The original article.

I am a veteran suspension practitioner with over a decade of practical hands-on suspension knowledge in a variety of settings: private; performance; large scale projects involving great heights with multiple people — including much of the suspension footage you have probably seen on TV on Ripley’s Believe it or Not and the Discovery Channel, to helping hang one Criss Angel from a helicopter; and many private gallery and art shows. But, my main interest has always been in high tension, highly kinetic suspension that culminates with my pride and joy: the 360, though we’ll get to that later. My point is, after a decade of practical, hands-on experience with the subject, I have also recently stepped into the arena of educating newcomers on the subject and art of body suspensions, so I feel well qualified to speak on the topic.

After all this time, blood, sweat and tears my dear suspension family and I have dedicated to furthering this art, one thing we have learned is that accidents do happen. We will be the first to admit that. I have personally witnessed many mishaps occur over the 13 years I have been involved with suspensions. Some could have been avoided, some couldn’t have been — there is no accounting for what should always be the weakest link: the skin. There have even been two cases in which people were injured where I was personally involved and, one time, one of those people was me. It jacked my lower back up in a way that still plagues me today. That definitely changed my mind about things.

Both times something happened during a suspension, not only did we know the negative impact it would have on the community (and did all we could to halt and reverse it), we also did everything we could to inform others about what the problem was and why it happened, in order to try to prevent it from happening to others. Some of our family had already been hurt physically and there was no reason for others to suffer the same fate. We didn’t shy away from the public backlash that was bound to happen. We wanted to try to get others to see how dangerous it can be and that safety is the first thing we should all have on our minds. We, as the suspension leaders at the time, thought of the community and what the impact of our actions would be.

Rich falls during practice.

To me, it didn’t seem right to just blame the hardware company when it was our fault if the materials were used inappropriately. Using materials that cause a mechanical failure and injury to a member of your suspension family is not a way to run a suspension group, or a way to look after your friends, in my humble opinion. So, learning from our mistakes, we opted not to — ever again.

We owned up for our oversights. We all got together and wrote up something that illustrated differences in marketing and wording when buying the materials and equipment that will hold human life in the balance. We showed what gear to use, explained ratings and what to look for. We took pictures showing differences and ways to self-test things. We even had it posted to ModBlog as a way to inform others that accidents happen and, hopefully, ways to avoid them. When human life is at stake, leave nothing to chance!

Growing up in the suspension environment that I did with the people with whom I learned, I have always been one for pushing limits and taking suspensions further. I got this crazy idea in my head about a “rotisserie” one night during the now-legendary all-night IHOP TSD meetings, and TSD made it happen. Since that was pulled off without a hitch, I got the idea for the end-over-end version of a rotisserie, or a 360. With the help of Tom Moore, an engineering friend with much more smarts than I, it became a reality. High tension kinetic suspensions were a very new thing back then (and remain so, in my opinion). Not much work has been in done in that area of suspensions, and I think with those sorts of experimental suspension trials, there is more leeway in terms of public acceptance of mishaps when doing something that has never been before. If done in private, that is, and not as part of a show.

The incident I’m speaking of, and which many of you might remember, was during a private suspension group practice while attempting to conquer the now infamous 360 suspension rig during; the other mishap was with a friend, trying out some stuff for an upcoming show. Yes, we try things out before shows to ensure they will work the way we expect them to because, as we all know and as this incident shows, things don’t always happen like you want them to. The way I have always seen it is if you see a suspension group as a band, doesn’t it make sense to try out your sets and get them down before you play them in public? I think TSD, CoRE and MAYHEM were some of the only groups I have ever heard of even attempting to do this. I attribute this to why there has always been a huge difference in stage shows between a real suspension group and people who just hang others.

If things have been done before, there shouldn’t be any oversights other than sheer neglect on the part of the department head that allowed the mishap to occur. If the same sort of neglect happened in a private corporation, I’m sure someone would have to answer for their inadequacies. I don’t see this with the current situation in Florida.

We publicly admitted when Richard fell off the 360, even though we didn’t have to. We explained and showed with pictures why the turn buckle failed, and made it clear that there were oversights on our part. But the fact remains, we admitted it. We knew the eyes of the community were on us as high profile practitioners and the experts in the field — which not only shows it can happen to anyone, but also how such an incident should be dealt with. We knew our responsibility not only to our team member Richard, first and foremost by getting him medical care and taking him to the hospital, but we also knew we had an obligation to explain to the community that we were trying to better our techniques and make progress. We knew we had to put out the equivalent of a press letter showing photos (one advantage of filming your own stunts) of the equipment failing, with diagrams showing what happened and why. We put information out there and accepted responsibility for our actions. This is sorely lacking in the current situation in Florida. We could have kept it quiet, but that wouldn’t have done anyone any good and Richard’s pain and suffering would have been all for nothing if nobody had learned from these mistakes.

Ron and MAYHEM experimenting with the 360 spin-off.

I’ve heard suspensions compared to the danger of BMX riding or skateboarding recently. I don’t agree with this at all. The difference is that in those extreme activities, the people are controlling their own bailouts; they haven’t put their lives in someone else’s hands and expecting things to be OK. In that case, you control everything yourself.

I heard it said that Jimmy (the poor fellow to whom this unfortunate incident happened) knew quite well of the possibility of complications with what he was doing. “He knew the risks” has been passed around. I’m sure if this thinly veiled attempt at passing the blame to him was truthful and he was indeed told that the sub-par rigging might break and he could break his legs, he might not have gone for it.

There are a couple of questions that stand out in my mind:

- Why wasn’t there secondary rigging involved, especially when they are expecting extremely intense G-forces to be applied to those links?

- Why were Home Depot links used instead of rescue, safety, or climbing equipment? Those quick links used are not rated for such a working load. This lack of suspension prowess is what caused the mechanical failure over the weekend.

Speaking to Allen Falkner, another notable expert in the field of body suspensions, he had these thoughts on the situation:

Here are the scenarios I can think that might have caused the accident:

- Faulty link (Home Depot is not really known for quality).

