The Legend Of Tex And His Big Fucking Stick (Part Two)
My old man is one of the most patient and open-minded fellows a person can know. He never spoke up when I’d come home with my fingernails painted and my hair dyed any variety of Manic Panic colors. He kept it to himself if he ever thought my enjoyment of collecting action figures well into my twenties was childish. He didn’t prevent me from hanging out with the young druggies that had gone to my school, kids who I’d grown up with. He believed that I wasn’t a fuck up, that I would make sound decisions and that I had enough emotional maturity to not get myself into dangerous situations. He trusted me. And my father’s trust runs deep and incredibly true.
He only wanted two things for his kids; that they work hard and that they remain healthy.
However, one topic on which my father was a very outspoken opponent was the idea of tattoos. He thought of them as desecration and trendy and he constantly pointed out their permanence and just how ridiculous they looked when they had spent thirty or forty years in the sun and faded into black amoebas on some old sailor’s forearms. He told me how the trade is unlicensable in New Jersey, therefore any dope with a tattoo gun could practice the art. This of course wasn’t true and I of course told him this but he wouldn’t hear my protestations.
“You wanna get hepatitis? You wanna get HIV? Fuck your whole life up for a stupid tattoo that you’ll probably regret in ten years.”
This was the only topic my father had ever spoken to me about in this manner. It elicited anger.
“When you’re eighteen you can do whatever you want,” he would tell me, hoping my desire for body art was the passing phase of a teenager.
I turned eighteen in the fall of 2000 but in an effort to respect my father’s wishes, I decided to hold off to get a tattoo until I was to move out of his house.
It was around that time that I was accepted into the film program of a well-known art school in Philadelphia. They told me I’d shown great potential as an aspiring filmmaker and even offered me their “Promising Artist Award” (which I’d later find out was pretty much given to everyone who was accepted). The one hurdle between me and my path to cinematic superstardom, however was the fact that I took no art classes during high school. I couldn’t draw or paint or sculpt.
This was amenable to the University by enrolling in — and paying a hefty tuition for — their pre-college summer program. This meant that unlike most of my friends, I’d be spending my last summer before college away from home. It did break my heart for a while, as my friends and I had always planned the summer of dreams. Days on the beach, nights at various house parties, wake, shower, repeat.
The program would start the first full week in July and run straight through Freshman Orientation at the end of August. I’d decided it was then that I could get my tattoo.
I told my father my plan. Explained to him how I’d respected his wishes and waited until I was eighteen. I’d even put it off a few months so he didn’t have to have a tattooed son living in his house. I told him that the weekend before I was scheduled to move into my new dorm and start my adult life, that I’d be driving up to my cousin John’s and he’d be taking me for my first tattoo. He respected that and told me I could do whatever I want with my body now that I was a man.
“But I wanna see this place,” he told me.
“What place?”
“Wherever you’re going to get your tattoo done,” he said. “I wanna go make sure they’re not gonna give you some fucking disease. You don’t know these people. And they don’t even need a license to do this.”
“Dude. That’s not true. I don’t know where you got the idea that they don’t need…” he cut me off.
“Michael, I don’t wanna hear it.”
“Ok fine. We’ll go next weekend.”
The time came and my father and I drove up the shore, deep into North Jersey. We stopped for lunch at a rest station on the Garden State Parkway and over Big Macs and Dr. Peppers discussed the Giants upcoming season and how miserable I’d be in Philly surrounded by all those Eagles fans.
“South Jersey’s no different. They’re all down there, too. I’m used to it.”
“Michael those fans are crazy and unreasonable. Please don’t get into any fights.”
“I won’t.” It was a promise I wouldn’t keep.
Back on the highway we’d passed the now quasi-famous Fountains Of Wayne garden center, known then more for the namesake band rather than the store’s appearance in The Sopranos.
“You like that band? They’re named after that place,” he said, motioning to the building.
As my father and I are wont to do, we discussed music the rest of the way until we pulled into Shotsie’s parking lot.
