My first Tattoo.
Not big, still heavy.
I recently found a photo of my first tattoo.
It’s small. A drawer. No frame. No furniture around it. Just the drawer itself. A simple black line drawn directly on skin. Raw. Minimal. Slightly crooked. Almost childlike. No shading. No detail. No decoration. Just a line deciding to exist.
When I look at it now, what strikes me most is how exposed it feels. There’s nowhere for the image to hide. No technique to lean on. No polish. Just intention and trust.
When I started tattooing, it wasn’t through any traditional path. There was no studio. No formal training. No clean setup. Just skin, close friends, and a machine I barely understood. I didn’t know the rules yet — and maybe that was a gift. What I had instead was curiosity, shaky confidence, and a deep attraction to imperfect lines.
I cared less about precision and more about feeling. Those early days were messy. Full of adrenaline, doubt, fear, and something very alive. Mistakes happened constantly. But so did moments of clarity. There was no safety net. Every line mattered because there was nothing to hide behind. That feeling — that intensity — is still something I chase.
At the time, that drawer felt like the most honest thing I could put into the world. I was drawn to what people later started calling “ignorant style,” but for me it wasn’t a style yet. It was instinct. A love for imperfection. For awkwardness. For emotional truth over visual confidence. The tattoo didn’t try to impress anyone. It didn’t perform. And that’s exactly why it mattered.
I did it for Antonia.
She trusted me completely. We did the session in my kitchen, in Maybachufer, in 2016. No sterile environment. No separation between life and work. Just a table, a chair, and the quiet agreement that something meaningful was about to happen. It doesn’t feel that long ago in years, but emotionally it feels like another lifetime.
On the kitchen wall back then, I had written a sentence:
“Trust is your relationship with the unknown.”
Looking back, it feels like it belonged there. For her. For me. For the drawer itself.
That tattoo became a milestone. Not because it was good in a technical sense — it wasn’t. But because it taught me something essential. That tattoos don’t need to be big, loud, or perfect to carry weight. That small things, when done with care, can hold a lot. Sometimes more than ambitious ones.
The drawer was about holding things together. About that inner space we all have where we store what we can’t carry in the open. The things we don’t talk about, but that still shape us. Memories. Mistakes. Quiet damage. Unfinished thoughts. We all have that hidden place — an invisible drawer where things pile up over time.
That idea never left my work.
The simplicity. The rawness. The permission to let things stay slightly off. Slightly broken. Not resolved. But still meaningful. Still honest. Still present.
I don’t know how Antonia feels about it now. People change. Bodies change. Meanings shift.
But I hope she still likes it.
And I’m grateful it exists.
nOT
