The door jingles as it opens into a small, dimly lit room filled with the distinct aroma of cigarette smoke. The inside of Animal House Tattoo, a small shack on the side of Highway 12, boasts an orange couch, plenty of wall art and a row of stickers for sale with messages like “Kiss my tattoo” and “Practice safe sex. Go f- yourself.” A stocky, bearded man sits behind the counter. His name is Meat.
Plenty of inked students on MSU’s campus are familiar with Meat and have his handiwork on their body to prove it. But most of them are less familiar with the history that lies behind the artist.
In 11^th grade, Meat, whose real name is Edward Johnson, was chosen to be a Walt Disney Company animator. Disney was hiring background animators for “The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride,” and Meat and his friend applied just for fun. They were surprised when they got a phone call asking when they could move to Orlando.
“The first question was ‘Where do you have your major and master’s in art from?’ and I was like ‘I’m in 11^th grade’ and he was like ‘There’s no way you’re in 11^th grade,’ and I said ‘I am,'” Meat said, recounting the phone conversation.
The recruiter told him he would hold the job for him. But unfortunately, a new director was hired and that promise fell through. So Meat took “the long way around” and went through art school at Mississippi State University. After he graduated, he applied again and got accepted to work at the Disney parks and shadow the animation team.
“I signed the paperwork, shook the guy’s hand, and when I stuck my arm out, the bottom of my tattoo stuck out from under my sleeve, and he pulls my arm across and pulls my sleeve up and says ‘I can’t hire you with tattoos,'” Meat said.
It is indeed a rule that no Disney park employees are allowed to have tattoos, and Meat, for the second time, was denied being an animator for Disney.
But, as Meat said, he is pretty good at not letting things get him down.
“I had a child, so she had just been born. I was like, ‘Well, you know, you can’t sit here and mope about this. You gotta take care of her,'” Meat said.
Meat moved on to the next thing and put his drawing skills to work, just on real people rather than animated characters.
Meat has been working at Animal House Tattoo since 2012 and devotes nearly 60 hours a week to his job, maybe more. He is just grateful to have a job in his major, he said.
“In Mississippi (tattooing is) the only thing art-wise to really make money off of,” Meat said.
But, despite his long hours, he never lets his work get in the way of his relationship with his loved ones.
“I’ve always made time for (my daughter). If it comes between her and the job, I’m gonna make sure I take care of her first … She’s with me more than she’s not,” Meat said.
Even those who know Meat only for the amount of time it takes to get a tattoo know how special his daughter is to him. Sarah Margaret Knight, a junior communication major at Mississippi State University, said she got a tattoo from Meat almost exactly a year ago.
“Meat was really nice. He was telling me a story about his daughter and how he had just bought his daughter a car, and he was really proud of himself, which I thought was really sweet,” Knight said.
Myia Wilson, a junior communication major at MSU, got her first tattoo from Meat on the night of her 18^th birthday.
“He loves his daughter. He has her artwork all over his office,” Wilson said.
Knight also mentioned the skill with which Meat did her tattoo, which was a backward “S” to represent her recovery from scoliosis.
“He did a good job doing the tattoo, like his technique was good. It didn’t really hurt,” Knight said.
But how does a tattoo artist go from drawing on paper to drawing on another human? Meat revealed the secret to his soft touch.
“We practice on fruit,” he said.
First, tattoo apprentices start off using the machines to draw straight lines on lemons, then graduate to drawing stars. Then they move onto oranges, honeydew and finally tomatoes.
“Then it was a red tomato with a really little tiny liner. And if you can tattoo that without it exploding, you should never damage anybody’s skin,” Meat said.
Next comes the final step: tattooing yourself.  
“You feel like you don’t have the right to cause anybody pain unless you know what it feels like by your own hand. It gives you a greater respect for the process,” Meat said.
Many of the tattoos Meat does are common symbols. He said the infinity sign will probably be popular for the length of its own meaning — infinity. But Meat’s passion lies in lengthy, elaborate tattoos — true works of art. His favorite tattoo he has ever done is recreating the hands of man and God from Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” across a man’s chest.
But for all the good tattoo ideas Meat sees, he also sees plenty of bad ones — such as a full-color Smurfette smoking a blunt spanning the entirety of a young woman’s forearm, or a six-point nautical star on a man’s neck to cover up the word “goon” that was already tattooed beneath his chin.
Although Meat loves art, and always has for as long as he can remember, he said his favorite part of the job is the people.
Wilson, who has been back to Animal House several times for nose piercings, immediately mentioned Meat’s proclivity to chat with clients.
“If you do go in there to see Meat, you definitely need to set aside two hours of your time because he does love to talk,” Wilson said.
Meat said he is prone to getting in trouble for talking too much.
“You get to meet new people all the time, and then your older customers, they’re almost like a separate family that come in here constantly, and then you get back there and you get to talking, and I get fussed at for talking too much,” Meat said. ” … There’s some people that start telling you stuff and it’s like ‘Oop I don’t wanna know, because I don’t wanna be an accomplice when they find the dead body in the woods, so stop talking.'”
Although Meat’s drawings could not be brought to life on the movie screen, they are brought to life daily by every person who sits in the tattoo chair and leaves Animal House bearing Meat’s art on their body.