Five minutes later we were back in the car, headed home.
“That’s it?” I asked. “You drove all the way up here for that?”
“I heard all I needed to hear.”
“You only talked to the guy for two minutes,” I said. At the time I thought my father was crazy for driving over two hours to have such a brief conversation. Now I know that it’s trips like that which make my father the man that he is.
“I just wanted to make sure they were using clean needles and that the guy wasn’t a knucklehead. It’s actually pretty clean in there.”
“So I can get it?”
“It’s your body.”
For reasons that I can’t remember, I had borrowed my sister’s car to take the drive up to John’s house in Jersey City. The car, a deep red, late ’90s Ford Mustang, was low to the ground and very, very fast.
I was driving so fast that it seemed like I’d somehow made the two-hour trip in forty-five minutes. Had my father known how hard I was pushing the Mustang, he certainly would have taken my license away for a time.
It was nothing I wasn’t accustomed to as, ever since my sister had gotten that car when I was fourteen years old, I’d use any opportunity I could to swipe the extra set of keys without my parents’ knowledge and rip around the neighborhood. I’d had logged plenty of miles before I was awarded a New Jersey State Driver’s License and I left plenty of tire tracks up and down our quiet street.
The windows were down and the Jersey summer shone in. I breathed in the beautiful and salty air of the Jersey Shore. I was eighteen, moving to a big city college in a few weeks and on my way to get my first tattoo. The Pixies’ Doolittle was on the stereo and I was invincible.
John lived at the bottom of the hill on Sip Avenue in what was the headquarters — ground zero — of Plugspark Sanjay. I found a parking spot down the block and bounded up the steel staircase that led to their second-floor front entrance. I knocked a few times and hear a voice shout up from beneath me.
“Hey fucko. Down here,” John yelled, his head poking out of the basement entrance beneath the steel staircase. “Come in this way. Someone’s sleeping on the couch.”
I crossed the basement’s threshold and entered the Temple of Sanjay. There were guitars everywhere. Along the wall was a row of amps anchored by drummer Ernie’s set. Broken sticks, empty beer cans, cigarette butts, picks and set lists from shows long forgotten littered the floor.
“I’m just gonna jump in the shower real quick,” Johnny told me. “You can fart around with some of those guitar pedals if you want. Try that green delay pedal. It does some really cool shit.”
“Ok.”
“We have time, right? What time is your appointment?”
“Three. Are we far?”
“Nah. Wayne is only like twenty minutes.” Twenty minutes. To people in North Jersey everywhere was only twenty minutes, even if it was ten minutes.
“Just don’t play too loud. Those jerks upstairs didn’t come home till like seven.”
I plugged in one of John’s old Stratocasters. It was covered in stickers and beat to hell. It felt perfect in my hands. I looped some harmonics over themselves and began to noodle quietly, running up and down the fretboard, clicking the distortion on and off.
After about fifteen minutes I put the guitar down and wandered quietly around the room noting as best I could what made Plugspark sound so good. I took mental images of how the amplifiers were set, how tight Ernie’s drumheads were and what kinds of alternate tunings the guitars used. I ran my fingers over the painted grate of Joe’s amplifier and used a discarded matchbook to light a discarded cigarette. I took the smoke outside and sat at the foot of the steel staircase, sucking on the orphaned Camel Light.
“Hey. You ready?” John yelled from inside.
“Yep.” He emerged as I was finishing the smoke and when I threw it down slightly out of my foot’s reach, he stomped it out for me. His car was parked a little way down the block, near the dreaded Pulaski Skyway, and as we passed one high-rise tenement he motioned toward it.
“Bettlejuice lives in that building.”
“Huh?” I said, thinking first of Michael Keaton’s character.
“From the Howard Stern Show. The little dude from the Whack Pack.”
“Oh no shit? You ever see him?”
“Yea he drives around all the time.”
“He can drive?”
