This was like meeting a holy man who looked right into your soul. What sacred art, what magic, what dynamic! It was far more intimate than sex and far more spiritual than any religious ceremony, and at the end of it all, there was Rebirth! And so, I began to visit Xed on numerous occasions and a few years later I began self-tattooing extensively. At this point in time, I was a radical ‘femme’ lesbian. I had long hair, wore high heels and worked as an exotic dancer. I had a fully disposable setup to tattoo at home and, with the guidance of ‘Bryan’, a tattooist friend from Hong Kong who was amazing at doing large-scale tribal blackwork (but at the time spoke no English), I began tattooing myself. But there was a no-tattoo rule for dancers at most strip clubs back then.