- The monofilament line, being so thin, was concentrating the pressure onto a very small point, creating excessive stress. (It makes sense that the thin line was creating a stress point that the links aren’t designed to take.)

- The link turned sideways. If the link was being pulled from a direction other than that for which it’s designed, it could be more prone to failure. Especially if it flipped and the nut was against the hook eye.


Here are the problems I can see:


1. Use of Quick Links: I know we use them often for suspension, but they are designed for static loads, not dynamic. Plus, they are not intended for human weight. Yes, we use them incorrectly in basic suspension situations and although I think they are adequate for static loads, it now seems time to discontinue this practice.


2. Accessory Cord: It is definitely stronger than 550, but not really designed for shock loading. A larger rope or webbing would have been more suitable.


3. Dynamic Rigging: In a fall like that, static rigging would have been the best in case of single hook failure.


4. Hooks: Gilson hooks handle dramatically more weight. Plus, there was definitely a chance of him bouncing off open hooks.

5. Safety Harness: This one is self explanatory.


6. Monofilament Line: I am completely unaware of its properties and how it would affect rigging components.

On the shoulders of giants we stand. Collectively, we set the bar and standards for others to follow and live up to. I don’t see any actions coming from the teams involved with this worth following, or examples showing other fledgling groups how to deal with situations like this. It only has to happen once for anything to get outlawed or shut down. A perfect example of this can be seen by looking at pyrotechnics and the ’80s rock band Great White. They also had careless stage directors and stage managers who didn’t pay attention to stage specs for a safe and proper pyrotechnic show, and the entire auditorium caught fire, trapping and killing many people. This made authorities come down incredibly hard on all who use pyrotechnics here in the USA. This is a precedent that I would hate to see applied to any facets of our industry. All because someone didn’t care enough to pay attention to specs. A scarier thought to me is what if this crew had attempted another feat they were equally unqualified to perform, like a knee-to-back transition? That would be hard for anyone to survive from that height. What would we do then?

The truth is, I’m really scared of the repercussions and backlash that our community will face because of this “passing the buck” attitude I am seeing from the groups involved, with no one accepting responsibility for what happened. To me, responsibility to your friends and group go far deeper than taking them to the hospital and telling everyone to wish them well online. Responsibility means accepting consequences for you actions and attempting to make up for them. I would think they would try to educate and show others how to prevent this from happening again so others don’t get hurt — not shifting the focus to your ailing friend in the hospital, trying to taking the attention off what you caused to happen with your oversights. But I’m old — maybe ethics and morals are a dying personal trait in this industry. (Did I really say that? Me? Moral? Wow, I must be getting old.) But a quick look at the group leader’s MySpace page and following his links to what he finds important to promote about himself, I get a better idea of the ethical morality of this person. I begin understand why they aren’t speaking up about what actually happened, and disseminating rumors about it all so we are forced to make our own assumptions about what truly happened. This is not the way professionals handle things.

For the record, I do not know Skin Mechanic or the guys involved with this. I know they were closely associated with some people making and selling hooks to our community, but I don’t think that endeavor will take off after this latest mishap, especially if it is true that the maker of a locking hook wasn’t using them for such a dynamic suspension. That would also speak volumes about their understanding of the act of body suspension and what happens during a dynamic suspension. It’s obvious some people don’t understand it — hell, I don’t get it all when G-forces come into play with dynamic or static rigging, but we at least overcompensate for that. Here’s something from rock-solid rigger Emrys Yetz, explaining how it works:

First, my thoughts go out to Jimmy Pinango for a quick and healthy recovery from the accident. Hope you’re doing well and are with the ones you love.

The accident that recently happened at the Deerfield Beach Tattoo Convention wasn’t due to equipment failure via manufacturer — it was a result of the equipment being used past its Working Load Limit. In order to understand what I’m going to explain, let’s first define Working Load Limit: “The maximum mass or force with which the product is authorized to support in a particular service.” The industry standard in the United States for chain and/or quick links is a 5 to 1 Design Factor, this meaning you take the Maximum Breaking Strength and divide it by 5 giving you your Working Load Limit. The 3/16” Galvanized Quick Link in question that failed had a Maximum Breaking Strength of 660 pounds, meaning its Working Load Limit is 132lbs (via 660 pounds divided by 5). Jimmy Pinango was suspended from six hooks, meaning six Quick Links with a total Working Load Limit of 792 pounds. Now, had he done a static suspension without any free fall, this would have been adequate, since he weighs 300 pounds.

By adding the bungee, you need to take into account that the static weight of 300 pounds no longer applies, because he is going into a free fall. At this point, you are talking about G-force, or the acceleration imparted by natural gravity. In order to calculate the amount of force applied to the Quick Links, you have to multiply the mass or Jimmy P’s weight of 300 pounds by the G-force or 32.174 feet/per second per second. In doing so, you come up with a Force equal to 1333.7044 newtons, which converts to 983.68988 pounds.

So, let’s look back to the Working Load Limit of 792 pounds that we calculated for the six Quick Links in use before, and we can see there were 983.68988 pounds of force being applied, which surpasses the Working Load Limit overall by 191.68988 pounds and by 31.94831 pounds per Quick Link.

I am speaking as a long-time suspension enthusiast and pioneer who sees this latest act of negligence as a sign of what’s to come, now that Pandora’s Box has been opened and anyone can pick up equipment anywhere. Except, often, they’re only copying what they see without real practical knowledge of research and development done anymore, like we used to do in the “good old days.” Nowadays, it’s all about copying what you see and trying to make a name for yourself with whatever claim to fame you can make — from the most piercings, to the most suspension positions, to eyelid microdermals. Don’t misunderstand me, I have always been one who highly respects outside-the-box thinking (hell, that’s how I got where I am), but these are things I don’t place in that category at all. It is things like this that will lead to the over-regulation of our industry into the ground.