“No he has a driver. He drives him around in a little black Honda Civic and get this,” he paused to take a pull from his cigarette. “It’s got his face airbrushed on the hood and underneath says ‘Juicemobile.’”
We laughed, got in the car and sped off.
We had gotten out to Route 23 when I’d remarked about the cassette that had been playing on the stereo.
“Rats Of Unusual Size,” Johnny said. “They’re cool. I just saw ‘em at Brownies. Big fat singer. Hey listen so we’re still a little early. You wanna go record shopping? Sound Exchange isn’t far from Shotsie’s. We can stop there.”
I was overwhelmed when I walked in, as I usually was and still am in a great record shop.
We browsed around for a while and I quietly followed John’s lead through the rock and punk section. I’d picked up a copy of Operation Ivy’s Energy, as the copy I’d bought years before was near-unplayable due to so many listens, Eric’s Trip’s Purple Blue and Sonic Youth’s Washing Machine.
“Cool but I don’t have a CD player in my car,” he told me as I unwrapped them in the parking lot.
“That’s ok. I’ve got one in my sister’s car. I just wanna read the book.”
“Liner notes.”
“What?”
“They’re called liner notes.”
“I just wanna read the liner notes.”
We pulled into the tattoo parlor’s parking lot and for the first time all day I’d felt the nerves in me begin to tremble. I knew it would hurt but what had me most shaken was how no one with a tattoo could definitively describe what the pain felt like. Everyone had a different description. Had I known what I was in for, I’m sure I would have been much more at ease.
“So you ready?” Johnny asked me.
“Yep.”
“You sure? Cause right now is the last time you won’t have a tattoo. Once he starts, there’s no stopping.”
We walked in and Gary — the artist whom my father had spoken with on our previous trip up — had reintroduced himself.
“Yea man. I was here last week with my dad.”
“Oh right. Does he approve?” He and John both chuckled. “It’s cool man. I get it. There are a ton of assholes out there who have no fucking clue what they’re doing. I’d do the same for my kid. Anyway. You ready?”
“Yep.”
“Alright,” he said. Just hang here and I’ll get the room ready. “Your buddy gonna come in with you?”
“That’s John.”
“How’s it goin, dude?” John said, extending a hand that Gary shook.
“Cool man. Gary. You want me to set you up a chair in the room? Or you gonna hang up here?”
“I’ll just hang out here.” John turned to me, “Just call me if you need me, man.”
Gary led me back through the small hallway and into the little room where he’d be giving me my first tattoo. He took the drawing John had made and held it up against my arm.
“This where you want it?”
“Yea right there. Can you make it a little bigger though?”
“Yea I just have to blow the transfer up on my copier.”
He left for a few moments and came back with a purple transfer of the tattoo. He instructed me to a black vinyl chair and had me roll my sleeve up. He squirted my arm with something and began to shave the hair off.
“So what’s the story with this tattoo?” he asked as he applied the transfer to my moist skin.
“Well, John drew it,” I said.
“The guy in the lobby?”
“Yea.”
“It’s cool, man. Scary. He an artist?”
“Yea. He’s really good.”
“What’s the stick he holding for?”
“To fuck people up,” I said. Gary laughed.
“Alright you ready?”
“Yep.”
“Here goes.” He dug the needle into my flesh and I was shocked at how much it didn’t hurt. I mean, it hurt for sure. Of course it hurt. This dude was tearing into my skin. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had presumed. I was prepared for the absolute worst.
“I can do this,” I thought to myself. “This ain’t so bad.” The pain varied depending on how deep he was digging his needle, where on my arm he was working and, most importantly, whether or not he was going over a part he’d already done.
I was a tattoo champion and I was not flinching at all. In fact, Gary and I were even having a conversation about his father who’d died a few years earlier and whose likeness was now etched onto the artist’s forearm.
Then I started to bleed.
I’m not good with blood. Never have been. Nicks and small cuts don’t bother me. A smear of blood or a nosebleed has no affect on me. A blood soaked shirt is nary an issue.
