. I stare at him. I keep going.
‘Don’t forget the plumb!’ He says.
So three hours later and this guy hasn’t so much as whimpered on the chair but I’m finally done. The weirdest tattoo I’d ever done but my God was it a masterpiece. The troll was an ugly pale green. The alpaca a fluffy off-white, fur glistening in the water. And the plumb. Well, who could forget a thing like that?
He thanks me and walks out the door and I stop him on the street because I can’t let it go. I can’t. ‘Hey, dude. What’s up with the tattoo?’
He looks at me with these instantly sober eyes and says, ‘so I never forget.’
‘Forget what?’ I ask.
‘That ‘alpaca plumb troll’ is an anagram for ‘Paul Blart Mall Cop’.'”
But What Would Shatner Think?
“A buddy of mine who ran his own studio once asked me to do an illustration for a strange request that a customer had. I had done a number of custom pieces, and some of them were pretty weird. This one, though… The guy essentially wanted a portrait of a 60’s era William Shatner ‘deep in thought’. He also wanted a dream bubble coming out of Shatner’s head, and inside that dream bubble, he wanted the exact same portrait of William Shatner with a mustache.
Essentially William Shatner dreaming about William Shatner with a mustache. The dude wanted this engraved on his flesh. I was in awe of how beautifully stupid it was.
Being that portraiture wasn’t my strong point, I gave it to someone else. Last I had heard, the guy actually went through with it.”
Are You Sure?
“A couple comes into the shop I worked at, and they tell us they want to get each other’s name on their shoulder blades. Not really a big deal in this line of work, it’s by far one of the most requested types of tattoos; although we spent a good 15 or 20 minutes trying to talk them out of it, they were very adamant that that’s what they wanted.
Apparently, they were getting married the following week, as well as each being deployed to different places the week after that. She to Korea, he to Afghanistan. So, while they mosey around the shop, looking at some of the stuff on the wall and waiting for an artist to become available; we notice that they’re whispering to each other, specifically him repeatedly saying, ‘Are you sure? I mean like are you really sure about this?’ It seemed they were having a change of heart, possibly choosing actual matching designs as opposed to each other’s names. Oh, how wrong an assumption that was.
After the artist that was to work on them cleaned up his station and came out to talk to them, that’s when she dropped the bomb, ‘I want to get his name FIRST AND LAST in old English, across my back.’
Our jaws dropped.
We all (3 or 4 of us) were utterly taken back by these words that had just resonated in the air. We shook our heads and asked her to repeat what she just said. Surely nobody could be that stupid.
Again, that was a very wrong assumption to make.
So, without much more hesitation, mainly because she asked or it, the artist got the design ready (13″ across in two lines, this was a MONSTER of a name) and got down to business; all the while the fiancé, watched with a face, which I can only describe as a calm, but pleased, disbelief… Around 4 hours later, the tattoo was done but the shop was closing. The fiancé had to schedule his for two days later. So that’s what he did.
But when he came in two days later, her name is not what he requested.
No, he said he would rather have a grim reaper… as he knew, the whole time, that his soon-to-be wife, had been cheating on him with his brother; and decided to confront her with this knowledge only after they got home from her getting his full name tattooed across her back in huge, bold, uncoverable, black letters. Wedding called off. Shipped halfway across the globe. Good luck lady, I can only imagine what you would’ve said now, thinking about that seemingly simple question, ‘Are you sure?'”
What’s In A Name
“I’ve been a tattoo artist for 6 years and a piercer for 13, so I’ve been in shops for a while. My personal sigh story is a lady who came in wanting her boyfriend’s name on her butt. I always try to talk them out of names, but at the end of the day I like paying my bills on time so if I can’t talk them out of it I will generally do it over having them walk. (unless it’s a face/neck/hand and they don’t have visible tattoos already.)
So I can’t talk her out of it, or into a reasonably small size so it’ll be easier to cover if things go south. His name was Demontray. But we do the tattoo and over the course of it, she explains that he’s in prison and she is waiting for him to get out. I do a good job and keep my mouth shut, people make lots of choices that I wouldn’t.
Three months later the same lady comes back and I’m thinking uh oh, now we have to cover it. Nope. Demontray is mad because he can’t see the tattoo when she visits and he wants her to get another one that he can see. So this time she actually listens to me and we did a second Demontray tattoo on her chest, but this one was small with flowers and she will be able to smack a rose over it later if she needs to.”