We, the suspension community as whole, got lucky that Jimmy wasn’t injured worse than he was, and our hearts go out to him. But, I don’t think the suspension industry will be able to recover from this very quickly. What I want people to get out of this is, yes, the act of body suspensions has inherent dangers, but we shouldn’t leave anything to chance, especially when lives are at risk. I also wish people would accept responsibility for their actions.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it. Don’t put the blame on mechanical failure when it’s your fault the equipment was used in the first place. This sort of thinking neglects to see the big picture: This affects all of us. This should not be done just you so you can get pictures for your portfolio, get your name on TV or to make your sponsors happy.

The words of Social Disortion come to mind:

“Don’t forget that they’re your future …”

And that scares the shit out of me.

Then again, you would have to be. With so many different languages and peoples all coexisting, Europe is quite the incredible mixture of culture, innovation and ideas. Heat be damned, Germany was a perfect place to hold a body modification conference, even if it was in the middle of nowhere.

In all my international travels, I’ve learned one simple fact: Almost everyone in the world’s modern cities speaks English — so, as an American I’ve always had it easy. And, sure enough, the BMXnet conference catered to English speakers. Yes, there were many classes labeled “German Only.” But, fortunately for those non-Deutsch speakers, the organizers had interpreters on hand to translate via headphones. Granted, the system wasn’t perfect: Technical terms were often difficult to translate, and there were times when the lectures were better heard in the native tongue. But, overall, the information flowed smoothly and everyone came out better informed from the experience — and what an experience it was.

Doubt me? Well, here’s a simple fact that was often discussed during the conference. Over 95-percent of the world’s piercings that are done with threaded jewelry are healed using externally threaded jewelry. Now, it has been commonly accepted — at least by the Association of Professional Piercers, of which I am a founding member — that only internally threaded jewelry is suitable for new piercings. Sorry, the numbers don’t lie. Yes, there are many factors that make one piece of jewelry better than another, and I still stand by the quality of several of the internal manufacturers, but it’s time to look at the statistics and accept the facts. The days of, “We’ve always done it this way” and, “This is how we were taught” are long since over.

[Steps off the Soap Box]

OK, it may seem that this article has gone off course, but nothing could be further from the truth. Statements like the paragraph above were the true foundation of BMXnet. We were there to challenge each other. Once you know it all, there is no more room to learn, and if there’s one thing this experience has taught me, it’s that there is so much experience and knowledge that far surpasses my own. I went to teach a class on Laser Tattoo Removal, co-present a suspension safety seminar and further participate in a suspension roundtable, but I walked away with so much more.

David is now in his seventh year of tattooing with an international reputation for his client-centric process, continues to paint and, most importantly, is the husband to his wonderful wife, Kimmy, and father of two amazing boys, Zeke and Abe.

Shawn Porter: Hey David.

David Bruehl: Hey Shawn.

SP: Let’s do the getting to know you. Where were you born?

DB: I was born in Oklahoma City, OK, on November 7, 1979.

SP: I know you have at least one sister — the hot one that I have a crush on. Any other siblings?

DB: That sister, Sheryn, is technically my half-sister, along with my other half-sister, Treisa. I’ve known them as long as I’ve been alive though, so it’s all the same to me. They’re respectively 11 and ten years older than me. (Irish twins!) I also have a younger full sister, Jessica, who’s two years my junior. I essentially grew up among women; I wasn’t really close with my dad.

SP: What were you like as a child? Typical “artsy dreamer” or more conventional kid?

DB: I always looked at myself as a normal kid, but moving back to Oklahoma has resulted in getting my extended family’s impressions of me as a child. Several cousins have described me as, “the kid reading a science book while everyone else was playing army men.” They all seemed to think I was going to be a scientist until I was around 11 or 12 years old, when I started always carrying a sketchbook.

SP: When did you discover you could draw? Did your family encourage it?

DB: I drew a little Halloween bat when I was about three that everyone made a big deal about — how much it looked like what I was drawing. They gushed over the thing so much, I still retain that memory as my proudest moment as a kid. I think on some level, my need to create seeks to relive that moment.

SP: Were there any other artists in the family?

DB: My grandmother painted and worked as a gallery artist, mostly doing wildlife themes. When I was a child, she would bring me with her to her art association meetings, and as a result, I viewed art as being something one could do as a career from the very beginning. She’s retired herself from painting now, unfortunately. Around the time I started attending art school as an adult, my mom introduced an art program into her school district and works as an art teacher now.

SP: When I first started seeing your work, it had a very cohesive “Bruehl” look to it — your pinups in particular were very easily recognizable as having come from you. Has tattooing made it easier or harder for you to adapt to other styles, and how do you keep that from losing your particular aesthetic?

DB: I think that working outside of one’s comfort zone, imagery wise, is very healthy for an artist. I see it all the time with artists, where someone repeats themselves stylistically and subjectively so much that every fault within their work gets magnified and they lose that freshness. You get the feeling that they’re coasting. Having to synergize with a client’s needs stretches me in ways I wouldn’t have, left to my own devices. My personal aesthetic gets retained by trusting myself and my intuition in creating a piece.

SP: You’ve recently started painting more. With your first gallery show under your belt (DB01-New Works, OKC, OK), you seem to be solidifying a personal iconography: birds, occult/esoteric symbols, numbers and invented crypto-zoology. How much research goes into a new painting? Do you use specific symbols to “charge” the piece? Or do you make your own up to thematically go with the work? Why have you consciously stayed away from “tattoo” iconography in your paintings?

DB: A lot of my painting work is done in an almost subconscious manner. I do a lot of distracted sketching, little tiny drawings, and the ones that resonate with me become paintings. The subject manner comes from being in a place with my children mentally, a simpler land of wonderment and mystery and the like. I’ve actually been looking at the work of Winsor McKay lately, as I think he was sort of coming from the same place creatively.

The symbols within the pieces are “sigils,” which is a blanket term for symbols used to create some sort of effect on reality. A quick and easy example of what I mean is cave painting: man draws buffalo getting killed, and then within a couple days the men in the tribe find a buffalo and kill it for the benefit of the tribe — the art then created the result in the tribe’s eyes. In cultures of the past, artists served a role much more similar to a magician or shaman; we still do, albeit in a more obscure form, especially if you loosen your term of what “art” is. Anyways, getting back to it, the sigils I use are mostly things dealing with personal change, though some are more general, especially the repeated ones. Those specifically serve to connect the work into a unified whole, much like a signature. I don’t use symbols outside of my personal symbol-language, as that’s what I’ve chosen to work within and what resonates the most with me.

