The mary is the religious part of me but she is holding a bottle of vodka which is the fun side of me just like the sun with god written in it i.e the sun of god. On the other shoulder is ohm’s law because I’m an electrician. The girls on either side are also my fun side meant to be my two sisters. At the botom it says, “I came I saw I conquered” because I have lost most of my family and I’m still going strong havin fun.
I have acquired, at this point in my life, quite a few tattoos. Actually I currently have ink on something greater than 50% of my lily white hide. I’m a fairly conservative, middle class business owner and most of my clients are stunned when they discover I have a tattoo and they are completely floored when they find out I have more than one. Since most people seem to be hiding some little ratty piece tucked away under a shirt, etc. I have kept it to an elite few in my small town that know the extent of my art and none of THEM even know half of the stories involved in how I got these pieces.
Today I wanted to tell you about the warrior fairy that I wear down my right ribcage and hip and the felon that drew her for me. She’s really pretty cool and doesn’t get enough respect since the mermaid showed up…
The original drawing was done by my first artist and good friend Frank. Frankie had a troubled past and spent some time in jail. By the time I met him he was a two strike felon, slinging ink at the local Hell’s Angel endorsed tattoo parlor, just trying to keep his head above water and stay out of trouble till he got off parole. What can I say? I’m an accepting person and have diverse friends. He’d done my first tattoo, treating a little white girl walking in to a rough place alone, way out of her league and too stupid/stubborn to leave without getting the little flower she’d come for with gentleness and respect. We became friends, I started to introduce him to the wonderful world of computers and we were moving forward from there.
Now, all things being equal, and Frankie being about as successful as any other Latino at keeping out of trouble in our little predominantly upper middle class, white county. He managed to get himself picked up on the way home from a party just before Christmas 2005. He was guilty of being Latino, being on parole, being drunk and riding in the same car as a bunch of other drunk folks. Since ‘Is anyone here on Parole?’ is one of the first questions a cop asks when he stops a group of people in a car, and my boy is not dumb enough to say ‘No’ and have them find out otherwise, he automatically got locked up. This was a very bad thing for Frankie. All I knew at the time was that he called to cancel our computer class and all the next day his phone was going straight to voice mail. It wasn’t until the next afternoon that I found out where he was but not what had happened.
I grew up in a predominantly Catholic environment. I went to the all girl’s school, did the volunteer stuff, read my bible. When I found out what happened to my new friend I couldn’t get the verse about visiting the criminal out of my head so I hauled my butt down to the jail. I’d never BEEN to a jail, didn’t know where I was supposed to go or what the rules were but hell… I’d walked into the tattoo parlor so I could sure walk into a jail house! I stripped down to my clothes, a pencil, my car key, my license and a $20 and wandered in to see what was up. It was one of the best things I ever did.
Frankie had no idea who was going to be there when he walked out to the visiting area and when he saw it was me on the other side of the glass the most profound look of relief washed over his face. For my part I was stunned. He was a mess. He’d freaked when they locked him up… A third strike and he’s down for the count. He hadn’t been sleeping or eating for the last 48 hours since he’d been picked up and it showed. As we sat there on the little phones with our hands pressed against the thick glass, trying to reach through it, I felt so bad for him but I wasn’t really sure what I could do except be there, be his friend and keep pushing him to work on the art and stick with all of the things we’d been working on before he got picked up.
I went and visited him in jail every chance I got while we were waiting for the arraignment and got my cell phone set up so he could call me and talk to me when he got the chance. He called a lot. I helped him put his head back in the right place, encouraged him not to give up, reminded him of all the good things he’d been doing and all the positive things he’d gotten involved with. I tracked down his parole officer, got him some art supplies, touched base with his family and let them know what was up. It never even occurred to me t do anything else. Sure, he’d done some dumb things in the past but was trying to get it together and I stood by my friend. My boy was locked down 4 days with no charges. When they arraigned him they dropped all the drug and alcohol stuff they’d been trying to intimidate him with and left resisting arrest because he was stupid enough to start cussing out the cops AFTER they handcuffed him and put him in the car.
