I first met Thom deVita while working on a photographic project. I was taking a series of photos of spring coming up through the cracks in the streets of New York City. I was hunkered down taking shots of a few blades of grass pushing their way out from between two cobblestones. When I looked up, there sitting on a stoop on St. Mark's place was Thom deVita. Thom deVita was an unusual figure, to say the least.

The weather was warm and Thom was wearing a black fishnet tee shirt with cut-off jeans, (A get-up that would have looked gay on almost anyone but Thom". Even then, in the late 60's or early 70's Thom was sporting the beginning of an elaborate collection of tattoos, the first good-looking tattoos I'd ever seen. I always thought tattoos were cool but I felt for some reason that they always looked sloppy. Even tattoos my friends had paid good money for looked like they were done by a drunken fifth grader. Thom's tattoos were done by someone who had tattooing under control. I was impressed that I braved starting a conversation with this odd looking man. Thom, of course, turned out to be a nice fellow and we sat and talked for a while. Thom told me he was learning to tattoo. We ended our first visit with Thom inviting me to his studio so I could watch him tattoo.

I was really stoked at the prospect of photographing the tattoo process. A few days later I visited Thom's home/studio on East 8th Street and as far as you could go on the lettered avenues, deep in the Lower East Side of Puerto Rican ghetto it was an area I had been warned to stay out of, yet there I was going into the area to visit an underground tattoo shop. Thom's place was every bit as scary as I had imagined it. On the ground floor rear of the nearly abandoned building, I knocked. Thom took a long time to come to the door. I was greeted and shown down a long dark hallway that was full of gothic looking junk that led into the kitchen area complete with a small tub, like most New York tenement apartments want to have. In the pool of light from a drafting lamp, sat a Puerto Rican guy who was in the middle of getting tattooed. Thom sat down and went back to work. This was to be the first of many, many visits to Thom deVita's.

As my visits to Thom's place progressed we slowly started to become fast friends. As I became more relaxed with Thom, his shop and his neighborhood, I started to feel free to ask about the hundreds of strange objects that decorated his home. One day I spotted a big black bell sitting on a high shelf covered with dust. I asked Thom about the old bell as I reached up to lift it down. Thom quickly warned me against touching the bell. He said, "Don't screw around with that bell, I got it from guy named Bill Heine." The story Thom told me was a bit hard to swallow, but it went; some years before, Bill Heine had used the bell to pay a debt he owed to Thom. After the bell had been around a while, Thom had discovered that after he rang the bell, Bill Heine would soon appear at his door. Thom said that it never failed. When he began experimenting with the bell, not only would Bill Heine appear, but along with bill would come groups of his ne'er-do-well friends. Thom said many of whom were drug friends and were hard to get rid of once inside his apartment. He spoke of a woman called Tessa who took up residence under his kitchen table for an extended stay. Thom said in the end he put the bell up on the shelf and there it sat in silence gathering dust.

Now, my story jumps ahead 4 or 5 years. I had taken up tattooing myself, but after working underground in New York City for a time, just as Thom had, I took off for the West Coast; California was a hot bed for cutting edge tattooing. I worked in San Diego up until July of 1973 when Sailor Jerry Collins (the undisputed king of custom tattooing) passed away. I was lucky enough to take over Jerry's shop in Honolulu, Hawaii. Thom deVita would visit me in Honolulu and when I was in New York City deVita's place was my first stop. While I was living in Hawaii, Thom had purchase a building on East 4th Street. He had gone in partners with the Reverend Richard O. Tyler. Tyler was head of his own self-styled religion, loosely based on the Tibetan Buddhism. Thom and several of his friends were a part of the Reverend's flock. Mr. And Mrs. Bill Heine were also involved.

On a visit to New York around '75 or '76, I found Thom's place in Turmoil. Bill Heine's wife, Ellen, had been found dead in the Heine apartment. The good Reverend was frantic to find Bill Heine, who was missing. He needed to get Heine's permission to start reading the Bardos over Ellen's body. The city would not allow Tyler access to the loved one without her Husband's written permission. According to Tyler the Bardo reading must start soon or the window of opportunity would pass. (I don't pretend to understand much about this. I am only trying to report what was going to on when I entered the picture.) I watched as people came and went getting orders from Thom and the Reverend about possible places to find Bill Heine. I was totally useless to their efforts; I had never laid eyes on Bill Heine. He was only a person in a story; a story about a bell. That's when I spoke up. "Thom" I asked, "Why don't you ring the bell?" Thom stopped in his tracks and asked, "What are you talking about?" I said, "You told me when you lived on East 8th Street that you had bell that makes Bill Heine appear." "yes!" Shouted Thom, "Why didn't I think of that." Thom went to his closet and began digging through the contents. First, a bicycle cam out and then from behind it was a pile of strange junk. From inside the closet came the clanging of the Bill Heine bell Thom exited the closet ringing the big black bell, then he sat down and waited. "Why didn't I think of that," he mumbled again. We all sat around looking at each other exchanging nervous smiles. Before ten minutes passed, there was a knock at the door. Thom smiled at me as he went to answer the door. The door swung open and I saw Bill Heine for the first and only time in my life. Thom acted as if it were nothing. For me, it was the only time I'd felt as if I'd seen someone do real magic and I still feel that way and I always will.

Michael Malone a.k.a. Rollo Banks
Rohnert Park, CA

Note: Scott Harrison had known about the bell story for years but was never able to get Thom to ring it and demonstrate its magic. It was a warm day in November. Scott and one of his friends from N.Y. were visiting Thom in Newburgh. Thom went to open the window for some fresh air when he accidentally knocked bell over. It rang. Shortly after that Thom went upstairs to find an old book that he had misplaced; he waited to show it to Scott's friend. When he located the lost book he picked it up and found an old Bill Heine illustrated poetry publication that had also been misplaced for quite some time. The explanation for finding this was clear; the bell had summoned it! Thom took both books down stairs to show the guys, while they were looking at the books there was a knock at the door; it was Bill Heine.