My Dear Friends of Inked So my son he knows that obviously his dad has a lot of tattoos he knows that my friends are mostly the ones who do them and uh he’ll so from time to time he’ll tell me Oh Daddy I want to you I want your friend to tattoo this on me and you know he’ll tell me he wants like Paw Patrol or something on his arm you know.
He’s only three so he can’t understand too much but the only things I have told them so far is uh just stay away from your hands neck and face everything else go wild if you want to my name is Brian Senator I’m from Fair Lawn New Jersey and I’m a barber I grew up in northern New Jersey and when I was 16 I moved down to Charleston South Carolina I.
Lived there for about 10 years and then I moved back to New Jersey I was in Pennsylvania during the week at my mom’s house in New Jersey on the weekends with my dad and when I was about 10 or 11 years old from what I can remember no explanation my mom wanted to move to South Carolina so she packed up me and my brother’s stuff left us on the.
Sidewalk at my dad’s house and we moved in with my Dad full time from there a couple years later I decided I didn’t want to be there with uh my dad and my stepmom anymore so I made the decision on my own to leave my brother behind and move down to South Carolina to my mom’s house I mean I don’t want to say I regret it because the way things ended.
Up playing out for me kind of you know it wasn’t the greatest but it led me to where I am now it all worked out in the end so the first tattoos I ever got are these two upside down crosses that are on my knees they look horrendous but I’ll never cover them up because they’re the first tattoos I ever got.
It’s kind of fuzzy because I was 16 um that was also on a lot of substances um so I don’t really remember I just remember I wanted upside down crosses because I thought I was a cool edgy teenager like I’m not too cool now to admit that.
Like that’s that was it there’s no cool story behind it I just thought it was cool and edgy I wanted to be the cool guy in high school and you know I grew up in like punk rock and skateboarding and uh that’s what I thought was cool at that time my first tattoo was in my friend’s bedroom he was trying to learn how to.
Tattoo and um it’s funny because actually 10 years later I met up with that same friend again and he’s now a professional tattoo artist and uh he tattooed me again and it’s much better than for the first time the one he gave me the second time actually looks good 10 years later so my mom never really cared too much.
About me getting tattooed my father always did but at the end of the day I never particularly care too much what either one of them thought about what I was doing I never really worried about living up to a certain standard or you know quote-unquote disappointing my parents like some people do I’ve always.
Just done what I felt I wanted to do my mother started getting tattooed by my friends I remember my mom would would text me like hey is Nick free today I’m like you have Nick’s number Mom call him if he wants to tattoo you I don’t know and uh yeah so she didn’t really at a certain point she didn’t care too much anymore like I said a lot of my friends.
Are tattooers uh so I would always be hanging out in tattoo shops and you know if one of my friends had nothing to do that day they had an appointment cancel on them something happened they’d kind of just look at me and be like hey you know you want this thing I drew up yesterday and I would look at him and say if it looks cool.
Let’s do it and that was pretty much it a lot of them don’t have too much meaning I just thought they looked cool obviously a couple of them do have meanings to me but most of them to me it’s just art so I’ve had my hands neck and my face tattooed since I was 18 19 years old.
Which was a terrible decision I wish somebody had told me not to do it but nobody stopped me so I did it anyway I don’t think a lot of younger people understand the consequences of the decisions that they may make regarding highly visible tattoos especially hands neck and face.
It’s going to change your life and I think a lot of people a lot of younger people don’t realize that these days I kind of wish I had known that at the time I feel like it probably would have made my life a little bit easier if I didn’t get these tattoos in such highly visible.
Places but nonetheless I got them and I made it work it was a little bit more difficult but I figured it out but still to this day you know there’s I can tell when people are looking at me different you know if I’m in a certain place a certain restaurant a certain neighborhood people do look at you.
Different when you have your hands neck and your face tattooed it’s just the way of the world I do think in the end getting all these visible tattoos did end up being a positive thing because over the years I did have to go the extra mile that maybe some people wouldn’t go.
Just to kind of overly prove that I’m not a bad person and I’m Not Who the other person may think I am and over the years you know it taught me just to not judge other people for anything they might be going through whatever it is they choose to do with their lives to me man as long as you’re not hurting.
Anybody women and kids especially I don’t care what anybody does with their life and uh yeah I think having all these visible tattoos and seeing how other people looked at me sometimes it kind of taught me what I didn’t want to be like I’m a recovering drug addict and uh this June I’ll be sober for six years.
One of the last rehabs that I ended up in I had gotten in some trouble and the judge sent me to a long-term facility which is at that point what I needed meaning nobody could leave to get anything that wasn’t essential so you’re not leaving to just go get a haircut so there was one guy in particular in there at the same time as me who would.
Mostly cut everybody’s hair on Sundays and I just remember watching them do it because up until that point I had never been to a barber shop as a kid my mom just buzzed my head we didn’t have money and um I remember watching them do it and it looked like the coolest thing that I had ever seen in my life he’s cutting hair laughing joking everybody’s.
Hanging out it was awesome so I approached him and I asked him if I could just hang out for one of the days while he cuts hair and watch what was going on I did that and then that night he let me borrow his Clippers and I walked around that facility and found three people who were willing to let me cut their hair.
For some reason don’t know why they agreed to it I’m not a barber I’m just a guy in rehab but they agreed and those were the first three haircuts that I ever did and then when I left that facility this was in South Carolina moved back to New Jersey and it was time to get my life together.
And pursue something for a career something I could do long term and I just thought what is it that I wanted to do because up until that point I had just been on heroin for 10 years I didn’t have any hobbies passions nothing and I remember once in one night specifically I laid in my bed for a long time.
And I thought about what it was that I liked and what I wanted to pursue and I landed on barbering and here I am six years later I have one tattoo that I got before I started getting high that covers towards the inside of my elbow and uh at a certain point during my drug addiction I started using needles and.
There’s now a mark where that tattoo is gone in the middle um of my elbow there and uh even that it doesn’t bother me um I you know I could obviously just tattoo right over it and get it covered up and it would be gone but it kind of it reminds me of what I don’t want to go back to and uh the things that that I.
Used to do and uh and all the things that I could lose now if I was to ever go back and do that again so I leave it there I leave it the way it is this is how I feel normal being covered in tattoos this way I I sometimes I sit and I try to think how I would feel if I had zero tattoos and um I just don’t think I would feel.
Normal in my own skin like this is I feel this is how I am supposed to be as a person this is how I’m supposed to look I don’t really regret any of the decisions that I’ve made whether it’s concerning tattoos or my history with drug use because everything that I’ve gone through has led me to where I am.
Now uh the pain that I went through I now use on social media to try and help other people I’m very public with everything that I’ve dealt with and still currently deal with and um I get messages and comments uh and texts all the time from people who tell me that I help them so without the things that I’ve gone through.
Without that experience however painful it might be I wouldn’t be in a position to now turn around and try to put my hand out and help somebody else
Bryan Senatore’s first tattoos were a pair of upside crosses on his knees. Looking back on it he understands it was a decision made by an impulsive teen, but it was also his first tattoo and it sent him on his journey, so he would never consider getting rid of it. Senatore shares his story of recovering from addiction and becoming a barber in this episode of Heavily Inked.
Bryan Senatore: https://www.instagram.com/bigyamshair/?hl=en
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