When my dad and mom were first married, they communicated with symbols and dictionaries until she learned English well enough. If that isn’t love, I don’t what is. I remember her handing him pictures of chickens to let him know that we needed eggs while he flipped through the Greek-English dictionary trying to find the word.

I went to a dream analyst named Dick Wiener a few years ago.

The first time I went to see him I had long sleeves on and we had a good talk. The next time I went I was wearing short sleeves so he saw all my ink and wanted to know all about it. When it came time for my third appointment, I couldn’t find his number and I couldn’t remember his address. So I called information and asked for Dick Wiener. The operator started laughing and said, “I have two Dicks.” I said, “You do? Damn!” She goes, “I have a Richard Wiener and a Dick Wiener.” I’m all, “Yeah! Dick Wiener, that’s the guy. Could you give me his address?”

Dick Wiener told me that the tattoos are my form of communication. I told him all about my life, all about my parents, and he told me something fascinating: I learned how to express myself in symbols from watching them. He said that at a really young age I internalized my mother’s experience and made it a part of me. He said that what I put on my body is what I want to bring into my life and what I want to say about myself. He’s right: I’ve got koi fish tattooed on my arm and I have a koi pond, I’ve got a cheetah, and someday I’ll have one. Most of what I have on my body has manifested itself in one way or another in my life.

I’ve got a lot of tattoos and I’ve got a thing for them—that’s retardedly obvious. I’ve already said this, but my first one was Mighty Mouse breaking through a bass drum. He’s got a pair of drumsticks in his hand, he’s on my right shoulder, and he’s pretty faded. But he’s still rad. I got him right when I started Mötley because Mighty Mouse was my childhood hero. He always saved the day, he was a good guy, he was a role model who did the right thing, and at the end of every episode, he always got the chick. He’d wail on the bad dude, dump him in jail, shine that guy’s evil plot, and then go scoop up his lady and fly off with her. What a pimp.

When I went to get Mighty Mouse, Nikki Sixx was with me. He was the reason I was there, so he had to come. He was definitely the guy that kicked off tattoos in Mötley. I didn’t know anybody with tattoos other than him. Younger readers, check this out—back then, most rock bands didn’t have tattoos. Nikki started the trend in our band and definitely set the trend for all the dudes who copied us.*

I got Mighty Mouse inked onto my body at Sunset Strip Tattoo. A guy named Kevin Brady did it, and it still looks great. Kevin did most of my stuff. Wherever the fuck you are, Kevin, hey, man, you’re getting your props right now, bro. Thanks. And good luck.

Mighty Mouse was my start because he summed up my childhood to me. After I began hanging around tattoo shops though, I immediately gravitated toward the Oriental style. It was peaceful, easy to look at, colorful, and so beautiful. To me, adding tattoos to my body was like buying art. But it was better because art hangs in a house or a museum and tattoos are fucking on you, with you, right there with you, every minute of the day. I started adding more almost immediately. When I looked in the mirror at that first one, I thought, “Wow, that’s really beautiful, but I’m out of balance.” I started putting them here and there on my arms, on my legs, trying to get it all to balance out in my head. They’re totally addictive, like potato chips—there’s no way I’m having just one.

If there is one word I want tattooed on my body it is the one that means pleasure and pain at the same time. I don’t know what that word is, I don’t think it exists. Maybe that word is “tattoo” because a tattoo hurts like fuck while it is happening but I’m thinking, “My God, when this is over it is going to look amazing.” I’ve got the word “tattoo” on my wrist. And it fucking hurt like hell. Wrist skin is sensitive, please believe.

My tattoos were done at separate times in many places, but I don’t think of them as individual pieces anymore. They’ve become one big work of art.

I’ve never been with a woman who is covered from head to toe in tattoos. That would be amazing because when I see pictures of it, I think it’s hot as hell. I would study her body like a Bible. I met a woman in Japan once on the bullet train* who had her back completely covered. The Japanese Mafia, the Yakuza, have their women tattooed. She was definitely one of them: She was in a beautiful dress and was surrounded by some tough-looking dudes. It was probably a pretty stupid thing to do, but I showed her some of my tattoos and made a gesture like I wanted to see hers. She didn’t say a word, she just got up kind of nervously and led me to the space between the cars. She let down her dress straps, covered her breasts, and let her dress fall to her waist. Her entire back was covered and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. She had it done in that incredible traditional Japanese style, and it depicted a Geisha girl dancing.

So any sane, tattooed lady, please apply, there is a position to fill here in Tommyland, and help is wanted.

One of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had was getting tattooed in Japan. People will argue about where the art originated, and I don’t know, but I tell you, that night, it felt like I was being inked at the source. I was sitting there with Yakuza members, being tattooed according to their tradition in one of their secret spots. We were drinking sake, lying on mats, with the tattoo artist in the traditional position with his legs crossed hammering the ink in manually. Nikki and I were there together, looking through the guy’s artwork while an interpreter told the artist what we wanted.

