Origin Story

How Queer Audacity ATX came to be, starting with Sunny

I felt too small and too loud. I was in the same hap-dash panic I’d been in (the one best known to people who became stay at home moms only to find themselves left behind, up the creek without a paddle, a marriage, or a career.) No matter how free a free-fall feels, It is still fucking terrifying. Every alarm within me screamed life or death; capitalism never spares the rod when it comes to working it’s dogs, and my system was a hard wired bitch. But I was stubborn too.

Tattooing was something I thought I’d never get to do—way up north at the top of the Mississippi river is a small city that had two tattoo shops: both owned by ornery men, who laughed me out of the shop and out of that dream—it was, after all, the 2000s.

But then, in 2021, I found myself in abrupt need of a career. I had a degree in creative writing, and my job history boasting things such as barista, stripper, and slam poet. I wasn’t sure what options my post-baby-body, and little-kids’-mom schedule left me with.

Was there anything I could do on my own schedule? On top of everything I was losing I couldn’t imagine losing weekend snuggles and bed time stories. What if I could do anything I wanted?A friend had recently taken me out for a Friday the 13th tattoo—there’d been an apprentice there, she was a stripper by night-, god I was jealous. Why hadn’t I learned a skill like that back then? Instead of writing so much god damn poetry— I started researching tattoo machines.

Controversially, I started self-teaching immediately while also looking for an apprenticeship. I’d recently been spending any free evenings at local gender queer events, meeting and making new friends… new friends who, thankfully, wanted free and cheap tattoos.

All of the tips I got, I saved and used to buy tattoos from established artists I admired. I’d bring my three ring binder of art with me and try to find the least terrible segue into asking them to look at my work. Even if they did not want or could not have an apprentice, I would ask them please, please, pretty please, would they offer me feedback on the art, and advice on next steps?

Most of them advised me to stay on my path towards apprenticeship and to, under no circumstances, become a DIY tattooist. Of the three artists who confided in me that they themselves had self-taught, with an “if they won’t open the door, kick it in,” attitude, I found it made perfect sense that all three of them were gender queer. I feel like we are well poised to understand that if we spend our whole lived waiting for permission, we will spend our whole lives waiting.

I still appreciate those who gave me their time and advice. Many of them I now have tattoos from—even those who’s work I could not afford at the time. However, I also remember how much dissuasion I came across—the eye rolls and dismissive attitudes.

Then came the day I got a tattoo from one of the two women I most wanted to apprentice. I brought her a water color painting, and on the advice of other artists, I had been interacting with her on Instagram. She agreed to see my work. She liked it—she liked me. She had been considering getting an apprentice, and after one coffee date a week later, she agreed to take me on! I was over the moon—I signed the shop’s contract, and when I returned to Austin from a short trip, my first duty was to help her shop with an art fair/fundraiser… one where she would meet my replacement. Just a few days after the event she sent me a text wall, telling me she was not ready for an apprentice, that it wasn’t my fault—I’d done nothing wrong, and not to give up.I thought we were parting on good terms, but after that she completely ghosted. She would delay announcing her new apprentice for six months, but in the future, when making an apprentice-graduation post, they would share screenshots of her and them agreeing to start an apprenticeship, complete with date and time and date stamps, from that same week.

Of course it was a younger, thinner, hotter person who pushed me out of my marriage. My first “apprenticeship” had striking similarities in that way, and it was hard not to collapse inward on myself as someone utterly replaceable. It must be stated here, her new apprentice was very talented, and didn’t have to balance tuck-time schedules, not to mention they had a banging Instagram following/talent for social media. And I knew I had brought the excessive enthusiasm of a Labrador retriever—the kind that makes the popular kids side eye you and call you a freak. I’ve known for a long time, that my case of cringe, is endemic.

Love me or leave me.

Life is a cycle of leaves, budding—withering, try not to be too sad about it. Try to look ahead, we are almost in the spring.

God it was hard to renounce my apprenticeship online and let people know I was looking again. To this day I have no idea what she tells people. After several more dead-ends, I was finally offered an apprenticeship and Lord I clung to that parachute of guidance and mentorship, only to realize it was neither. An American traditional tattoo artist, who had owned a shop with his late wife was planning to open a new shop on his own. I started out with high hopes for guidance, unfortunately he was still preoccupied with sorting out his life as a widower as well as balancing a massive amount of amazing work in the sober-living community. I have a huge amount of respect for what he spent his time doing, and when asked, he gave great wisdom for dealing with difficult clients and the like, but I only ever saw him tattoo twice, and he was almost never around.

I’d spent a little over a year working alone in his shop when I went and did my first guest spot up in Dallas. Between my appointments, the Dallas artists let me watch them work, and enthusiastically answered any questions I had. It felt amazing, but returning felt even lonelier that before.

A few months later, my mentor told me he was going to sign a lease on a larger building and that he’d be relying on me to help with hiring, and construction, and other shop management tasks

“Can I count on you to help with that?” he asked. I said yes. I was excited. I told Alec, the person I’d been dating.

“Oh cool, are you going to get paid?” Alec asked.

“I don’t know… I assume I won’t have to pay him a percentage anymore or maybe he’ll subtract hourly pay from what I owe him? I’ll ask next time we talk.”

However, the next time we talked he side stepped the question, saying “we’ll play it by ear,” and “we’ll figure it out as we go along,” my excitement waned… but I knew the history of apprenticeships—years of unpaid labor, cleaning toilets with toothbrushes, running endless errands for shop owners, arriving first and leaving last every day. So maybe I should just do this? But also, he had said I wasn’t an apprentice anymore… I still felt like rocking the boat would get me dropped with no where to go.

