Inked

The first time I met him, he grumbled a little, asked if I had a design, said to fill out the paperwork and stuck his hand out for my id. He disappeared in the back for a while. It was a little different from the girl who did my first tattoo a few years earlier, and I subtly looked around to see if she was there.

I wound up in his chair, he pressed the transfer on and got to work, giving solid instructions to not look down, or at him, said to stop breathing so hard. I stared at his drawings on the wall and photos of coverups - the before and afters that he was known for. I couldn’t believe the misspellings that he’d turned into a trucker girl tattoo, a lotus flower, or re-spell a broken up lover’s name into a new-someone-else.

By the end, he’d sung along to his radio for the good part of the hour and asked about my kids - by then he’d softened, when he realized that I was “ok” - not a squeamish indecisive girl in his chair.

I felt like I had won a grade school citizenship award when he sent me off with a “you did great”. I’d apparently made the cut as I walked away with his cell phone number to text for my next appointment.

When I decided to add my daughters’ birth flowers, he remembered, smiled…asked how I was doing during an almost 2 hour session of the rattling needle against my ribs.

“I want to throw up….but I promise I won’t”. He pointed to the trash can - “give me a two second warning so I don’t mess up…”. This is when we learned I have a weird tic of rubbing my fingers together when trying to hold still. He chuckled, “You’re doing it again…”

I last saw him after his first bout of treatment, from sickness - about this time last year. As he added what I’d decided would be the last piece to my arm, a work in progress over the years, he said, with a slight slur from his surgery, that tattooing was the only thing he could still do at 100%. If I have ever felt gladness for someone in a moment it was then, for him.

About nine months later, I read in a tribute that he was “one of the oldest existing tattooers in the state of New Hampshire, right up to the end.”

A few generations wear his work, I’ve recognized it on other people, and it has always felt like being in a special club, having been inked by him, my two daughters included.

I have never asked the meaning of their tattoos, hell, I don’t even really know the meaning of my own. I’d say that one or two may have come after fighting a battle. There is no religion, but there are symbols. They are time capsules.

I have a hard time feeling disappointed that my kids have followed suit and that they are smattered with ink. I love what they have chosen. But I also can’t avoid the reality that they are light years behind in the wisdom and feelings that accumulate through time.

I hope they leave room for more, and I hope that it isn’t ever painful. But I am sure it will be - because - Life.

When I left the shop that last time, he pointed to the blank space over my shoulder and slowly dragged his finger up, over, and down to the back of my shoulder and said softly, “next time we can continue here and here, like this and we can add a…”

There isn’t going to be a next with him. It will be someone else’s when it’s time.

Some of my best moments in some of my hardest times were in the chair next to him, bent over, intent on his work, daring me to breathe.