HE’S NOT SO TOUGH

Courses of action to be considered if ever approached by Erik Robertson in a dark alley:

* Run. Like a scalded dog. Don’t look behind you. Try not to think of those dreams where you can’t move your legs.

* Call the police. Tell them there is an oncoming man, about 6 feet 2 and 315 pounds, who looks like a cross between Andre the Giant and Ozzy Osbourne.

* Give him all your money. Hope he just wants to eat a turkey leg and not you.

Robertson, senior offensive guard for the California football team that plays host to UCLA at Memorial Stadium on Saturday, has always had a way with strangers.

He terrifies them.

“Even when I was in high school, and had a nice, clean-cut haircut, I still had that effect on people,” Robertson, the Apple Valley High school graduate, said last week before practice at Cal’s Memorial Stadium. “I was still like a big, kind of scary-looking guy.”

Robertson has since dyed his hair black, grown out his goatee and embarked on a mission to tattoo every inch of his body.

“I’m not even close to done,” he said. “I’ve got so many planned.”

Robertson took advantage of Cal’s off week, in fact, by getting some of his tattoos “touched up.”

He is Cal’s “Illustrated (Line) Man,” a heavy dude who is into heavy music. His favorite band is Killswitch Engage, described by Wikipedia as being influenced by the “melodic death metal” scene. Robertson plays bass guitar, as if anyone was going to stop him.

Robertson has Killswitch lyrics etched on his tattoo-saturated left arm: “When darkness falls we are reborn.”

Here are some other things you should know about Robertson:

He has never, according to his coaches, been late for a team meeting.

He is majoring in Scandinavian studies.

He has never, he says, been involved in a fight.

“You get the guy, or the girl, who’s really kind of intimidated, afraid to talk to you, or someone who wants to challenge you,” he said. “I just come up and introduce myself and all of a sudden there’s nothing to think, it’s all out in the open.”

Robertson is smart, quick-witted, even-tempered and the bruised-up leader of Cal’s banged-up offensive line.

“An imposing figure,” Cal Coach Jeff Tedford said of Robertson. “He looks like somebody you’d deem a tough guy, a hard guy to talk to. But he’s the best guy to talk to.”

Robertson is so outgoing he has made friends with his opponents -- during games.

“It’s really competitive,” Robertson said of football in the Pacific 10 Conference, “but you meet good people, you’d be surprised, even on the field.”

He says several opposing players, after trying to crush him on the way to Cal’s quarterback, have complimented him on his tattoos.

The one that adorns Robertson’s right biceps means the most.

He dedicated it to his older brother Shane, who died in 2004 of stomach cancer.

Erik, the youngest of five children, wrote a poem to his brother and then watched as it was painfully inscribed into permanence:

You said I am strong.

You are stronger than I ever could be.

I watched you while you suffered.

You suffer no longer.

Now you watch over me.

I feel your eyes watching me.

They never changed.

Do not think I have forgotten you.

I know you are there.

I love you, brother.

People have stopped Robertson in the grocery store to read his right biceps, admiring the meticulously detailed workmanship.

“A lot of people think it’s Scripture, or the Declaration of Independence,” Robertson said.

He said the tattoo is a goodbye letter, “almost like last words.”

“I dedicated part of my body,” Robertson said. “I hate to say it reminds me of him, it’s not like I was going to forget. But it’s nice, nice to have it there, to look at.”

People always ask Robertson about his tattoos.

Why does he do it? How much is too much?

The pain is sometimes intolerable. One complicated piece near his rib cage took 11 hours and three sessions to complete.

And once a tattoo is paid for ...

“It’s always there,” Robertson said. “That’s one of the reasons why tattoos are so fascinating to me, because they’re permanent. That’s usually what scares most people away from them. That’s what brings me toward them ... the tattoos are expression, they’re art.”

How Robertson found his way to Berkeley from Apple Valley still baffles him -- but he obviously landed in the right place.

Robertson grew up near Hesperia, with the Mojave Desert as his “fenceless” backyard. His youth was spent riding dirt bikes and catching various bugs and lizards. He didn’t play organized sports until his freshman year at Apple Valley High. His junior-year team went 0-10. Robertson was big and athletic. USC sent him some game tickets but never called back.

Robertson says he did not follow college football and only knew “Toledo” was the UCLA coach because he went to his football camp.

Robertson doesn’t even recall being named to the Los Angeles Times’ All-Desert/Mountain Region team.

Cal football, at that time, was in a miserable state, coming off a 1-10 season in 2001. It was in the final wheeze of the Tom Holmoe era when it offered Robertson a scholarship.

Robertson said he had no idea Cal was one of the top public schools in the country.

“I didn’t know anything about universities,” he said.

Five years later, Robertson is lead mule on the No. 10 team in the country, looking to lead Cal past UCLA this week and toward its first Rose Bowl appearance since 1959.

“It kind of seemed like it was meant to be,” said of his experience. “It’s like it all fell in place.”

Robertson and Cal were a football -- and a cultural -- fit. He is almost a poster-child for what Berkeley represents for many: freedom of expression and thought.

“That’s not what we’re all about, but it’s very welcome here,” Tedford said. “It’s a great lesson, that’s for sure. When people talk about gold teeth or earrings or whatever, you really find that there are quality people behind those things.”

Robertson said Berkeley has not been as tolerant toward his fiancee, Cal softball star Kristina Thorson, the 2006 Pac-10 pitcher of the year.

“She’s got dyed black hair, a lot of piercings and tattoos, and I think there was a double standard for her because it was a women’s sport,” Robertson said.

Robertson said Thorson’s coaches made her remove her piercings and cover up her tattoos during games.

“You think it’s Cal, you should really be like above that, but it still happens,” he said.

Football is the only gray matter on Robertson’s mind now -- UCLA this week, then Arizona, USC, Stanford -- the Rose Bowl? What about a pro career with America’s Tattoo, the Oakland Raiders?

A hard-metal world beckons for this big, bad, mean-looking Bear. There is music to consider and contributions to humanity.

Robertson wants to be a high school teacher, specializing in history or English literature. He is looking to scare the life into students, bass-line beat information into their fertile brains, rattle a few cages and continue to dispel stereotypes.

And how might he convey his methods of teaching?

“With long-sleeve shirts on,” Robertson said.

chris.dufresne@latimes.com