I pictured agreeing to things, him signing an expensive new lease in anticipation of being able to depend on me, and then us being unable to agree on things, having a falling out, and me leaving him, up the creek without a paddle. I couldn’t give him my unconditional word.

I needed a consult. I met up with a friend of mine since 2010. An entrepreneur/business owner for over a decade, Winnie has always been one of the most honest and ethical people I’ve known.

“I don’t want to tell him I’m in if there’s a risk I’ll back out, but I also don’t want to pour my time and labor into someone else’s dream if I’m not going to have any stake in it or at least be monetarily compensated. At that point I’d rather pour it into my dream.”

“What is your dream?”

“I don’t know,” I lied, “I just want to be somewhere where my clients will feel comfortable, someplace aggressively queer affirming, and it would be great if I could work whatever hours my kids are at school or with their dad, but without it being like 1,500 a month.”

“Do you think you’d ever want to have your own space?”

“Yeah, probably, I’d still want other artists in it, and I don’t think I could actually afford anything or qualify for any loans or leases anytime soon. I guess If I have to I could tattoo out of my house but I really don’t want to do that—especially having kids.”

“Well,” Winnie began, “I think you have to get something clear, in writing, from this guy stating how you are going to be compensated.”

“What if he just kicks me out?”

“I’ve been considering subletting one of our studio rooms,” she and I both looked up and across the large room where we sad— areal rigging hung from the two story ceiling, a large white font desk sat before us, just beyond it an open hallway of studio doors. We were in Winnie’s gym: Sky Candy Austin. “Right now I have it set up as an office for me, but if I’m not at my home office I’d rather be working at a coffee shop. It just sits unused, full of furniture. If he kicks you out, I can clear that room out and we’ll see about getting permission from building management for me to sublease to you.”

The next day my shop owner took me to see the strip-mall location he wanted to lease. I finally pressed him and told him I was nervous about him signing a lease before we came to a concrete agreement about his expectations for me,

”If I’m in charge of hiring, do I also have a vote on if there’s someone you want to bring in? Like what if they’re homophobic can I veto them?” (I was recalling the one day he randomly showed up with a young 20-something guy and announced he was taking on a second apprentice. He had the guy sweep the shop—he was kind of a dick to me—but then I never saw him again.) He side stepped the question letting it go unanswered.

“—and how we would balance the extra work financially, because what if we can’t come to an agreement, I would hate to have a falling out where I end up leaving? If you wouldn’t sign the lease with or without me, then I didn’t think you should do it. I mean unless we’ve already sorted these things out and can be sure we’re on the same page.”

He was quiet at first, then said he understood, but thought I was making a mistake. That we could back-burner the new shop and both keep working where we were for now.The next day he asked me to come by and settle up with what I owed him fort he month. When I walked in his big dog, and his new girlfriend where there, both unusual. His arms were crossed and he did not stand to greet me. His exact words were a soft “I think it’s time for you to pack your shit and get out.”

I was shaking, trying to fit all of my things into my hatch back around the giant cases of fizzy waters I’d just picked up for my kids’ birthday party—they were turning 5 and 7. I called Winnie as I drove away from the shop.

“Hey,” I said, “remember yesterday when I told you he actually took it really well and things were gonna be fine? LOL just kidding.”

That evening Winnie met my partner and me at Sky Candy, and we shuffled around furniture, started looking up permitting processes and talking contracts.

“Even with best friends,” Winnie said “I’ve learned to have contracts. It helps make sure everyone is on the same page and gives you something to reference back to if there is a disagreement.” O! The relief of not wondering—I’m telling y’all, clear, kind, and direct communication is the best. It was mid April.

The feeling of being disposable crept up the back of my neck once again, threatening to choke me with doubt while we waited. I had been kicked out in April. There was the “will they/won’t they” of getting the sublease approved, then the waiting for license approval, then painting, and furniture. And finally, on September first, we announced! For the first several months Winnie let me pay half rent, and cover the second half by running fundraisers for Sky Candy’s Jedi Fund (which helps lower income families pay for areal classes/camps for their kids.)

Now, just a bit past our two year anniversary, I still think back to a much-more established tattoo artist I’d become friendly with, They the first artist I had told about Winnie’s offer—I’d been hoping maybe they’d want to join me in it if we made it happen, but before I even broached that part of the conversation they shut me down: told me I absolutely should not open a studio myself, because I was too new—that it would ruin my reputation in the tattoo world and make the other studios mad at me. I made some counter points but they remained foreboding.

It was that evening as I vented to Alec, about history of American tattooing, once illegal—done anyway, not by well trained apprentices in state approved shops with name brand machines and decades of experience, but by random dudes in garages with cobbled together gizmos and experimental ink recipes:

“hell,” I said “Some of the most iconic styles of tattooing originated from jail cells, done with Jerry-rigged machines and ash! At the beginning of tattooing as an industry it was literally just some men deciding you’re just going to do the damn thing, then doing it. So why can’t I? I might not have male audacity, but I sure as hell have queer audacity. And if they can do it, I can do it—

—I should just call it that. Queer Audacity.” I laughed in false bravery. My stubbornness has always been a shield against the fear of inadequacy.

“That’s actually a pretty awesome name,” Alec said.

“Right? If I do ever have a shop, that’s what I’m gonna call it.” It still felt so far away.

I wish I could reach through time and reassure myself.

I still yearned for a real mentorship. Would the other shops really be mad at me? Would I ruin my name and end up alone, or suffer humiliating failure—geez, who did I think I was to be doing this??

Do it scared, sunny. It’s gonna be big and beautiful. And even if it doesn’t last forever, it will still be so important to so many people.

And It has been. And it will be. And I’m happy you are here, and that you wanted to know how this all started.

It started small and loud.