Some of my more recent work has incorporated some tattoo iconography, albeit in a more reduced form. There’s several design elements within tattooing that I think work well within paintings as well. In a way, painting started out as an escape from the tattoo juggernaut, which has a way of becoming all-encompassing in one’s life. The fact that some of it has started finding its way into my painting work is a sign of the proper integration of tattooing into my life, I think. In the end, whether it’s a painting or a tattoo, it’s all part of the whole of my work.

SP: You “gained speed” as a tattooist pretty quickly; I remember watching your work progress at a geometric rate and knowing early on that you “got it.” What are your thoughts on traditional apprenticeships? Do you think that the ability to make needles with a soldering iron and jig or being able to build machines is necessary for the modern tattooist?

DB: Tattooing is in a weird spot. Most good artists out there have no interest in taking apprentices, which leaves hopefuls to take on the dangerous task of learning on their own — which really puts a lot of people in a worse position than not knowing anything, since they end up with a bunch to unlearn — or to learn from sketchy bad tattooists who are taking them on for the wrong reasons. It’s inevitable that there’s always going to be new blood becoming part of the community, so there has to be some way to sift through everyone to ensure that the people who deserve it. I don’t know that there’s an answer to that conundrum.

I think knowing every aspect of one’s craft is important. I know how to make needles. I can build a machine from raw materials (metal, magnet wire and some screws). I can make pigment. I can essentially make anything involved in my craft except a power supply. Do I do all of that? No. I no longer make my own needles. I make machines, some of which I keep, some I sell. I don’t make my own pigment, except on rare occasions. Learning all of that, though, connects me to and further refines my process. So much of tattooing is about learning what works for you, rather than knowing the one “right” way to do something. It’s easy to get lost in all that, though. No matter how hard one tries, there’s not going to be that magic machine or magic pigment that’s going to make a person a good tattooist. That’s the result of a lot of hard work and a lot of time spent at the drawing table.

SP: Tattooing is in a weird spot. I can remember headlines when I was a kid boasting, “Tattoos: No longer for Bad Boys and Bikers!” Yet, all of the people covered in the articles were bad-asses or bikers. We’ve finally hit a place where it’s transcended that: almost everyone in our age group has at least one tattoo. But it’s moving past just regular joes and hitting the superculture. What do you think about the “tattooist as celebrity” concept? You know, mix your Ed Hardy energy drink with Sailor Jerry rum and down it when you’re watching Miami Ink — is this good for tattooing?

DB: Not just regular tattoos, it seems like a good chunk of people our age are rocking a half sleeve, or at least one in progress. To me personally, I find celebrity culture in general obnoxious, so seeing it come about within my own craft is especially annoying. As it relates to the tattoo community as a whole, though, I think it’s too complicated to frame it as necessarily good or bad. It’s a total paradigm shift, and it forces us to rethink what our expectations of “tattooing” are.

It’s not really a surprise that it came about, though. The market wants to frame everything simpler and sexier to make it into a commodity, so this “tattoo subculture” comes about, with the clothes, the look, the phones, et cetera. That’s so limited, though, and doesn’t get to the essence of what tattooing is. Most serious tattooists I know don’t relate to that whole thing at all. It almost resembles the “maya” concept of the veil that obscures reality as it is.

The funny thing with it all is that the permanent nature of tattooing itself denies it from being able to be a passing trend. Someone may be into the “tattoo culture” and get a bunch of tattoos then later grow out of it. However, the tattoos are still there. So, as they grow older, they’ve gotta rock them, they inevitably get more, but the nature and style of their tattoos change to reflect their growth.

SP: Cliche interview question, but whose work are you into these days? Tattooers, painters, directors, musicians — whomever. I find that listening to the proper music really helps me write, but can’t read before I work on something, lest Bukowski or Palahniuk get channeled without me realizing it. How does the output of others influence your work?

DB: The first artist that really shifted my perspective in tattooing was Grime. I can trace that to a specific tattoo. When I was very young in tattooing, I was into all that ‘99-era new-school cartoony tattooing. Looking at artists online, I found Grime’s portfolio on the Tattoo City Web site. I had heard of him more almost as a legend from people who had been at shops when he did guest-spots. In his portfolio he had a sleeve of Houdini, in a straight jacket, upside down on an arm, rendered almost like a painting of a Catholic saint. It also incorporated some severed flying hands in handcuffs, and a key, with a background that was an abstracted and more dynamic form of Japanese iso bars. It was the first time I saw a tattoo that you couldn’t really pigeonhole into some category. It was simply illustrative. Seeing that really pushed me into a direction; not to do tattoos that looked like Grime’s, but to do tattoos that drew from my approach to subject matter, rather than an established genre within tattooing. (I frequently use the term “genre” rather than “style” to refer to traditional, Japanese, new school, et cetera. I feel it’s a more accurate term.)

Most of my influences have been more from the painting and illustration world. Jeff Soto and James Jean have both been influences. Kathy Olivas and Brandt Peters are personal friends of mine, and have helped me and definitely influenced my painting work. I owe a lot to them. Musically, a lot of Canadian post-rock stuff like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and HRSTA, along with Beirut, and lot of softer stuff like Belle and Sebastian, and then some ridiculous power metal round me out. Jodorosky is inspiring as a director, as I’m sure you know. I also have gotten a lot from Aronofsky, particularly from The Fountain, which I highly recommend to any visual artist. Winsor McKay, who I mentioned before, is a visual treat …

But going back to tattooists, I’d like to also mention Tim Biedron. It’s been a while since he’s really been a direct influence on my work, but I’ve gotten to work with him a few times at Deluxe this last year, and seeing him go from a rough, energetic stencil to a highly polished tattoo is amazing. He definitely puts out his own vision. My friend Jason Vaughn is right there, too, for much the same reason. Jason also has such a great knack for breaking down subject matter into simplified elegance. Another guy, who I haven’t met or talked to, is Jeff Gogue, who does a purely painterly soft style of tattooing. It seems to me that many guys who do work like that almost use it as an excuse to be a bit sloppy for the sake of energy, but his work in particular is very refined. Then, going in a totally different direction is Spanish and Italian traditionalists, Deno and Gore, and Rudy Fritsch, respectively. They all do a very folky style of tattooing that just has such raw visual power.