Well, my life works in odd ways and one of my clients was by my shop several times that week. He saw me scooting in and out low key during office hours so I could make the visiting hours at the jail, etc. the day I scooted out to the arraignment without barely saying ‘Hello’ to him, which is quite out of character, I found him waiting for me at my office when I got back. He nailed me down and got the whole story. He’d seen Frank’s portfolio at my office a few weeks before when I’d been scanning the art work into the computer so that we could put it up on-line and potentially find some more clients. I explained how I’d been helping Frank learn to use computers so he could expand his opportunities. This guy listened to everything, admitted to having been very impressed by the work he’d seen and told me he was glad that I was being such a good friend. Then he told me that he lived next door to the head of the County Sheriff’s Dept and volunteered to go over and talk to his neighbor about the situation.
Without warning and against all odds Frank walked out of jail on Christmas Eve. While he was in I had encouraged him to keep drawing and not to lose hope. He wanted to thank me by drawing something for me that WAS me. He drew the warrior fairy, all blades and sharp edges and a ton of bad ass. Then, typical to Frankie, he decided that it was too raw and wicked to be sweet little ‘Roja’ and ended up drawing some soft, pretty thing coming up out of a flower. When he got out he gave me the softer one but he mentioned the original and I made him show it to me. As soon as I saw it I told him ‘Fuck that sissy fairy, Frank, I like the tough one!’
I tried to convince him to do the tattoo for me countless times over the next few months but he wouldn’t do it. He felt I was getting too much ink. Eventually he moved shops, which was a good decision for him but put him a long way away, and I ended up paying him for the drawing (he didn’t ask me to, but it is his day job after all and I respect his work) and found another artist to tattoo it. I still like Frank’s original WAY better but the piece I wear is still really special to me. It was the first time anyone ever gave mean image of myself that was something I wanted to be. I’m hoping some day Frank will get a chance to do a little adjusting to her and make her more of what she was meant to be…
I have recently been going through some pretty significant problems mentally. I suffer from PTSD, Panic disorder and severe depression. The other day I found about this tattoo shop that was only about a half hour from my house. I decided to just go in and check the place out. I have about half my body tattooed and have only gone to one artist before I went into this shop. While I was browing around was checing out a book with some kanji in it, the first symbol I some across is the one for taking control. I don’t believe in consequences so I had to do it. I got the symbols taking control, and soul tattooed on the underside of my wrist and then added a bracelet of flowers to jazz it up a little bit. Needless to say the artist was amazing, her name was Jen and the studio was Ricks tattoo studio in Newport NH! The only picture that I have thus far is one that was taken by my 6 year old daughter on my camera phone and it is really really bad!! but I am gonna send it anyways with the promise that better pictures will follow.
This is one of my most memorable tattoos. It is in memory of my dad who passed on at an early age. He was very close to me miss him dearly. He will always be in my heart and always with me deep in my skin. He has been gone for 8 yrs now but his memories live on forever.
My Boys Posted on June 14th, 2007 at 3:20 am by admin
Well my story is short yet meaningful (to me). The tattoo on my right arm is my two son’s names Tyler and Austin and beside their names is a tiger for Tyler and a teddy bear for
Austin. I got it because I’m a truck driver and I spend a lot of time away from home and they are too little to go to work with daddy. So having my boys tattooed on me I can take my boys with me everywhere I go.
This tattoo is one big memorial. On May 18th, 2006, my best friend, AJ, tragically passed away. He was only 23 years old. Its strange because I don’t remember the exact moment I met him three years ago, but he’s the kind of person you never forget and feel like you’ve always known.
AJ was the poster child for life, why you should never give up on it, and how to live it to its fullest. We met at SUNY Purchase College, he was a film student. He was also a DJ, who always knew what to play and when to play it. He was big on funk and music like Stevie Wonder and Prince. I was always a dork growing up, even at college, but once he started DJ-ing my dorm parties, everyone knew where G-7-2 The Olde was and that AJ was the house DJ. We joked that I was going to be his secretary because everyone started booking him for their parties. He made every weekend a lasting memory. Wherever he went, everyone got along, everyone respected each other. His wisdom seemed to reach everyone through his presence.
