December 2004 Issue - Essay # 4
Revelations
on Tattoos and Tatto Artists
By
Liberty Walther Barnes
“Josh stopped by at 2:30 in the morning to look at his baby book,” my mom tells me long-distance. It’s the first time in eight months anyone in the family has seen or heard from my brother. We call him a free spirit when he calls out of the blue. We call him the black sheep when he calls out of the blue asking for bail money. Josh took a one-hour pit stop at mom’s place in Utah while road-tripping from Colorado to Oregon with his girlfriend. “I offered to let them stay the night,” says mom, “but he just wanted to have a snack and show his girlfriend his baby book.” For all of Josh’s unpredictable behavior, he never fails to ask for his baby book when he drops in. That’s why mom keeps it in the living room. Josh performs the same ritual each time he views the holy book. He ceremoniously points to the kids in his pre-school, kindergarten and first grade class photos, remembering each one by name as if reciting some sacred canon. He prayerfully wonders aloud where they are now and how they’re doing twenty years later. Josh traveled from our childhood home in the Pacific Northwest at age 22 to New Orleans where he completed an apprenticeship as a tattoo artist. He worked in the parlor by day, and slept in the backroom by night. His own lanky six-foot-four-inch frame is covered in tattoos and body pierces. I imagined Josh’s boss was a seven-foot giant, who wore a black leather vest over a robust and shirtless hairy chest. A naked woman on a Harley was tattooed to his right bicep, and on his left forearm was something as irreverent as the American flag on fire. People called him “Butch” or “Rex” or “Bull.” I never once visited Josh in New Orleans, because I was scared of Bull. But now I wonder: Does Bull the Tattoo Artist have a baby book? Does he visit his mom in the middle of the night because he wants to reminisce about his Kindergarten playmates over cookies and milk? Does Bull have a sister like me, and is she afraid of Josh? Though Josh currently owes jail time in three different states, I’m certainly not afraid of him. He was the kid in school with learning disabilities, the one who was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder back when Ritalin® was a dirty secret and not the household word that created a pharmaceutical empire. He spent his first day of Kindergarten in the principal’s office for throwing rocks, once dropped a brick on our other brother’s head, and stole the cash box from the community pool’s concession stand. For a hooligan, he was usually harmless, and our neighbors even described him as “perfectly charming.” Never one to follow the beaten path, Josh got lost in the Cascade Mountains of Washington on a Boy Scout trip. I still remember my mom falling to pieces in the kitchen when the park ranger called to say the Search and Rescue Team had been mobilized. She bawled hysterically, and I felt strangely calm, as if his disappearance may put an end to the years of humiliation he had brought to our family. Though he was missing to us, a free spirit is never lost. To this day Mom feels sick when Josh doesn’t call for months, but the rest of us know he will show up sooner or later on someone’s porch. Just like he did at the ranger’s station. “This is the first time in my career a missing person turned up alive,” a dumbfounded ranger told mom. Josh eventually attained the rank of Eagle Scout for re-landscaping a park in our neighborhood. Today, he takes great pride in his pro bono work for Mexican immigrants. He tells us they arrive in the United States with grotesque amateur tattoos. (It’s one of those plaguing social problems they don’t teach us about in my graduate classes in sociology.) The tattoo ink has bled and faded. Josh carefully redesigns their tattoos into presentable images. I wonder if Bull is an Eagle Scout, too. Behind the black clothes and pierces and body art, does Bull have the same tender heart as Josh? I’m sure that Bull must have had some terrible upbringing, full of abuse and neglect, which is why he now derives pleasure in tattooing and piercing flesh. Of course, if you consider being forced to drive twenty hours to Yellowstone with five kids piled in the family van with no air-conditioning a form of abuse, then you could say we had abusive parents, too. Factor in that we qualified for free lunch at school amid the financial turmoil of dad’s mid-life crisis, and you might even say we had it tough. My parent’s divorce five years ago confirmed that we were just as dysfunctional as any other good American family. Did Bull have it worse than us? Last week the guy next to me on the campus shuttle had his brow, lip, nose and ears pierced and tattoos on each arm. I could see the tattoo on his right arm clearly, and studied the image. A woman with big hair and bulging cleavage in a tattered green skirt à la Peter Pan and pirate hat was wielding a sword. I leaned forward to ask “What does your tattoo mean?” But I caught myself, suddenly realizing that such a question may be in breech of the unwritten code of tattoo etiquette. A busload of college kids could attack me, or worse yet, roll their eyes and pretend I don’t exist. I read enough Lacan and Derrida in college to know that signs and symbols can have multiple meanings. What if the meaning behind a tattoo is deeply personal with infinite layers of meaning that cannot be explained in our finite language? I made a mental note: Ask Josh about proper tattoo etiquette the next time he calls. Recently Josh ran out of surface area to apply more tattoos, so he shaved his head bald and tattooed his scalp. Mom says Josh loves his baby book because he longs for the past when his baby skin was pierce and tattoo-free. Do the childhood pictures represent all the tattoos that can’t be erased, or do the myriad of unexplainable tattoos represent years of life experience that can’t be forgotten? The phone rings. My husband shakes his head, and says, “You’ll never believe who it is.” The free spirit on the line tells me he won’t make it to the family reunion this year because he’s got an upcoming court date in Wyoming, and will most likely be spending the Fourth of July in jail for a misdemeanor. Suddenly overcome with curiosity I ask, “What was the name of your boss in New Orleans?” “Oh, his name’s Joey. Nice guy. Why do you ask?” I say I don’t know, and my image of Bull dissolves. He wishes me a Happy Mother’s Day and asks how his niece and nephew are doing. I jot down his address so I can mail him the kids’ Easter portrait, hoping he puts it up in his shop. I forget to ask him about the meaning of tattoos and tattoo etiquette.
|
|
Author's Biography |
Essay
Reviews! Site Reviews! We'd
like to know from our readers if they enjoy Seven Seas Magazine! Do
you have praise or complaints? Suggestions or ideas? Get notified! Would you
like to get notified as soon as new Seven Seas issues are published on the
Web? Tell a friend! Do you enjoy
the Seven Seas site?
|
|
Go back to the table
of contents |