That brings me to Dan Higgs. He also seems a bit ubiquitous within modern tattooing, but he, as a whole person, has definitely been an influence. The retired tattooist/musician/magician/poet/painter is such a personality that he has achieved mythical proportions in many ways. I see an undercurrent of an attraction to his weaving of alchemical philosophy into traditional tattooing, but the result for the most part has just been a homogenous genre of “mysterious traditional” without respect to the whole picture. (I’ve been guilty of this.) It seems like the path that Higgs in many ways started should be a jumping off point rather than an end point. I think the permanence of the form of tattooing leads us to use established solutions as a crutch.

I guess my personal vision is to use tattooing to develop synergistic personal narratives. In a way, one person’s experience is every person’s experience, and tattooing records this. In the best form, it’s me utilizing my vision to express my client’s vision culminating in something that ends up becoming more universal. In the more limited form, though, we draw from a standard established symbol system, when more appropriate symbols could be used, instead. There’s definitely growth out there, though. Look at all the nature tattoos people want. How many owls/birds/trees has every tattooist done in the past couple of years? There’s meaning behind all that.

SP: Higgs is a strange case. I’ve seen him flatly turn down a client’s design request and then give them a (well deserved) lecture on why you should know the significance of the Sacred Heart before you get it tattooed on you. What are your thoughts on putting “hidden language” tattoos on clients? You’re one of the few tattooers I know who knows what a lot of these things represent — do you feel a responsibility to talk to a client who wants a symbolically powerful design but who’s ignorant to the meaning?

DB: I’m a little more light-hearted about it than that. In those situations, I take on the role of the educator. We live in an entire world of symbology, and I think everyone who chooses a tattoo does so because it resonates with them, albeit sometimes on a very subconscious level, so I don’t judge. They likely may not know the specific significance, but a part of them speaks the language. I hope that’s not getting too abstract.

On the same subject, but an even more light-hearted note: Every time a person has ever come in wanting to get a yin yang tattoo, I’ve joked with them that I won’t do it unless they tell me what religion/philosophy it’s associated with. In my seven years of tattooing, I’ve never had someone correctly answer “Taoism” or even “Chinese” philosophy. So they may be ignorant of the origins surrounding the symbol, but they do correctly seek to realize the balance that it represents.

Used like that, tattoos become sigils themselves. Great sigils, as a matter of fact — ones you spent a small portion of your life focusing on just dealing with when receiving the tattoo, and then they’re there forever. I see the same reoccurring themes among clients: simplification, seeking balance, connection to nature, connection to a higher power, connection to art/process/work, self-improvement, and escapism.

Outside of the pure “collector” mentality, tattoos are usually there to symbolize/elicit an effect, so my job is to understand the motivations behind a tattoo and know “the person” behind what they’re wanting. Once I’m there, people tend to be a lot more open to imagery and approach, and I’m able to render something that may be a lot more appropriate to their objectives than what was in their head. I get it all the time, “It’s not at all what I was envisioning, but it’s exactly what I wanted.” I don’t take this as me being some astounding artist, I just listen to what’s behind a person’s words.

SP: You did a set of flash with Dan Rick, but most (or all?) of your work is custom. Do you think a design loses its “power” when it’s constantly reproduced? Or is the opposite true? Have you seen any tattoos done from your designs?

DB: For the most part everything I do is custom. As a community, we’ve kind of moved out of the flash era of tattooing. There’s a lot of flash that’s being put out, but its purpose has changed. Flash exists either for purely artistic reasons, or to act as a jumping off point for clients to figure out what they want tattooed. No one wants something directly off the wall anymore.

As far as a design losing its power? I think much of it depends on the design itself. Some things gain a lot and get refined as different people explore a form and as a result put out some mighty powerful imagery. Other designs are so quaint and personal that repeating them just waters them down. A lot of “clever” tattoos fall into that category, like the finger mustache.

I’ve seen people who have copied my designs before. I’ve seen elements of my work that were obviously my approach in others’ work. (Like roses that are identical to specific ones I’ve done; not drawn like them, but obviously traced from the original.) I’ve also seen a couple fully copied tattoos where it looks like the client must have brought an image of mine from online to their artist. Honestly, those things in no way bother me, but make me feel sad for the other artist and client. Copying my work does nothing to affect me, but serves to define them as unoriginal copiers.

SP: I recently read an interview with tattooer turned “fine artist” Mike Giant. He gives his reasons for quitting tattooing:

“Also, tattooing has become the hardest job I can do and pays the least. I make way more money with REBEL8 and fine art now. And in the end, I’m content just sitting in my studio drawing on paper with Sharpies. I’m tired of drawing other people’s ideas and trying to get those ideas into their skin.”

This is a guy who started tattooing roughly the same time you did. Would you give it up for painting if money wasn’t an issue?

DB: I don’t think money is an issue. If I felt really strongly about it, I would bust my ass as a painter and make that into a successful career. What it comes down to is that I consider tattooing to be my primary medium. It’s what I have the most love for. Sure, there’s lots of frustrating aspects of it, but there’s nothing else like it.

SP: So with the dynamic of tattooing changing, do you ever see yourself taking on an apprentice?