We worked for that session, let me tell you. We had begged our Japanese promoter, Mr. Udo, to take us to a Yakuza artist for years. He just kept saying “Oh, no, no, no, no” every time we went to Japan, but finally he caved. Pretty early into the night I figured out what he was freaked out about.

We were picked up in a van with blacked-out windows so dark we couldn’t see where we were going. A couple of bald guys get out of this thing and open the door. You could tell right away that under the tightcollared shirts they are wearing, they are tattooed from head to toe. It’s heavy. They drive us to their clubhouse, but if my life depended on it, I couldn’t tell you how to get back there.

When we arrive, I notice right away that the guy tattooing has no pinky. He’s got this huge callous in the web between his forefinger and thumb. As he tattoos us, by hand with a bamboo stick, we communicate with him through our interpreter.

It got more bizarre. Nikki and I are getting tattoos and one of the bald-headed guys who picked us up comes in and says something funky in Japanese. Then he whips out his dick. Dude, I’m lying there on the fucking mat and he’s standing right above me with his dick out. Plus, in this whole Yakuza tattoo scene that we’re in, they take a mixture of cocaine, novocaine, and water, soak it in a washcloth and rub it on your skin as a topical anesthetic. After they rub it on your arm, you feel nothing. So there I am, looking at some bald guy with his dick out, while homecooked numbing juice soaks into me, and a guy with no pinky pokes my arm with bamboo. Nice.

The guy with his dick out, by the way, pulled it out to show off what he’d done to it. I’m looking at it and thinking, “He must have some disease, what the fuck is wrong with this guy’s dick?” He has bumps all over it. I ask the interpreter what the fuck is going on with this guy. He tells me that the guy has pearls in his dick. They do this thing where they take a bamboo stick that’s as sharp as a knife, make an incision, and put a pearl in the shaft. Once that heals, they do it again. This guy was fully loaded—he had more speed bumps than a school zone. His dick must have been worth a couple grand. They say when you fuck with pearls all up in your dick skin, it hits the girl’s clit, right up on the top side where she likes it. It was the ultimate human dildo, attached to a bald tattooed Japanese guy. For a minute there, I was like, “Woah, hey. Maybe I should get one.”

That night was far more traditional than the day I got some switches inked on my elbow in Dallas, Texas. The Crüe was touring Generation Swine, and John Corabi was our lead singer then. Crabs was extremely hungover that particular day so we did the sensible thing and went to Benihana’s to drink and drink and drink and drink. Dimebag—that’s Darrell, the guitar player from Pantera—is with us and he decides that we need to swig Hulk Blood, a mixture of Midori and sake. It’s a shot, and of course we order many. Corabi is so hungover that real soon he’s fucking wasted. The man’s liver is on crutches. At this point, Corabi is still so fucking happy to be in the band that he religiously wore the $5,000 pair of leather pants we’d bought him. (I think he slept in them.) So there he is in hot-as-fuck Dallas, wearing his leather pants, wasted as hell. It’s the middle of the day, we’re drunk, and we need something to do. We go to a tattoo parlor and Dimebag gets “Hulk Blood” inked on his leg. I get my “kill” and “reset” buttons, and Corabi gets the same thing. His are on the outside of his left arm, mine are on the inside of my left elbow. They are my out when shit gets too fucked for words. I concentrate on what effect I want it to have, and push the button. I “kill” sparingly. It’s huge—I only blast that one when someone needs to die and I can’t do it myself because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail. It’s all I can do when I really want someone to go away and I’m okay with that. “Reset” is used more frequently. It’s what I do when I’m hungover, tired, you know, when I’ve got to reset. It’s for those times that are just, “Oh God, please. God, please reset this, I need to come back.” I’ve got to be careful about the “reset” switch too, because it’s easy to accidentally bump it and use up one of those valuable chances.

We got tattoos that day in Dallas, but we weren’t done. The three of us decide we need to water ski and go out on our friend’s boat. It’s about one hundred-something degrees and we idiots meet Rex, the bass player from Pantera, at the lake. Corabi passes out on a park bench next to where we hopped on the boat. We left him there in his leather pants, just all Drunk Guy. He must have taken his shirt off at some point because when we got back to scrape him up, dude was sportin’ the most fucked-up sunburn I’ve ever seen. It was classic. In a few short hours he’d turned into Mr. Blistering Drunk Guy. Crabs got a tattoo that day, but even if he had sat for eight hours with some cat who specialized in red he never could have made that fucker’s skin look the way it did.

If anyone reading this is thinking of getting a tattoo, stop for a minute, take the design home, and live with it—don’t get it that night. This is art for life—it’s no impulse buy. Think about it a good long time, plan it out, find the right artist for the right tattoo—they’re all out there, so do it right. Whatever you do, for the love of Jesus Christ and all that’s holy, don’t get a girl’s name tattooed on your body. It’s a curse, it’s taboo, it’s the beginning of the end. It’s like naming the fish in your aquarium—as soon as you do, you’ve got a floater on your hands. Girls come and go, but what you’re putting on your skin isn’t going anywhere. And if you’re thinking about lasering that fucker off, good luck. It’s twice as painful, twice as expensive, and it doesn’t work. Trust.