body offering??

i had a client offer me his skin -his entire body- as a canvas tonight. 

anything i could want to do ... (motivated by the desire to collect free ink, as the conditions are, he has no money and no prospects for money in the near future) ... he was honest and sincere about it, and i wasn't offended.       

i responded to his offer with: "well, if i were doing you the way i wanted to, that tree on your side would have (and here i am gesturing on his body) extended from here to here (right hip to left chest); it wouldn't look anything like the one you asked for!" 

his response, [excitement] "i would've loved to have it be like that, but i got what i could afford and i don't have any money!!!"

i know he is sincere ... and i am not entirely adverse to tattooing someone for free for that type of opportunity (i've done it before --but that was between apprenticing and taking a shop position). my problem is, i just can't see my way to tattooing anywhere but in the shop, where i have strict pathogen control ... and i don't own the shop ... so i can't choose to give away work for free, in order to have complete freedom!!  

oh but i do want it. this has been my fantasy ideal, the offer of an entire body as freedom's playground ... and the proposal is daunting and beautiful (but also a bit scary). 

before he left, i directed him to this blog (to read whatever appeals to him through the titles), because i think that he might not have understood that i also meant the tree would not have been done in a "realistic manner".

now i understand why jime litwalk wanted direction from me when he tattooed my arm this winter; we had no working relationship. i contacted him through email and offered him my forearm at whatever his hourly rate was, and tried to skirt around the subject matter. 

he wrote me back,insisting  he needed some subject on which to draw. 

i think i tried to skirt the issue again, by telling him what tattoos i already have on my arm and the general theme of it ... he kept on ... until i gave him the subject of  'an intoxicated fly' for direction.

when i arrived for my appointment and he approached me in the shop with the drawing of his bar fly, he took one look at me and said, "maybe we should have talked a little more before i drew this up." 

i just nodded and said: yep. it's not intoxicated on booze, jime, but from feasting on flesh!

he went back to the drawing board for close to forty five minutes and came back with the fly we both agreed on.  

anywho, the opportunity to have a relatively clean slate to work on, in whatever manner i want, is so tempting!! 

then i wonder, how could i take someone's entire body and work on it ... if that person does not dictate in some way what they want their body to "be"?!  

i feel like in reality, all i can actually do, is each "piece" he wants 'my way' ... however big or funky i want it to be ... it just isn't right to inhabit someone's skin if they do not in some way self-determine!

i do have a good working relationship and a 'connection' with this client ... but when i am real honest with myself about it, i do have a mental hang-up about not receiving re-numeration for the work.  i mean, this person is a client, not a lover, and there seems to be no end to those who would love to have work on them as long as they are getting a deal out of it! perhaps there is some compromise? ie., the client pays the bottom price for the work and i spend as much time and energy as i please executing my vision after shop hours?  

questions: 

do i have the energy to work so much? 

and if i do have the physical energy; do i have the psychic energy? 

last but not least:

is tattooing anything if not self-determined?