DB: It’s tough. I see the need for it within the community, but I worry a lot about committing myself to teaching someone for that long. I definitely can’t say, “No, I never will.” I suppose if the right person came along with the right art skills and drive … Actually, my friend Jason Vaughn apprenticed in Tampa at Atomic, the shop I worked at several years back. He and I shared the most similar aesthetics and sensibilities in the shop, so I sort of got to act as a mentor back then, but I was pretty green myself. When he first came around, though, just looking at his sketchbooks he had with him, you could just tell that the tattoo community would be missing out if he didn’t become part of it. I think what he’s accomplished so far shows that. He’d be a tough act for another person to follow.

SP: I’ve met Jason — really great guy. That he’s an amazing artist wouldn’t be the first thing I said about him; it would be more about who he is as a person. Same goes for you. So would taking on an apprentice for you be more about what they bring to the table artistically or more what they bring to the trade personality wise?

DB: It’s a combination of both. I’d have to hit it off right with the person, but the art has to be there; I’m of the belief that in order for someone to be great artistically, they need to have a strong personality to provide the drive, endurance and such to create. Natural talent is a myth.

SP: I remember a conversation we had once about you restricting your hours at the shop so you had your tattoo days, your painting days and your family days. Very structured to make sure Kimmy and the boys had dad/husband time. You guys have been together forever — where did y’all meet?

DB: Yeah, I’ve pretty much dropped the painting days from all that, but that’s how it works. Kimmy and I met on IAM — we each had a page and met up through there. Kimmy and I probably did everything you’re not “supposed” to do in relationships: Met on the Internet, moved in together quick, got married quick, had kids quick. It just all works for us. Our relatives say that we seem like two old souls that met up again.

She’s an integral part of the whole dynamic of my work as well. Kimmy helps out where ever she can, helping out with contact with clients, scheduling, Internet work, providing a much needed second opinion on design issues, et cetera. I joke that if she wasn’t involved, it would be weeks before I got back to anyone.

SP: Kimmy is awesome. She seems to really be at ease with my continued attempts to steal Abe (Ed. Note: Abe is David’s youngest son) while still finding time to schedule appointments and keep your clients in the loop.

Going back to Higgs for a second, what’s the connection between guys with big beards and guys who do strange tattoos? You have a big ol’ beard and you’ve tattooed some strange things. Same with Higgs, Hedgie … What does a big beard mean to you?

DB: I’ve had some level of facial hair ever since I could grow it, because without it I look like a child. (I know, I shaved it all off once. Once.) I resisted the mustache part of the beard for a long time until my wife finally convinced me to grow it all out. It really doesn’t have any deeper meaning to me necessarily. I range between letting it get real big and wild, and keeping it trim and well put together depending what mood I’m in. I have to admit, I really like the image of the otherwise well dressed man with just a totally wild beard.

SP: How would you like to be remembered?

DB: I’d like to be known as an honest person who truly pursued his own path while putting the important things first.

SP: Anything I haven’t covered that you’d like to finish up with?

DB: No, I’ve gotten to put a lot of more abstract musings in my head into a concise and concrete form. It might be fair to mention that while I may have a magical perspective on tattoo symbology and its affect on people, I don’t necessarily overtly interact with people on that level. The tattoo consultation process is usually a pretty light, enjoyable experience, rather than deep and intense, which discussion of all this stuff on such a philosophical level might lead people to misunderstand.

FEBRUARY 8, 2006

The voice fools Howard Stern. When Buck shows up at Stern’s Sirius Radio studio to take part in a self-explanatory game called What’s My Secret, the crew sees a man, five-foot-eight, muscle-bound and covered in tattoos, sporting a clean-shaven skull and a thick Fu Manchu that, says Stern,“is a better mustache than I could ever grow.” For the purposes of the game, that little vocal flourish is a red flag.

“You’re gay,” Stern guesses incorrectly, and the air goes out of the room. If not gay, then what? What else could there be about a biker-looking workout junkie with a deceptively faggy voice? The crew is stumped and silent until Stern’s longtime sidekick, Robin Quivers, has an epiphany.

“You have not always been a man,” she announces, triumphant and grinning. Buck’s eyes close to slits as he turns to face her, grimacing and nodding his head. Bang on. “This is a man who went through a sex change.”

“You are very good,” he says, thinking, Quivers is a total dyke — of course she knows who he is. “That is awesome!”

Stern looks legitimately dumbfounded, saying he never would have guessed Buck’s secret … except that’s not the extent of the story. “You really have to guess what’s going on in Buck’s pants,” says Stern’s producer, Gary Dell’Abate. Stern looks like he’s catching on and asks Buck if he’s had “the surgery,” but Buck shakes his head.

“No, I’ve still got a pussy. That’s the whole thing: I’m Buck Angel, the man with a pussy.”

Like manna from heaven. All tension dissipates, and the Stern crew starts the inevitable pile-on. “So you’re not really a man.” “You have sex with women? So you are gay.” “You’re just fooling the authorities. If you’re legally a dude, then I’m legally a black man,” Stern says. Ad nauseam.

Yet Buck is all smiles, happily whipping out his wallet and passing around his driver’s license to prove that, legally, he is indeed a man. “My vagina does not make me a woman,” he insists, a statement that lands so far beyond the crew’s breadth of understanding that he may as well have delivered it in Martian. As Stern repeatedly tells him he’s “a chick, no offense,” Buck lets it roll off; he understands they’ve never seen anyone like him before, and he realizes that they’re not going to “get it” right away. Then it’s revealed that, as a woman, Buck was a female model, and Stern is even further flummoxed: Photos show Buck in a former life, a tight wet T-shirt over perky breasts and a slim frame, frosted blonde hair and strong, sharp features.

“You were a hot chick,” Stern says, less disrespectful than disbelieving. “What a waste. I would’ve done you.” That’s funny, Buck thinks, because God knows he would never have done Stern.

Ostensible mutual disgust aside, it’s still the Howard Stern show, and Buck ends up being asked to take off his pants. He obliges, but first asks, in complete earnest, if everyone’s ready for what they’re going to see — “a big man vagina,” that is, with a clitoris enlarged by nearly two decades of testosterone therapy. He drops his trousers and groans rise immediately from the room; writer Artie Lange barely peeks through fingers laced over his eyes, Quivers cackles, but Stern lets loose with a guttural laugh that belies the horror he’s tried to put on and instead indicates some sort of tangible fascination with what he’s seeing.

