DO TATTOOS HURT?

In short, yes.
Hell yes.
In fact, if anyone has ever told you otherwise or has playfully laughed them off as some simple, easily-endured process, then perhaps they are nothing more than a big, fat fucking liar. I know, not the most eloquently put, or not even the funniest, but it’s either that, or they only sat there for ten measly minutes, distracted with an unwelcomed audience of friends or family, cringingly cheering them on, while having something as small as a fucking coin drawn on their wrist.
So yes.
Tattoos hurt.
A lot.
Take it from a man who is densely covered from his neck to his colourful feet. A man who has stomached the absolutely awful pursuit of welcoming a body suit which has included the intimate, moist areas of armpits and the sensitive, paper-thin flesh of a vulnerable pelvic region. Take it from a man, and perhaps a crazy one, who has sat for over 40 hours while having both of his legs coloured in (and the awful afternoons of torturous kneecapping), as well as a man who has laid patiently on his stomach while surrendering his back and exposed ribcage in order to be pricked and prodded and stabbed like a hacked piece of festering meat. Admittedly, my arms were a little less painful, as many professionals will attest to, but again, after hours and hours of work burning against elbow bones and ditches, the soft, vulnerable skin of inner-biceps, and the indignity of having your raw ass cheeks excruciatingly painted, I stand by my initial, perhaps brazen offering of calling people out who say tattoos don’t fucking hurt.
Because they do.
Don’t just take my exaggerated word for it. You can ascertain such a fact with the amount of people who scramble to find the right painkillers or try to fool their tattooist by applying numbing cream before their appointment, despite assuring them they didn’t commit such a critical error.
Quick tip: artists hate that.
(I, for the record, have never done either of those things, for the concept of suffering, of ‘earning’ your ink, was introduced to me early on in my journey. So yeah, hero, right?)

After all, and getting back on track, the process of welcoming fucking art into the otherwise plain pigment of your skin entails small, furiously-working needles, and in the realms of up to twenty at time, piercing your bleeding epidermis from anywhere from 50 to 3000 pricks a minute. The ink is then delivered deeper, into the dermis, which contains nerves and blood vessels and receptor cells, and then bob’s your bloody uncle, that’s where the pain enters the fucking fray. Ouch. I mean, have you ever seen a slow-motion video of a tattoo gun raw fucking someone’s skin like an inky, bloodied appendage? Have you ever witnessed the squirming, the sweating, and the sheer displeasure of someone being creatively drilled for hours at a time as they clutch the edge of the table? No. Of course you haven’t, or otherwise you would be agreeing with everything I’m saying.
(If you are, then good.)
Now, granted, the initial buzz, the sting, and the deep-rooted vibration that spreads through your bones is, if I’m to be totally honest, somewhat bearable. In isolation, in fact, small lines and modest areas of shading that only require a minute or two of someone’s professional handiwork, don’t necessarily drive you towards the higher end of the pain spectrum. You can bravely withstand the fleeting burn. Sit comfortably. Pretend that all the other tattoos you’re now eagerly planning to get will feel the same as this somewhat mildly unpleasant commitment.
“Is this it? Awesome! I’m going to get more and more.”
I’ve felt that. I once shared in a foolish yearning of envisioning myself covered (which I am now) after wrongly believing that what I was going through in the opening stanza of any particular tattoo was ‘easy.’ Hell, and depending on where exactly you are being tattooed, a five or ten-minute job or the beginning stages may even near the realms of feeling ticklish or offer you the false sense of security of where the notorious pain of getting some work done is greatly exaggerated or only feared through the eyes of a quivering pussy.
“I don’t know what my bro, cousin, boyfriend, mum etc…were talking about. That was a piece of cake!” you exclaim, as you proudly sit up with a deceiving sense of the whole, ten-minute experience.
Ha.
Don’t fall into that trap, because I can promise you that you will be bleary-eyed, intoxicated with the gleam of your freshly-delivered ink, wanting to sign up for a whole rib-cage or a leg sleeve or a burning chest sticker or a full, unbearable back piece, only to regret your influenced decision the moment the artist takes their first, real break.
“We must be getting close now, right?” you will say, shaky and bleeding, with ink running down your skin, worry in your eyes, and an arm or leg numb with pins and needles.
“Well, we still have a long way to go, but you’re doing so well!”
“Oh. This feels worse than the last time…”
Here’s a tip.
Anything over an hour is bad. Really bad. The area of the body plays a huge factor too, but for all the ink I have acquired over the years, there weren’t too many places that I remembered being enjoyable. I had even foolishly believed at time that my ass cheeks, an area abundantly padded with tissue and fat, strong and rigid, would be a walk in the park, easy, and a fucking homerun.
“Ass? There’s so much meat there I’ll hardly feel it.”
God, that was an awful day.
It truly was.
My prostate is still recovering.