1968 – the year the hippie explosion was in its infancy. In Chicago there was a whirlwind of preparation for the Democratic convention, shortly after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in the kitchen of an LA Hotel after the California primary race. The world was up for grabs. We knew that President Johnson was not in the race. Hubert Humphrey, his vice president looked so weak. After being successfully challenged by Gene McCarthy, who had won six of the 14 primaries held that year. Then Kennedy won six, including California. Johnson was heading for the hills. Viet Nam and protests were gaining steam.
I remember being devastated by Kennedy’s assassination. I was sixteen when his brother John was killed. I had, as a 13-year-old, distributed fliers for him in my hometown. I went door to door. He was elected and I felt part of the change underway. I was at lunch in the high school cafeteria when the whisper came through the room of 400 plus students like a power hose. You could see it pass from table to table. Students breaking into tears. Teachers weeping openly and consoled by other teachers; a loud crash and wail from the lunch line staff.
In the case of Bobby, it flashed across late night news with the devastated face of Rosie Greer as a centerpiece. His face reflecting us all. The fragility captured in the phrase – “No, not him, too.” It felt like the floor ripped from under my generation. A flash of hope on the California political horizon dashed. McCarthy had lost footing and credibility and how does any candidate run against the death of someone who was the leading light of liberal politics. You are only left a pitiful shadow.
It was clear, Nixon was the Republican nominee and the newly imprinted hippie revolution gathered in Grant Park and by the Conrad Hilton Hotel in the hot summer nights of August to march to the convention and let our feelings be known much to chagrin of Mayor Daley and the local police force. They rose up in the first police riot cracking heads and filling the air with tear gas.
After that debacle I walked into the Cliff Raven tattoo parlor on Belmont Ave. In the US, there were three name tattooists back then, all with bird names; a guy named Sparrow in New York, Madeline Bluebird in San Francisco and Cliff Raven in Chicago doing work on everyone from Hell’s Angels to Janis Joplin and Joan Baez. But it wasn’t like now. Ink was still forbidden fruit, frowned upon by normals. But I wanted one.
From the outside, it was a seedy looking joint, as one would expect. There was a small flashing neon sign stating their business was open. The wooden entry sat on an angle just off an alley. I walked in, greeted by antiseptic smells and unbelievably bright fluorescent lights. I had almost expected it to be dark like the work needed to be done in secret. Instead, there was a long counter blocking entrance to the workstations from the front. Everything was open to see. A biker at the back workstation was getting his entire back done in a colorful Medusa head. I can say now, though I knew nothing then, all that color hurts like a motherfucker. He had an audience of biker brothers and a girlfriend I guessed. Seeing it was daunting. You could hear the electric vibrations of the tattoo machine, nearly as agonizing as the sound of the dental drill. I could see his face in a mirror. The tattooist hunched over like some artistic troll, moving the machine back and forth between outlines giving Medusa’s tangles shape. I could see him wince with some regularity. Tough biker, sure, I thought.
Cliff was available. “What do you want?”
“I came for a tattoo”
“Do you know what, or do you want to pick something off the boards.”
Scattered around the upper parts of the walls and making up the entire countertop were pictures identified with numbers or letters of some combo of anchors, daggers, pinup girls, hearts with Mom scrolled across, many naked women with extraordinary breasts or butts or lips or hairdos. There were sailing ships and submarines, pirate faces or flags, tigers, eagles and a plethora of the animal kingdom, snarling, smiling, eating other animals. I stared.
“Well, did you pick one out?”
“No. I know what I want to do.”
About a month before a film had come out about the political upheaval in Greece.
It was about a prominent politician murdered during a political riot and all the insanity that follows. It felt incredibly perceptive of all we were going through at the time. The election of Nixon. The trial of the Chicago 8. The protests in the street. The marching on Washington. The title of the movie was Z. It stood for the Greek word Z E I, which meant he is alive. That’s what I wanted, on my chest, a badge of declaration, death was not the end of the struggle it was the beginning. That was my first dose of ink.
I was an actor in those days, and many after. I insisted that the color be soft enough I could cover it with makeup if needed. I thought it would last forever, but It faded long ago. It did create a parental row, not insurmountable. More, it gave me a taste of ink. They say it is an addiction – get one and you will always get another. It took thirty years but eventually it was replaced, but not forgotten.
See My Ink – Part 2