What gets me — and it gets me every time — is seeing the origin of where the blood comes out. Seeing the little hole or the perforation in the skin and watching the blood bubble up. That’s what gets me. And when you get tattooed, that’s all the blood does. It bubbles through the holes.
“Hey man, you doing ok?” Gary asked.
“Yea I’m alright,” I said, not taking my eyes of the bleeding holes in my arm.
“You’re looking a little pale. You sure you feel ok?”
“Well, blood kind of fucks me up. Sorry dude.”
“It’s cool, bud. You wanna take five?”
“Yea. Actually. Is that cool?”
“Totally cool. You want a water or something from the soda machine?” he asked as he handed me a moist paper towel.
“Dr. Pepper would be great,” I said as I used my left hand to reach for my wallet.
“Don’t worry about it, dude. I got it.”
“Thanks.” He left the room and returned in seconds with an ice-cold can of Dr. Pepper.
“Here. Drink this and put that paper towel on your forehead. Cool out and do not look at the blood. When you’re ready, I’ll be in my office.”
Unable to make it through the most basic of arm tattoos, I was devastated. Any cool that had accumulated was immediately gone. I was a chump. I was a little bitch.
After about five minutes and a can of Dr. Pepper, I was feeling much better and decided it was time to resume.
What happened next is an unbelievable confluence of coincidence and timing.
I opened the door of the little room where I was being tattooed and looked into the hallway. The door to Gary’s office was closed and I figured he might be on a phone call. I had to pee from the Dr. Pepper so I decided to go to the bathroom across the hall, splash a little cold water on my face, grab Gary and finish this thing.
I politely let the shop assistant cross in front of me, as she was taking a heavy-looking garbage bag toward the back door at the end of the hallway.
I crossed the hallway, entered the bathroom and the moment I closed the bathroom door Gary left his office to come see how I was doing. He poked his head in the room and saw nothing but an empty chair. He looked to his right and saw the open door at the end of the hall. I can’t begin to imagine what was going through his head as he walked toward the shop’s lobby where John was sketching in his book.
“Um. I think your buddy left.”
“What?” Johnny said.
“Your friend. We stopped to take a break cause he was feeling woozy and I’m pretty sure he ran out the back door.”
“WHAT?!” John said. The two ran down the hallway and out the back door, seeing only the shop assistant dealing with the garbage.
“You see a kid come out this way?”
“Nope,” she said. The two ran around the side of the store and found no one but a couple of bikers pulling up in the front parking lot.
“Where the fuck did he go?” John said.
In the meantime I had returned to the small room and was waiting for Gary. I heard the bell on the door signaling a person’s entry. Johnny spoke over the music that was playing on the shop’s overhead speakers.
“I’m sorry dude. I don’t know where the fuck he went. Should I get in the car and find him?”
I poked my head out and looked past the front desk and into the lobby.
“What’s up?” I said. The two looked at me, breathed a deep breath and began laughing in unison.
“Where the fuck did you go? We thought you ran away,” Gary said.
“I was taking a piss.”
“Jesus, man. You scared the shit out of us,” John said.
“I thought there was some kid running down the highway, bleeding from a half-finished tattoo.” We all laughed. “You ready to finish?”
The tattoo was completed without further incident and Gary wrapped me in gauze and Saran Wrap and left me with explicit instructions for caring for the tattoo.
No direct sunlight.
No direct water.
Do not submerge it.
No scratching when it itches.
When it starts itching, pat it with a wet paper towel.
Use non-scented moisturizer or bag balm three times a day.
I paid Gary, gave him a generous tip and headed toward John’s car. As we got on the road, Yo La Tengo was playing on WFMU and we both lit cigarettes. We drove in silence for a long while, passing the strip malls and diners that make New Jersey famous until John chuckled and broke the silence.
“Fucking pussy,” he said and we both laughed as we merged onto the Pulaski Skyway.
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