That’ll Teach Her
“A Tattoo artist told me that once a young couple walked into the shop and the girl asked for the guys last name on her rib cage. While doing tattoo the guy never said a word and the girl was just going on about how much she loved him. When he finished, the artist says, ‘Check it out in the mirror.’
When she was looking at it, her boyfriend was standing behind her with this blank stare. She spun around and said, ‘Doesn’t it look great?’ The guy stared at her for 5 long seconds and then said, ‘I know you cheated on me, have a good life.’ Then he walked out.
She went running after him and the artist reached out and grabbed her by the arm. ‘You’re going to have to pay before you leave the shop,’ he said.”
Always Make Sure To Communicate With Your Tattoo Artist
“My father is a tattoo artist. He regularly tells a story about when he was much younger, and still new in the business. Once, a man trotted in the parlor, with more hair on his arms than his shiny head. The man wanted to have his bald head tattooed, with a cricket.
My father asked him how he wanted it done, and the man answered in a bawling Australian accent, ‘However you want to, mate. Make it good, and surprise me.’
After getting his tattoo utensils, my father hesitantly began the process of tattooing a cricket on his gleaming head.
Well, when it was completed, my father pulled out a mirror and showed the man his new permanent feature. The Australian gawked, mouth drooping with horror. It turns out, he had wanted something involving cricket – the sport!- put on his forehead. He played on a team in Australia and was in America on vacation with a few other buddies when he went to the parlor to get a tattoo.
The Australian just kind of stared at himself for a few minutes then burst out into laughter. He loved it! He paid, and left, with a huge smile on his face. Later that afternoon, he brought one of his buddies who wanted the exact same tattoo, but on his bicep.
Turns out that the bald man had lost a bet involving a cricket game, and had to get a tattoo of the game cricket. When he came back with an actual cricket tattoo, his buddies thought it was hilarious.”
That’s Just Too Far
“I’m an artist and someone wanted to commission me to draw a tattoo for them. This was maybe 10 years ago, the dude offered me $100 to draw an obese raccoon in a diaper. I said, ‘Okay sure whatever, anything specific you’d like regarding color etc?’
He said that he wanted the diaper to be ‘very full and leaking.’ Now mind you, I have drawn worse things for money. When I was a teenager and into my early 20’s, these more ‘questionable’ commissions kept a roof over my head. So, I wasn’t particularly shocked by the idea that this guy had a furry diaper scat fetish, what shocked me was that he wanted it tattooed. That just seemed like the worst idea imaginable.
I ended up telling him that I wasn’t comfortable drawing that, and refunded him the $100. He replied with a massive wall of text about how close-minded I was.
I’m sure he found someone to draw him the thing but I just couldn’t do it. Not for a tattoo.”
A Very “Creative” Fella
“At my old shop in Seattle, I had one of the artists show me some of his own personal weird ones on himself. He had a colonial soldier riding a horse, but the neck and head were a throbbing member and a Japanese woodblock style, of a woman’s ‘area’ in a kimono holding a man’s junk but as a baby swaddled in cloth. He also had a skull on his thigh, that turned into a massive ‘lady part’ at the forehead.
When I asked, why in the heck? He responded, ‘Why not? No one else would.’ He was a rad dude.
At another shop I went to for a lot of my work, the owner gave a pole dancer an Illuminati ‘all seeing eye’, on her butt.”
Asking The Important Questions
“Had a couple come into the shop. The guy wanted ‘Numba One’ on his left outside forearm and ‘Stunna’ on the other. The lady wanted ‘Stunna’s’ on her left arm and ‘Numba One’ on the other.
If you’re keeping a tally, that’s ‘Numba One Stunna’ and ‘Stunna’s Numba One’. In this horrible self-drawn graffiti letter style. They were white college kids.
Another artist in the shop that night, deadpan, goes, ‘What if one of you drops to Numba Two?’
They did not end up getting tattooed that night.”
Getting More Than You Expected
“I worked at a tattoo shop a few years ago and my friend is the owner. One day two guys come in and they’re partners. One is quite flamboyant, and he requests a regulation-sized dartboard on his butt with the bullseye as his butthole. My friend tries to talk him out of it and lets him know it will more than likely get infected. Of course, he still wants it and gets it.
