More Black Eye’d Demons

Roni Lachowicz has just added another demon to Satan’s roster, blacking out the eyes of Pascal at Absolute Body Modification in Switzerland. This gives me the opportunity to mention a tip for making eyeball tattooing work better that Emilio Gonzalez mentioned to me last night — eyeball massage. By massaging the eye before the procedure, you help to loosen the bonds between the tissue layers (as you would with normal skin and soft tissue massage) so that they can lift more easily separate and accept the ink. Additional massage afterwards can help to spread the ink evenly, which also reduces the risk of ink pooling in unsightly cyst-like bulges.

Little nuances like this reduce the amount of ink required, minimizing the trauma to the eye, and is just one of the many ways this procedure has been improved by thoughtful practitioners since it was first pioneered five years ago in my daughter’s bedroom by Howie, first on the late Josh Rahn (stabbed to death a bit over two years ago) and then on myself (Pauly Unstoppable also had his eye tattooed that day, but using a completely different procedure). I think for those considering the procedure this is an important comment, both good and bad — we haven’t perfected this procedure yet, but it gets safer every day as we learn and improve and build up a database of results. So the longer you’re willing to wait to get your eyes tattooed, the better (and yes, I know how hard it is to wait!).