He never had a bad thing to say about anyone. I met him through an ex-boyfriend, and even after a violent end to that relationship, he never picked sides, he never said a negative thing. He would always be my best friend, always be my big-little brother (he was 6 foot something and a year younger than me, I’m barely 5 feet tall!). The worst thing he ever said about anyone when I would be venting my little heart out was, “Damn, that’s messed up.” . He was so enthusiastic about life and that enthusiam showed in all his films, all his DJ-ing, and his amazing breakdancing skills. He was an eternal optimist yet all his optimisms were truths. His motto was, “Everything is going to be OK. No matter how bad things are, they will ALWAYS get better.” It was simple, but it was true. He had a thousand friends, he made them everywhere he went. There isn’t a person out there who could say one bad thing about him. He was wise beyond his years and he was blast to be around.
I went through a lot in the last four years. I survived a sexual attack, I was diagnosed Type 1 diabetic, and I went through 2 abusive relationships before I found my soulmate. I knew AJ through almost all of that. The last abusive relationship I was in had really isolated me from all of my friends and family. But AJ was the kind of friend you couldn’t be isolated from. He always knew when something had gone down, and that I was alone in my on campus apartment, ready to check out of this life. He would come bursting through the front door like Kramer from Sienfeld (oh yea, AJ was quite the comedian!) and then knock gently on my bedroom door. He’ d listen to me blubber for an hour, give me hugs, tell me jokes, and bum ciggarettes from me. We’d chain smoke and have a few drinks while watching the sci-fi channel and talk about how we were going to make our own Paranormal Investigation team. He’d stay with me, until one of us passed out. Then he’d eventually go back to his room to finish editing his film series, Project 27. He never realized how many nights he saved me from doing the unspeakable.
He managed all that for months while maintaing his own relationship and his projects.
Well in February of 2006 my fiance, Eugene, came back to SUNY Purchase and in a sense rescued me. Once AJ saw that I was safe and being cared for and loved by Eugene, he spent that extra time with his own love. By the beginning of May his girlfriend and my good friend, Erin, told me they were talking about getting married. She was to go visit his mother, step father and half sister in England over the summer. AJ hadn’t seen them in years.
AJ had been filming a series called Prject 27, there were about 5 episodes. AJ was the master at filming amazing things with no budget. Since I couldn’t act I helped behind the scenes, as the Director’s Assistant and first aid lady. I kept him organized haha. He did all of his own stunts. He took martial arts lessons, went to shooting ranges so he could shoot the props realistically on film, and learned the skills he needed to do the stunts properly and safely. He was in amazing shape despite his asthma. My father is a doctor and we get samples of inhalers for me all the time, and knowing AJ had no money, I used to sneak him extra inhalers and decongestants when he needed them. He was still in amazing health.
I held my very last blow-out party two nights before graduation, so all my underclassmen friends could make it before the school kicked them out for the summer. AJ dj-ed. Everyone had a great time, everyone said their goodbyes to the graduating students. Everything was fine. The next morning AJ came to pick up his equipment to pack up and take home. I gave him a hug, one last hug, and said I’d call him and see him later. Not to forget about coming to my summer house at the beach.
I wish I hugged him harder. Just a second longer.
AJ died that night while doing a stunt alone. He never did stunts alone before but this one was supposed to be a quick easy one. He had the camera on the table, the script on the floor, he tied the same safety knot he’s tied a hundred times before. But he fell the wrong way, and the safety knot on the noose didn’t give.
He was my best friend, and always will be. The ink on my arm is a tribute to his work and a pheonix, because he will be reborn. Somehow, somewhere. There was no stopping that boy, and death is merely a phase. The sun pictured can be either rising or setting, like on the death card in a tarot deck- it also means rebirth. The moon cycles represent life cycles. And the shooting star is- well, AJ. AJ is a star. For his birthday, two months after his passing, I had a star named after him. It sits on Orion’s Belt, watching over us, inspiring us.
Losing your brother (blood or not, doesn’t matter), is something that changes you forever.
