By Dennis Hensley

Last week, one of my best friends got a tattoo. I had never thought of him as the tattoo type -- he used to play Aladdin at Disneyland for cryin' out loud-- and now, suddenly he's subversive, devil-may-care, unpredictable. Since his grand unveiling, I've concluded that the surest way to go from being the type person who'd never dream of getting a tattoo (i.e. uptight like me) to being the kind of person who actually might, is to get a tattoo. But do I dare?

At least, in Hollywood I certainly wouldn't be alone for stars of every age, shape and breast size have been going under the needle for ages. At present, there seems to be a particularly vital tattoo frenzy going on among the denizens of young Hollywood, like your David Arquettes and Charlize Therons. But before I join their rebel-rousing ranks, I figure a little investigating is in order.

"I've been giving tattoos here for a little over ten years," proclaims Mike Messina, a genial, pony-tailed artist who works at Sunset Strip Tattoos in West Hollywood. "This shop has been here for about thirty years so we've tattooed everybody from Ringo Starr to Cher to Nicholas Cage to Lorenzo Lamas to the blond girl from Dawson's Creek."

Though I'm tempted to say to Mike, "Just give me what Lamas had!" and be done with it, I opt instead to take my time.

"I was thinking of something simple," I tell Mike. "Like Allison Eastwood, who has a purple rose on her left shoulder."

"I don't know Allison Eastwood," Mike admits.

"She's Clint Eastwood's daughter," I say.

"Oh, OK," he says. "Well, a flower is something that twenty years down the line, it's not a bad thing. Like Clint can say, 'It could be worse. At least it's not a dripping bloody skull with an ax in it's forehead'."

Mike admits that he gives pretty good flower himself, adding that he actually spent six or seven hours penning a whole slew of them across Cher's Oscar-winning derriere.

"You sat there with Cher's ass in your face for six or seven hours?" I ask.

"I sat there with an ass in my face," he clarifies. "I automatically disconnect. I mean, I tattooed my mother's upper thigh and it was a four inch square of flesh I was looking at, and then when I looked up, there was my mother's head on this person's body."

I'm tempted to inquire who's older, Mike's mother or Cher, but instead I ask him if he knows who Fairuza Balk is.

"No," he shrugs. "What has she been in?"

"I can't remember," I say, "but she has a Sanskrit mantra around her arm. Is that sort of thing popular?"

"Yeah, actually Chester's got Sanskrit on his arm there," Mike says indicating his fellow artist, Chester Oswalt. "It's a dead language, like Latin only it's deader than Latin."

"It was a popular tattoo in the 1930's and became popular again in Vietnam," Chester explains. "It's a good luck charm more than anything else. I put it on my right wrist so I do good tattoos. A lot of people put them on their ankles so wherever they put their first step is always with a mantra."

"I like the idea of that," I say eagerly, then realize that if it really was a good luck charm, I would have been able to come up with at least one Fairuza Balk movie. Hoping to drop a name or two that the Mike and Chester may have heard of, I bring up Pamela and Tommy Lee and their his and her ring tattoos.

"We did those," says Mike, "and the barbed wire around her arm as well."

Given that I just heard the couple are splitsville, I ask Mike if his clients come in wanting to get rid of a tattoo when the object of their affection is no longer in the picture.

"Oh, that never happens in Hollywood," he deadpans. "No, I'm just kidding. Actually, it depends on what your definition of 'get rid of' is, like I did the 'Winona Forever' on Johnny Depp and unfortunately, forever came and went. But he's not opposed to having a tattoo, he was just opposed to having that tattoo so I think he had somebody cover it up with a different tattoo. Or you can just have a doctor laser it off but it would cost infinitely more than covering it up."

None of which has a damn thing to do with my tattoo selection process given that the last love interest I had was wearing a prom dress. I decide to bring up something I at least have some connection to, cartoon characters.

"Maybe I could get a Dennis the Menace," I suggest. "I mean, Casper Van Dien has a tattoo of Casper the Friendly Ghost on his arm."

"These names don't ring a bell," says Mike needlessly. "Anyway, people identify with certain cartoon characters. I kind of identify with Bugs Bunny because nobody really got the better of him."

"David Spade has Hobbs from Calvin and Hobbs on his arm," I remark.

