Prime time ink

The needle traces a purple outline of two checkered flags. Bill Wendt’s blood fuses with the iris-black ink, permanently staining his well-tanned forearm.

Wendt ekes out a smile, looking uncomfortable. His face fluctuates from grace to grimace as the tattoo gun hums over his 66-year-old skin like a monstrous bee.

Wendt gets a chance to regroup when tattoo artist Tony Gaither pulls away.

Gaither leans back, switches to a six-flat needle, and dips it into a small container of black ink. He wears blue surgical gloves, glossy from blood and ink. He takes a paper towel and wipes away excess fluids from Wendt’s arm.

It’s a scene repeated across the country: Tattoo artists discovering that 18-year-olds with bare midriffs, iPod ear buds and trucker caps no longer have the market cornered on first-time tats. What’s cool for grandchildren can be just as hip for grandparents.

“We see older people in here all the time,” says the 23-year-old Gaither.

Before getting inked, Wendt showed off a picture of his race car, printed on a holly-decorated Christmas postcard with the title: “Happy Holidays 2005 Southern Vintage Series Overall Champion.”

The picture shows Wendt tucked into a single-seat sprint midget car originally built in 1946. “I restored it myself,” says the racing fanatic. “They’re not as safe as today’s cars but, boy, they move.”

The checkered flags are special to the Cape Coral driver who’s won hundreds of races in his lifetime. He says he gets a rush from jetting down speedways at high speeds, and he’s come to Fort Myers Beach Tattoo on this day to memorialize five decades of his love of speed.

It’s his first tattoo. Two checkered flags forever waiving him in.

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Over the past decade tattoos have lost much of their gritty image. They have morphed from a penitentiary art form, something reserved for scruffy biker dudes and burly chicks. Skulls. Naked women. Dragons.

They’re now a more common right of passage for well-behaved teenagers and young adults.

A trip to the beach reveals just how ubiquitous tats have become. Butterflies flitter just above bikini bottoms. Shoulders flex with half-dollar-sized Chinese symbols. Cartoon characters zoom across biceps. Inked barbwire wraps around arms.

Reality shows like “Miami Ink,” which give viewers an inside look into the workings of a tattoo parlor, have helped tear down the stigma of getting permanently penned.

And while the backsides of 20- and 30-somethings make for sexy TV, the reality is that more and more 50-, 60-, and 70-somethings are coming into the crosshairs of the tattoo gun for the first time.

“The oldest person I’ve worked on was a 92-year-old woman named Maxine,” says master tattoo artist Bill Hannong, who, at 55, has been in the industry for nearly 30 years. He owns three tattoo parlors in Fort Myers, including Fort Myers Beach Tattoo.

“A lot of people, retired or otherwise, are exercising the right not to answer to anybody,” he says. “They have found that getting a tattoo doesn’t change who you are.”

As many as 15 people over the age of 50 visit the store each week, he says. “It’s not a freak occurrence,” Hannong says on a recent Thursday night. “There’ve been nine to 10 people already this week.” Most have never been tattooed before, he says.

For the most part, people over 50 have a strong idea about want before they step in the door.

“There are images they’ve had in their mind for years,” says Hannong, “and they have the experience of age. They’ll get the tattoo and won’t ever look back. There’s very little room for regret. That’s not the same for the younger kids.”

Paula Dahlman, 67, got her first tattoo at the Fort Myers Beach studio last week. The retired owner of a hair salon says older people don’t have the same social and professional responsibilities as younger people.

Dahlman says that when she was running her business she didn’t allow employees to have visible tattoos. “I just don’t think it’s very professional look,” she explains.

But at this point in her life, she says she’s not concerned with holding down a job or appearing professional. “My lifestyle has changed since I retired,” she says. “I don’t have 140 employees anymore.”

While she wasn’t entirely sure what design she wanted, she was certain about what kind of tattoo she didn’t want.

“I didn’t want a rose on my boob,” she says, laughing. “By the time you get to 80 it would become a long-stemmed rose.”

Dahlman decided on an ankle bracelet.

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Some retirees may have the same emotional verve as someone younger, but tattoo artists know the older generation doesn’t have the same vibrant, durable skin either.

Like Wendt and his checkered flags. He came into the parlor with a design he’d printed off the Internet. “Here you go,” he says, handing the design to Gaither. “This is flag I want.”

“OK?” Gaither responds guardedly. “We’re going to have draw it up a larger image with fewer squares. Can you come back in a few hours? This is going to take a little bit.”

“Why can’t you just do the flags I have here? They look fine,” Wendt says.

“They might look fine, but we’re going to have to make the squares larger so they don’t bleed together over time,” the artist says, explaining that as skin ages it loses the ability to keep ink in one spot. He says that tattoo artists have to make changes to designs to prevent them from becoming a splotchy blob, also known as a “pigment migration.”

“When they’re in there 50s, they still have good skin,” Hannong explains. “But when they get into their 60s and up, the skin progressively gets more fragile.”

The most vulnerable areas for this problem are the ankles and wrist bones, Hannong says. Artists have to make images larger and leave more blank skin between the lines.

“The older the skin, the more everything bleeds together,” Hannong says.

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Tattooing the older generation is becoming increasingly more acceptable, says Bud Yates, president of the National Tattoo Association. He credits movie stars, athletes and rock stars for getting people interested in painted skin.

“Tattoos are ways of keeping memories alive,” says Yates, who owns two tattoo shops in southern Colorado. “I had a 70-year-old whose husband had died come in not too long ago and she got her first tattoo — (a depiction) of a hummingbird she had in her yard.

“She saw it for years and wanted to make sure she always remembered it.”

Older people tend to get tattoos that remind them of a friend, family or a meaningful relationship, he says, adding that women tend to get tattoos after their husbands die.

“Some women were in really controlling relationships,” he says. “They don’t even know why they want a tattoo so bad. It’s unconscious.”

“Think about it,” he continues. “That woman wanted a hummingbird. It symbolized freedom. She’s out of a relationship, and she can do whatever she wants to now.”

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Back at the Fort Myers Beach parlor, the tattoo gun makes the final passes along Wendt’s now-tender forearm, filling out the last bits of black. The constant pricking has caused his skin to go numb, he says with an unforced smile.

Gaither dips his needle for the last time and touches off the checkered flags, almost flapping in the wind.

“Alright,” Gaither says, covering it with a bandage. “Keep this on for 18 hours. Stay out of the sun. And keep it lubricated with non-scented lotion.”

It’s the same speech he gives all of his clients.

Racing has been in this 66-year-old’s blood since he was 16. When he finally peels away the bandage, his skin will be decorated with what could be considered a birthmark of his choosing. One that was five decades in the making.

He doesn’t know if he’ll get another. But as saying goes, tattoos are like pistachios. You can’t have just one.

If he does get another, he says it will be a heart with “Mom” in the middle.