“I had a really weird thought,” Stern says to Buck at one point. “Do you want to get on the Sybian?”

The Sybian is a sex toy that looks like a saddle with a rod in the center, onto which different “heads” can be attached and then vibrate, weave and rotate. Porn stars are frequent Stern guests, and they’re often asked to ride the device. Buck, although he’s the world’s most successful female-to-male transsexual porn star, bristles internally at first, thinking there’s no fucking way he’s getting on that thing, but that’s quickly quashed by the showman inside that tells him to just do it. So he hops on and proceeds to purposefully make everybody as uncomfortable as possible.

He stands up a few minutes later after having taken enough, the room full of staffers on the brink of convulsions, and decides to bring down the house. “Oh God,” he says, pawing at his tenderized crotch and looking down at the machine, “I squirted!”

“I was fucking with them so hard,” Buck tells me two years later from his home in Mérida, Yucatán, where he lives with his wife, body piercer Elayne Angel. He’ll never go back on the Stern show, he says, not because he was hurt by what Stern and the others said to him, but because he thinks it would detract from the dominant performance he gave the first time around. “I know how to play that game,” he says. “I can make fun of myself too. I’m a porn star! Give me a break.” And though the experience was degrading to an extent, Buck knew exactly what he was getting himself into — it was the Howard Stern show, after all.

Watching the video of his appearance though, I tell Buck I got the impression that for all the fronting Stern did, it seemed like he really, truly wanted to be OK with Buck and what he was seeing, but that it was so different from the world with which he was familiar, he came off as incredulous and more than a little phobic.

“Exactly!” Buck says, downplaying the severity of Stern’s barbs. “I think Howard likes me a lot, and I think Howard respects me a lot. The stuff he said to me was very minimal.” That is to say, Stern was just confused; there are plenty of others who make concerted efforts to actually attack him — often, the community of transgender men.

According to Buck, this is because he doesn’t identify as a trans-man — he considers himself a man, plain and simple. “They’re the ones who are more political,” he says of trans-men. “I think they get sort of upset about me calling myself ‘the man with a pussy.’” 
   

Buck has also butted heads with the trans-man community over what Buck claims is the increasingly frequent practice of fundraising parties thrown by pre-op men to finance their sexual reassignment operations; he was even quoted by the Village Voice for an article on the subject. “Boy, did I get myself into a big problem with that,” he says, but claims he received a decent amount of supportive feedback, too, from others who feel that if one wants to be a man, then, well, “be a man, dude.

“Too many of these fuckin’ people are in this situation where they’re begging,” he says, which he understands to a point, “but how come you can’t get a job?” Buck worked two jobs to pay for his surgery, and the sense of pride that comes along with that achievement itself nicely complements the satisfaction of finally feeling comfortable in one’s own skin. “But a boob-cutting-off party?” he asks. “What the fuck is that?”

It could be, of course, that these men feel they’re entitled to reach their transformative goal any way they see fit. They were slighted to begin with by being born with the wrong body, and that the destination, in this case, is far more important than the journey.

“It just seems so female,” Buck says of the trend, though. “I don’t know any transsexual women that throw cock-cutting-off parties! They just don’t go there.” He concedes, however, that there aren’t any guidelines on how to be a man, and that, his objections notwithstanding, he’s not suggesting that all men should feel they need to emulate him. “I’m just an old-school kind of guy,” he says. “I couldn’t imagine anyone paying for my surgery.”

Sexual reassignment surgery is expensive, though the prices vary. For a transgender man, breast removal can run from $3,000 to $15,000, a range Buck likens to the difference between buying a Volkswagen or a Cadillac. Some people can wait a few years and have a higher-end procedure, but for some, the urgency takes precedence. “And believe me,” he says, “it is an urgency for most of us. You can’t deal with having boobs. It’s horrific. To me, and a lot of guys, I think, it’s worse than not having a cock.”

Buck opted for a $7,000 operation, which, he says, would likely run closer to $10,000 nowadays — not cheap, but, he admits, it was a necessity for a person who’s more than a little vain. The first nine doctors he visited told him any chest surgery would result in nasty scars, which he found unacceptable; he wanted to be able to take off his shirt and not have anyone know he used to be a woman. His tenth consultation was with a surgeon from UCLA who specialized in operating on biological men with gynecomastia, a glandular issue that results in overdeveloped breasts, and who was confident he could perform surgery that would leave minimal scarring. Buck was lucky: He had small breasts to begin with, and the doctor’s prediction was correct.

This was 15 years ago. The surgery, combined with testosterone therapy, had Buck well upon his way towards a sense of ease he’d never really experienced. And a good thing, too, because he probably would have killed himself otherwise.

Buck was born the daughter of parents he (lovingly, sarcastically) calls “old school, Republican, scary white people,” and was equal parts loner and tomboy. He was raised playing football, wearing boys’ clothes and playing almost solely with guys — hell, he was even called “Buck” as a young woman. The second of three girls, he always felt that he was raised more like a boy than either of his sisters, though he rejects the idea his crisis of gender was caused by his upbringing; rather, he thinks his parents knew that there was something inside him that required a different approach than those tried with his sisters.

He eventually came out as a lesbian to his parents, but with what, at the time, seemed an unthinkable qualifier: “‘It’s not that I feel like a gay woman,’ I told them, ‘I feel like a man.’” Buck’s dad, who he describes as “super macho,” began to weep and blamed himself; he had wanted a boy, and must have thought he had somehow left his middle daughter fundamentally confused and irreparably damaged. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Buck started doing a whole bunch of drugs. Coke, crack and massive amounts of booze did their thing — he admits there are significant parts of his life of which he has little to no memory — and before long, his family disowned him completely. He doesn’t blame them, and, without a hint of self-pity, cops to being, by all accounts, a miserable scumbag. By his mid-twenties, he was suicidal, having been tossed off by most people in his life, and was living on the streets as a thieving, drug-addled prostitute. He hit bottom about as hard a person can, but he somehow conjured up the presence of mind to start attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which he says undeniably saved his life.

