Overview

"A trained classical musician, Robert E. Roberts forsook composing harpsichord music to become a gifted tattoo artist. In his eye-opening memoir, Roberts, aka ""Mad Dog,"" describes coming out as a gay man and treats us to a mosaic of ink stories that document the height of the San Francisco Gay Revolution. Every tattoo has a story, and Roberts' categorization of the tattoo images and their meaning in gay life is a veritable Rosetta Stone providing new insights into the great social changes that were taking place. Here is a brightly shining memoir detailing the identities, challenges, sorrows and joys of gay life in powerful, archetypal images including machismo, bear culture, tribalism, and mythology."

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9780998909813

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Writing in permanent ink, tattoo artist Roberts gives eyewitness voice to the sex, art, and skin it took to create our queer identities after Stonewall. Who doesn't confess to their tattooist? These urban tales make Roberts' memoir unique. Authentic. And cool. A master of anecdote from San Francisco to Amsterdam, he builds gay history on the mad kinks of clients. Telling all about tattooing, he reveals truths about surviving gay human life because, for our defiant Archetribe, tattooing is a blood art with needles, existentially suited to rage against AIDS. Empowered by his own lover lost to plague, he puts names to faces of men long gone--men on whose skin he inked images drawn by Tom of Finland, Rex, and Disney. A terrific contribution to San Francisco gay history. So well-written we could have serialized Roberts' fun, smart, and powerful writing in Drummer itself. --Jack Fritscher, Drummer editor, author of Mapplethorpe: Assault with a Deadly Camera and Some Dance to Remember: A Memoir-Novel of San Francisco 1970-1982 In the early 1980s we both tattooed in San Francisco, and in later years Robert would often visit my shop across the Bay in Berkeley. Although we moved in different circles, I admired his dedication to tattooing and his commitment to an openly gay lifestyle in the very heterosexual tattoo world. This unique book will not only take you on a tour of Robert's life as a tattoo artist, but also offers a history of the gay movement in San Francisco from the 1980s and beyond. And if you've ever wondered about the Tattoo God's Universal Tattoo Truths, this is your source. Don't miss it. --C.W. Eldridge Tattoo Archive, Winston-Salem, NC

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