If it said anything, it’s oh god this hurts so much more than people prepared me for. My octopus was not a sacred profession of my personality.
#Entropy tattoo skin#
I must carry on, as long as I can, to steward the oeuvre of an artist who worked on that most precious and tender of mediums, the skin of wriggling and crying people. And this tattoo-actually, her name is Octavia-goes on that list of reasons, along with “remain to care and love for your girlfriends” and “figure out what the fuck they are trying to do with the show The Blacklist.” Reasons to eat, to flush the pills and look both ways before I cross the street. God, are you there? It’s me, and I’m a fucking museum of flesh now. But not one of the countless tattoo books we’ve perused in Portland parlors contains an appendix on bereavement. OK, that’s-I’m being a little melodramatic here. Our history.Īnd he’s looking at his Norse compass? Which way does he go now? I will now shave the hair that grows through and over art history. People pay money to look at art made by the since departed-I have an incomplete map of mastery and expression embedded in my fucking leg. That we will be a more or equal amount of alive than we were. We seep into these silences because there is always the security that when we throw off that duvet, when we turn the ignition and pull out of Home Depot, that we will have re-entered the game. In which case-good news, there is something after life. But if you find anything, anything at all, scarier than a greying dyke with a tattoo gun who simply speaks over your gasps of searing anguish to continue her story about what it’s like to be in a biker gang, you might be in hell. Oh, of what use is this thing?Īnd if I didn’t meet Tala, who followed your notions of age out of the club screaming, “Fight me you fucker,” I might have known to fear growing old. When you’re older, and that sexual capital becomes more latent and learned, you are looked on with pity. People may not agree with your choice (and/or harass you into trying to kill yourself over it) but they understand that someone wants to fuck you and that this could be motivating your life’s decisions. When you have your youth, you are contextualized by your immediate sexual capital. There’s just not much of a visible, maintained community. Some even consider (if coercively) going back to the closet upon reaching middle age. The average lifespan of a trans woman is 30-32 years.
We talked about her often-the reflection of her audacity lit a lot of people’s way. Yeah, we were doing that thing, I remember- that person we share was there too. At any moment, people you know are talking about or around you. We’re all constellations, reference points. Muscles mournfully shuffle-he looks on the Norse compass on his arm, me on the octopus sashaying along my calf. Tala Brandeis, our brilliant and trusted tattoo artist, had left us. We are more alone than we thought here in the parking lot. This silence, this shared being alive for no particular reason-a motionless victory lap. You change a lot in a decade-I look forward to these respites in the consumerist hellscape. I have four partners and just ate mushrooms on purpose for the first time. He draws and erases and draws it over in Palo Alto. He and I’d made the decision together, to get to the action, but made the journey apart. Nothing hits the spot like shutting the fuck up and watching people come in and out of the combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell after a long week of watching all that you know and love writhe in practiced agony. When you’re younger, these moments of quiet resemble roadblocks to the action. Two whole minutes of suburban suspended animation unpunctuated by the stress of doing, going. Sometimes the solace of a Home Depot parking lot is the sweetest gift you can afford yourself. We slouched, wordless, our weary bones burrowing into sun-drenched car seats.