Jaime Nanci

Musician

I have tattoos everywhere, and many have personal significance. I have a 1970s microphone and a strip of music from a song I wrote about my grandad scrolling up one arm. On the other arm, I have a Jack of hearts with an ‘ M’ in the middle of it, and a male pin-up of a sailor and anchor. I wanted that because so many of my tattooed friends have highly sexualised images of women; it’s a macho thing, and I wanted to reference that, but have a man instead.

My most recent tattoo is about marriage equality — two Victorian men in a heart, with my husband’s name over it. We got married in Cape Town four years ago, and I did the tattoo last Valentine’s Day. I didn’t feel any trepidation getting that done — getting his initial, ‘M’ in the middle of the Jack of hearts was a far bigger deal because I did that very early in the relationship.

I got my first tattoo, a dolphin, when I was 15. I was a bit of a punk at the time, but I had a thing for Take That, and one of them had a dolphin. Once I got one, I wanted more, and I’ve been getting them since then. The bigger pieces take three or four hours, and at the end of each session I say, ‘Right, that’s the last one, I’m not doing that again,’ but after a few months, I feel the urge.

I have a tattoo of a treble clef behind my ear. When I got it done, 10 years ago, the tattoo artist called it the I’ll-never-get-a-job-again tattoo, but so much has changed in that time. I think the stigma is now completely gone.