The bottom of the dartboard couldn’t be finished completely without a sensitive area getting buzzed and I think he was done after 2 hours of line work. We set him up an appointment for 2 weeks out, but he never showed. So now there is a guy walking around out there with 3/4 of dartboard linework around his butt.
Another guy, who I assume is a new college student in the town, comes in with his buddies and tries to act all cool saying that he wants ‘the most unique peacock’ that my friend could draw. Keep in mind that when you tell someone that works in a tattoo shop that you want something unique, you could end up with something you really don’t expect. Our sense of humor is messed up. Anyways, my friend draws the letter ‘P’ in the shape of a veiny male member with peacock feathers behind it. I’m hoping the kid lost a bet because he has that on his left butt cheek now and I don’t see anyone doing that on purpose.”
Maybe Some Research Should Be Done Into These Things
“My tattoo artist told me about how once a father and adult son came in for matching tattoos of Ned Kelly, this is reasonably common here in Australia as Ned is a famous outlaw and many ‘patriot’ Australians have been known to get his distinctive armour tattooed on them as he was known for sticking it to the establishment in the 1800s.
During the tattoo of the son he asks what’s the occasion, the father says, ‘My son just graduated as a cop and I’m a retired cop and we wanted to celebrate.’ Amongst many things Ned Kelly is Australia’s most famous cop killer.”
Some People Have The Best Imaginations
“The artist who did my first tattoo said a guy would come in for these crazy tattoos that he could never talk him out of but always did the best he could. The worst was the guy had a literal piece of brown poop tattooed on his forearm. The best was some cartoon animal being pulled in a Roman chariot by two pieces of crispy bacon. My artist said that was his favorite tattoo he’d ever been asked to do.”
And The Preacher Said, “Let Us Clap.”
“My tattoo artist friend had great stories. My favorite was the fellow who came in wanting, ‘Those two hands clapping with a necklace.’
It was a rosary prayer. He wanted a rosary prayer tattoo.”
These Kids And Their Trendy Butt Tattoos
“I’ve been a tattoo apprentice for about a year and a half. I once tattooed the name ‘Decklan’ with a little heart on a dude’s buttcheek.
I also tattooed ‘fantastic’ on a girl’s butt. I don’t know what it is with kids and butt tattoos these days.
Then, of course, a whole bunch of stupid cliche stuff. Tiny minimalistic anchors? Sure. Watercolor? Of course. I do a decent job and they turn out cute, but I feel like the general public doesn’t realize what makes a tattoo bold and stand the test of time.”
No Ones Finest Moment
“I was at a shop once while a buddy of mine was getting his tattoo done. The artist was telling us this story of a guy that came in with his girl and literally wanted a portrait of her getting intimate with a deer.
The customer said he had met his wife on a camping trip. They hadn’t really been introduced yet but she went off to pee and he heard a scream. He went to help and supposedly this deer came up behind her and had mounted her. He killed the deer and met his new wife… not sure that’s exactly what I would want on my leg though.”
When Everyone Knows This is A Mistake
“I was keeping a friend company while she got tattooed and she wanted to get a wolf’s pawprint on her foot. Not the top of the foot, the bottom of it. Right on the ball.
The artist and I both questioned her decision, ‘Are you sure? You won’t be able to walk on it, and even then, the ink will probably sweat out so it won’t be deep.’ She was insistent, willing to pay, her choice, etc. About a week later, all that was left was the faintest outline.”
Words Are Probably Better In This Case
“A man came in asking for a picture of his daughter, but when he came in he did not have a picture and wanted to verbally explain it to me. I wrote her name on his rib cage instead.”
Employee Of The Month!
“I was getting some work done and a guy came in and got the Pepsi-Cola logo tattooed on the side of his head. It was the size of a fist. The man was bald and a truck driver for Pepsi-Cola. He was wearing a Pepsi-Cola hat and a Pepsi-Cola shirt. If they made Pepsi-Cola sunglasses, I’m positive he would have been wearing them.”
A Rare Mythical Creature
“My regular tattoo artist told me about a woman who was obsessed with Gary Barlow from the band Take That and various ‘talent’ shows, to the extent that she wanted a full-color portrait of him on her hands. I don’t know if it was the same portrait across both hands, the same portrait on each hand, or two different portraits per hand. She would come in pretty regularly to ask for it, each time she was turned away. When I was getting a pretty large thing done that took multiple sessions, I went in bright-eyed hoping to witness her one day, but alas, no dice.”