KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Did it hurt?
Dalton Meek just laughs. And laughs. And laughs.
"Duuuude," Meek says, slowly. "Yeah, it was the most painful thing I've ever gone through, dude. I mean, it was wicked ... it feels like knives just slowly (going) down your head."
So, yeah. Getting a giant Kansas City Chiefs tattoo along the back of your shaven skull?
It hurt. A lot.
And yet...
"I don't regret it," Meek, a 19-year-old Chiefs fan from Lenexa, Kan., said of the head tattoo -- a grinning skull with the Chiefs' famous arrowhead logo on it -- that's raised eyebrows across the internet this week. "And I never will regret it. I will forever be proud to support my team."
Especially the "forever" part.
"I was like, 'That's a die-hard Chiefs fan,'" chuckles Dan Kubin, the Kansas City-area tattoo artist who performed the rather distinctive work on Meek's noggin.
Kubin's done ink inside a belly button. And on the bottom of the foot. And near some of the more, um, intimate regions of the female anatomy.
But a Chiefs tattoo? On the back of your shaven head? As wacky requests go, that was a new one.
The tale of the tat dates back to 2011, roughly: As Kubin remembers it, Meek dropped by the shop to get a Chiefs logo tattooed along his forearm.
"I did a good job and everything, and he was like, 'OK, thanks, man,'" says Kubin, then playing his trade at Bleeding Heart Tattoo in Lee's Summit, Mo.
"Then he came in the shop later and said, 'My next tattoo, I want this big skull on the back of my head, with, like, a headdress on it and Kansas City Chiefs colors and a Kansas City Chiefs logo in the center. And I want it so that when I'm at a Chiefs game, in the stands, if I'm standing in front of a Raiders fan, I want him to be intimidated.'"
Either that, or horrified.
"I didn't think he was serious," continues Kubin, who these days works at Modified Ways in Blue Springs, Mo. "And so I made him put a deposit down."
As it turned out, the kid was serious. And, some time later, out came the deposit. Twenty bucks. Boom. Let's do this.
Meek eventually came by with the $480 for the rest. Kubin finished that bad boy in one marathon, four-hour session.
"(For) most people, yeah, that would've been a mistake," Meek says. "But for the kind of fan I am, for how much this team means to me, no, it's not a mistake at all. And I will never regret it."
Dalton says he unveiled the tattoo at Arrowhead Stadium during the Chiefs-Chargers game on Halloween 2011. The hosts won in overtime, 23-20.
"Oh, man," says Meek, currently a college student at Pittsburg (Kan.) State. "That night is one of the nicest nights of my life."
But as Meek is also an undergrad by day, he let his hair grow back after the 2011 NFL season.
Now he only brings the nasty look out for special occasions. Or really, really, really humid days.
"It's a conversation starter, that's for sure," Meek says.
A conversation-ender, too.
Also, it hurt. A lot.
"Pain," Meek chortles, "is temporary, man."
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
