getting inked

Roger Ingerton is a Wellington tattoo artist. His shop, Roger’s TattooArt, has been located at 198 Cuba Street since 1977 – long before any “Lord of the Rings” fan would even dream of connecting Middle-Earth and New Zealand. Roger specializes in sprawling, detailed tattoos that cover large swaths of skin. The walls of his tattoo parlor are covered with photos of bare-bottomed men who are covered, shoulder-to-knee, in intricate tribal designs and mythical scenes. Many of these tattoos are Ta Moko, or traditional tattoos depicting Maori family history and legend. But today, Roger’s small, cramped tattoo parlor draws a second type of crowd, too – the slightly geeky, often shy type seeking to mar their unblemished skin for the first time in the name of fandom.

Back in late 1999 or early 2000, after filming for the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy wrapped, the actors who were part of the cinematic Fellowship decided to commemorate their journey and friendships with a unique tattoo. The tattoo was the number nine – representing the nine members of the Fellowship – written out in Elvish characters. And Roger Ingerton was the man who branded it onto the shoulders, hips, feet, and arms of the likes of Orlando Bloom, Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, and Sir Ian McKellen.

Each month, Raewyn coordinates appointments at Roger’s for any Red Carpet Tour members who wish to take home a permanent souvenir from their time spent in Middle-Earth.
Out of the August Fellowship, only two – Echo and Mary – were going under the needle. Echo was getting an intricate tattoo of a horse’s head, with a mane that tapered down and twisted into a Celtic knot. The tattoo was inspired by Tolkien’s horse people of Rohan, and Daniel Reeve designed it. Mary was getting her third tattoo from Roger – three tattoos for three trips to Middle-Earth. Appropriately, this one said “ME3” in Elvish characters.

On the ride back into the city, as I helped Vic navigate to Cuba Street (as much to my own surprise as his, I think, to find that I knew the city so well), I asked Raewyn how many tour members usually sought out tattoos.

“Oh, it depends,” she said. “We usually always have at least one, but sometimes we have up to five or six!”

Even though we only had two brave, about-to-be-inked souls among us, we decided to turn the event into a group outing anyway. Since Vic and Raewyn didn’t have anything planned for the rest of the afternoon, Charlotte, Lisa, Josephine, Susi, and I accompanied Echo and Mary to Roger’s.

When you walk into Roger’s TattooArt, it is clear that Roger has been practicing his craft for decades. Every wall – of which there are many, thanks to the various, slightly unnecessary partitions that make the space feel even smaller than it is – is covered with photos of tattooed people of all shapes, sizes, and ages. The surfaces not covered in examples of Roger’s work are obscured by bric-a-brac, including a horned mask hanging over the arched doorway that lends an odd western flair to the space.

Lisa and I were peering at a photo of a particularly intricate full-body tattoo that consisted of a lot of solid black in the rear-region when Echo and Mary slipped behind the counter to get ready for their tattoos.

“Aren’t these just gorgeous?” Susi asked, pointing to another full-body tattoo photo.

“What, the tattoo, or his butt?” Lisa asked. Susi let out a hearty laugh, and Lisa just shrugged. “Hey, I can’t help it if I find Kiwi guys ridiculously attractive.”

“How do you know he’s a Kiwi?” Charlotte asked, nudging up between Lisa and me to peer at the wall. “You’re only seeing him from behind. He could be old, fat, and German.” This only made Susi laugh harder.

“Oh, to be young again!” With that, Susi slipped behind the counter, too, to join Mary in the back room where Roger himself would be working on Mary’s hip. Echo, meanwhile, was conferencing with the other tattooist working at Roger’s – a short, mustachioed man named Tom. Tom was resizing Echo’s design to fit on her lower leg.

“Do you think it’s too big?” Echo asked, coming out from behind the counter, one pant leg rolled up, to examine the outline near her ankle. We all leaned in.

“I think it looks good.”

“A bit big for me.”

“I hate needles, so way too big for me.”

Echo decided to have the design shrunk a bit more, and then was finally satisfied with the result. Tom had her lay down on a low table in the front room as he got his equipment ready. And then the tattoo gun started to whir.

“Ow! Bugger, bugger, bugger! I should’ve taken a shot before this!”

Suddenly, Echo’s normally animated, good spirits were doused. Within minutes, she laid curled up on the table, eyes scrunched shut, face red, and knuckles white as she squeezed Charlotte’s hand over the counter. The only sounds coming from her mouth were associated with pain, and her free hand was clenched into a tight fist to prevent it from shaking.

As Echo contorted her features into an especially grotesque grimace, Susi emerged from the back room. The older woman leaned over the younger one, her long hair swishing past her hip as she did, and placed a feathery kiss on Echo’s forehead.

“Don’t worry,” she said, squeezing Echo’s arm. “After this, we’ll go get drunk.” Echo smiled momentarily, and Susi returned to the back room. But as Tom made his way closer to her ankle bone, Echo’s courage failed, and she let out a whimper.

“This is so much worse than my last tattoo,” she said through clenched teeth. Charlotte renewed her grip on Echo’s hand as Lisa snapped a photo with her pink camera.

“Gotta document this,” she said with a small, crooked smile. I would have laughed, but I didn’t out of respect for Echo’s pain.

“Is he done yet?” Echo discarded her glasses, and buried her face in the crook of her arm without waiting for an answer.

“If I lie, will it make it better?” Josephine asked. She was kneeling on an old leather couch on the other side of one of the shop’s partitions. She had her camera pressed up against the glass that separated her from Tom’s workspace, and therefore was able to clearly see that Tom had barely even started.

Roughly twenty minutes into the tattoo, a group of teens crowded into the shop. Clad in a lot of black and a few chains and piercings, they huddled in a corner, whispering.

“This place looks sketchy as,” a girl with a streak of pink in her blonde hair finally said, and the group filed back out the door. I cringed at her use of “sketchy as.” Kiwis – especially younger ones – gravitate towards similar phrases, where “as” is used for emphasis after a descriptor. Something really cool is “sweet as,” a girl wearing skimpy clothing is “trashy as”… you get the picture. Perhaps it’s the English major in me, but this drove me nuts. When some of the other American students started picking up “sweet as,” I got into the habit of responding with, “as what?” I got the impression that it annoyed them right back, which was fine with me.

No one else seemed to care about the group of teens or their open-ended similes, however, so I turned my attention back to the table. I was in the midst of trying to come up with something witty and encouraging to say when Susi re-emerged from the back room.

“Mary’s almost done,” she told us. “If you girls want to go, I can stay with Echo.”

“Yeah, go, go,” Echo said, her face still hidden. “You don’t have to sit here and watch.”