"Janet Jackson has a Mickey and Minnie Mouse," I report. "I think Minnie is giving Mickey a blow job."

"As well she should be," chirps Mike. "Even mice need some every now and then."

Just then, the phone rings. While Mike fields the call, I think about getting a religious tattoo like Tom Arnold's star of David or Alyssa Milano's cross and rosary beads, but that idea quickly falls by the wayside when I realize that the closest thing I practice to a religion is a curious worship of, well, Alyssa Milano.

"Do a lot of people get Asian images," I ask when Mike returns, "like Angelina Jolie who has a Chinese dragon on her arm and Julia Roberts who has the Japanese symbol for strength next to a little heart?"

"Strength of heart," says Mike with a smile, leading me to wonder if Lyle Lovett has the same tattoo but with a Ghostbusters-style slash through it. "A lot of people relate tattooing to China and Japan like they created it or something. They just have a lot of neat artwork, basically. The artwork is ancient and mysterious and has folklore behind the imagery, which make it fun."

When Mike explains that he's got an ass to illustrate in fifteen minutes, I decide to fire off more of the celebs who seem to be beckoning me into their multi-colored, body painted clique.

"Vivica A. Fox has a fox's head on the top part of her left arm," I announce.

"Nothing wrong with a little head," says Mike.

"Courtney Love has a flying angel," I say.

"Yeah, we tattooed her," he says coolly. "It's all a matter of people's perceptions of themselves."

"Jon Bon Jovi has a Superman logo," I say. "Does that mean he fancies himself a man of steel, if you know what I mean?"

"Could be," laughs Mike, "but then again he could just like Superman."

"Minnie Driver has a rose on her butt."

"News to me."

"Can she cover that up if she had to do a nude scene in say, Hard Rain 2?"

"Yeah. There's stuff called Tattoo Cover. It doesn't fool the eyes, but it fools the camera, and that's all it really needs to do."

"Rose McGowan has a Varga Girl tattoo," I say. "Is it unusual to have sexy girls with pictures of sexy girls on them?"

"We don't do that much, but I don't think it's unusual," Mike says. "Guys get big, hairy Vikings and stuff so why not?"

"Sheryl Lee has a snake," I say. "I think it's interesting to have an image of something most people are afraid of."

"Well, it's not a snake," says Mike. "It's a tattoo of a snake. See, Chester's got a snake on his arm. But he's married, he's not afraid of anything."

Mike's next client arrives so I get up to go, but before I do, I make tentative plans with Mike to have my Dennis the Menace done on Saturday.

"People who don't have tattoos, look at them but they don't really see them on other people and then, all of a sudden when they get a tattoo, they start seeing tattoos everywhere because now they're sort of part of that group." A group that includes Drew Barrymore and Mark Wahlberg, I think to myself. "Nowadays, everybody from every social class is getting tattoos; college students and doctors and lawyers. It's not just the biker and the sailor and the hooker anymore."

"It's the chick from Dawson's Creek!" I say excitedly.

"Whose name escapes me," admits Mike, before bidding me farewell.

Saturday arrives and hell-bent on going through with it, I hop in the car and head for Sunset Strip Tattoos. I get stuck, however, in Laurel Canyon, when a house fire holds up traffic for hours. I decide it's a sign. I call Mike from the traffic jam and tell him I'm going to hold off, that he can let Tony Danza or the guys from Motley Crue have my ink.

"If you have to make a decision, don't," Mike says reassuringly over the sound of girls giggling in the background. "You'll know."

The final straw in my decision to hold off came a week later when I read that some of the Spice Girls got tattooed in West Hollywood on the very afternoon that I was going to. In other words, had I not got stuck in traffic, Baby could have held my hand while Ginger rubbed me down with Neosporin and Posh got the gauze ready and Scary flirted with Mike and Sporty went in the corner and shadow-boxed. It would have been my own perfect little SpiceWorld, and if I can't have that, I don't want no tattoo. All the same, I called and told Mike to page me if Hanson wanders in.

Dennis Hensley is a regular contributor to Movieline, Detour, Cosmopolitan, TV Guide and Us. He is
also the author of the novel "Misadventures in the (213)" and has recorded his own CD of music entitled 
"The Water's Fine," both are available at Amazon.com. To learn more, visit his website: www.dennishensley.com
All text is © Dennis Hensley. All rights reserved.