My first Tattoo.
I recently found a photo of my first tattoo.
It is 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 is nowhere for the image to hide. No technique to lean on, no polish, no complexity to protect it. Just intention, trust, and a line placed on the body.
When I started tattooing, it did not happen through any traditional path. There was no studio, no formal training, no clean professional setup. Just skin, close friends, and a machine I barely understood. I did not know the rules yet, and maybe that was part of the freedom. What I had instead was curiosity, shaky confidence, and a deep attraction to imperfect lines.
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 recognise in the work today.
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 was not a style yet. It was instinct. A love for imperfection, awkwardness, and emotional truth over visual confidence. The tattoo did not try to impress anyone. It did not perform. That is exactly why it mattered.
I made it for Antonia. She trusted me completely. We did the session in my kitchen on 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 does not 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, and for the drawer itself.
That tattoo became a milestone, not because it was technically good, but because it taught me something essential. Tattoos do not need to be big, loud, or perfect to carry weight. Small things, when done with care, can hold a lot. Sometimes more than ambitious ones.
The drawer was about holding things together. About the inner space we all have, where we store what we cannot carry openly: memories, mistakes, quiet damage, unfinished thoughts, things we do not talk about but that still shape us. We all have that hidden place, an invisible drawer where things accumulate over time.
That idea never left my work. The simplicity, the rawness, the permission to let things stay slightly off, slightly broken, unresolved, but still meaningful. Still honest. Still present.
I do not know how Antonia feels about the tattoo now. People change, bodies change, meanings shift. But I hope she still likes it.
I am grateful it exists.
jorge
