Ray James classifies the caricature of Jerry Lewis on his friend Don Perazzo's right shoulder as "a totally ironic tattoo." Perazzo, though he doesn't refute the assessment, feels that it calls for further explanation. "I got it because I had sort of a love of Jerry's comedy," he says. "And I also loved that he was a freak and a nut and out of his mind—I mean, he calls the Muscular Dystrophy kids God's mistakes." Perazzo acquired the tattoo, which depicts Lewis as a knock-kneed marionette caught in the tangles of a microphone cord, in 1995. He had it drawn to his own specifications, based on three sources: a videocassette box of "The Godfather" (the puppet motif), Lewis's trademark caricature (the head), and a cartoon from a book about Lewis written in French (the body).

The tattoo had its largest public showing the other night, in front of five hundred people at Congregation Rodeph Sholom on West Eighty-third Street, where Jerry Lewis was appearing at a Learning Annex seminar entitled "Jerry Lewis on the Human Condition: Life, Laughter, and Healing." Perazzo, a thirty-nine-year-old standup comic who pays the bills as a lab technician breaking down blood into components, and James, a former writer for "The Daily Show," had come to pay their respects, along with Perazzo's fiancée, Carmela Tapino ("Basically, she was there for the tattoo," Perazzo said). Perazzo's big moment—and the tattoo's—came during the question-and-answer portion of the evening. A middle-aged man who had announced "I saw you in 'Damn Yankees' fourteen times, Mr. Lewis—I'm addicted to you," had just posed for an onstage picture, clutching his heart and weeping. Then Perazzo stood up and raised his hand. After scanning the crowd, Lewis pointed to him and said, "Yes, you."Perazzo paused, like a poker player savoring the moment before laying down a full house. "Jerry," he finally said, "I've got a tattoo of you on my right arm." There was a brief silence, and the audience erupted, clapping, stamping, and shouting "Whoo!" Lewis cackled—a high-pitched, plosive "Paah!"—and summoned Perazzo up onto the stage.

"Jerry autographed the tattoo, we hugged, and I shook his hand. The crowd went wild," Perazzo recalled. "It was like I was in some whole other zone. When I jumped off the stage, I was surrounded by all these people who wanted to get my picture. Several of them wanted their picture taken with the tattoo. It was pretty weird."

During all this, James had managed to call his cousin Tony, whose wife is a tattoo artist in Queens. She was about to close up shop for the night, but after James filled Tony in on the situation and Tony told his wife about it she agreed to remain open if they could get there quickly. James pulled Perazzo up the aisle, out the front door, and into a taxi, which they took to Union Square, where they jumped out, bolted down into the subway, caught the L train, and rode to Grand Street in Brooklyn. There Tony was waiting in a car to drive them to his wife's tattoo parlor, in Middle Village. When they arrived, Perazzo rolled up the right sleeve of his white T-shirt, and Tony's wife, plying the electric needle and indelible pigment of her trade, tattooed over Jerry Lewis's signature.

With the addition of this fourth, and crowning, element, Perazzo considers his tattoo complete. He regrets that it required his early departure from the seminar, though. Perazzo missed the chance to hear Lewis recite from the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, which he had promised to do "with all the love that comes in through the aorta, into the heart, and into the brain."

Adam Green