He started having what he calls “awakenings,” and tried to isolate what made him start doing drugs in the first place. Three years into his sobriety, with the help of a therapist, he felt like he could comfortably trace the roots of his drug abuse to his incredible gender confusion; at the time, he didn’t even know transsexuals existed. But one shot of testosterone, he says, was all it took, “and all of my problems were lifted from me.”

Then he lost everyone all over again.

“When I first decided I was really a man and not a woman,” he says, “because I was a dyke, my circle of friends all pretty much dropped me. They couldn’t even comprehend.” Buck says the stereotypes are true, and that, about militant lesbians, “they are male-haters; they are not positive about men, and they have a lot of issues about men. I don’t know if it’s penis envy or what, but most of them were like, ‘Dude, you’re out of here.’”

A handful of friends stuck with him, but having worked so hard to build back up a strong network of people after being alone for so long, only to see it disappear again, was devastating. Fuck communities then, Buck thought, if all they do is uphold the tenets of a rigid, unchanging identity, and then spit you out when you deviate. The dykes won’t stick with a trans-man, and the trans-men get offended by a guy who has the balls to trumpet the virtues of his vagina. Why go through the effort of establishing nomenclature for every variation of queer identity if they’re going to be used as tools of division? If only your average straight-laced queer-baiter knew how closed-minded some sects of these hated deviants can be.

A funny thing happened, though. Over the past few years, a number of these women who once told him to go screw? They’ve come to him for advice on how to have a sex change. And at first, empathy was far from the order of the day. “I’m not one who likes to hold on to animosity,” Buck says, “but my first impulse was to say, ‘fuck you, you guys totally dogged me when I was hurting and feeling so confused.’

“But then I thought, OK, you know what? I’m a pioneer. It’s sort of my duty to say, ‘yes, I can help you.’”

JANUARY 13, 2007

The Adult Video News Awards, which are essentially the Oscars of pornography, were once described in a David Foster Wallace essay as an “irony-free zone.” The porn industry is, if nothing else, helplessly earnest. Buck knows this, and can see the humor in his surroundings, but the fact that, on this night, he’s nominated for Best Transsexual Performer of the Year is an honor nonetheless, especially considering it’s the first time a female-to-male performer has ever been nominated. Though he only started doing porn in 2003, it’s taken some serious chutzpah to get here.

“In the beginning, they would not even look at me,” he says of others in the porn world. “They were mortified, and I was shocked because I thought they were going to love it. They have everything! Fifty-million-man gang-bangs, balloon fetishes, clown fetishes, horse fetishes, whatever the hell they do.

“But,” he says, “they thought I was the sickest thing ever.”

Though he initially signed on with the production company Robert Hill Releasing, he ended up branching out on his own, and now produces, directs and stars in his films himself, after he realized that, otherwise, he was just going to be mocked. (Also, he was being screwed out of money.) Once he left Robert Hill, the company hired another trans-man to star in their films and called him “The Man With a Pussy,” a title Buck now has trademarked. (Seriously.) This performer, however, had had no surgery, and once his clothes came off, he looked like a woman. “They used him to make freak-fest movies,” Buck says, “and they bombed.” Working within such a small niche market, a producer needs to have the utmost respect for the material — the people who are going to be turned on by it comprise such a small market share, you can’t afford to make them feel like they’re freaks.

The industry must have recognized his dedication, because when it comes time to announce the winner of the 2007 Transsexual Performer of the Year, Buck hears his name called, sees his face on the screen, but is told not to go up to the stage to receive his award; his category is the very last one of the night to be announced, and people are already filing out of the auditorium.

“It’s totally rude and disrespectful,” he says. “We’re behind the ‘best anal gang-bang,’ we’re behind the ‘best cumshot up your hole,’ we’re behind every single other genre. They look at us like we’re freaks.”

(Dykes? Check. Trans-men? Check. The vultures of the adult entertainment industry? Check.)

“Of course, I was still super happy to win the award,” he says. “It was super huge and historical.”

He even called his dad after the show.

“He loved it,” Buck says. “He said, ‘That’s so cool! I have a son who’s a porn star!’” Once Buck started his sex change, he rehabilitated his relationship with his family, with whom he says he now has as healthy a connection as he could ask for. His parents call him their son, his sisters call him their brother, they come to Mexico to visit and love Elayne. “I truly believe,” Buck says, “that all your family ever really wants is for you to be happy and successful and not fucked up on drugs.”

Many people’s lives may be easier if Buck didn’t exist. Not if he were dead, mind you, but if he had just been born in a man’s body. Or, barring that, if he had just shelled out the $70,000 for a limp piece of meat to hang between his legs, risked the 50-percent chance of never having another orgasm, and lived his life as a sexually unsatisfied man who at least fit in neatly somewhere. Ours is a society built on binaries, after all: Man and woman, good and bad, husband and wife, hero and villain. They allow for order, or at least the illusion of such. A person is one thing, or they’re another thing, and that’s it. Without a Buck Angel around, one need not address the idea that sexuality is perhaps more fluid than originally thought.

It makes sense in a masochistic sort of way. You feel certain impulses, desires, and rather than addressing them and finding a way to incorporate them into a healthy life, you don’t just suppress them — you adopt a world view that makes such urges impossible to even consider. The idea is to simplify your life, to reduce everything to a pair of choices, but the grand irony is that it’s this attempt at simplification that ends up destroying a person. Which is not to say that embracing these multiform routes through life is simple by any means, but the potential payoff is far greater. Under the current system, who is supposed to be turned on by Buck, anyway? The vagina is a deal-breaker for gay men and straight women, and the fact that he’s a man probably wouldn’t sit well with straight guys and lesbians. And yet, he’s got his fans, his following.

That said, he’s not a hero. He’s not saving the world by getting fucked in his big man vagina. To an extent, though, he is indeed the face and the voice of a new way of thinking, one long denied its existence and its relevance, and of that, he is living proof.

Let’s just not give it a name.