Tramp Stamped.

Yeah I’ve got one.

A short while after I started dancing the only two real relationships that I had started crumbing – my boyfriend Caesar* started doubting me and my ability to remain true in a long distance relationship, and my best friend Christmas* who had brought me to Wilmington to live and work started becoming annoyed at the fact that her paper stacks were lower than mine at the end of our shifts. Caesar started to tell me that I had changed whenever I saw him and complain that I wasn’t interested in him anymore. Christmas started to work a different shift and sometimes in different clubs all together which was hard for me since she was my support system in that business and I needed her. Or maybe working and living together, she realized that she I was more aggravating and obtrusive than she had realized, prior. I felt her becoming distant, and starting to find me a menace/annoyance rather than a friend but I ignored it and hoped it was all in my head. They both worked themselves almost entirely out of my life within 6 months.

But before Christmas did, on a trip to The Bronx, NY in the summer of ’02 to visit her ailing father, I got my tattoo. I had been there about a week and Christmas only a handful of times since the first day. She was off reliving the olden days of NY life, which lets face it – is really the best life in the world – and left me to fend for myself. So in my exploration of the borough with Christmas’ cousin Star* I came upon a tattoo parlor. I had been wanting one for a while, although I wasn’t sure what to get or where, but when I walked in and saw Michelangelo, the artist, bending down over a particularly sexy Puerto Rican’s  rib cage,  I knew right away. On the back of his bald head was a pair of eyes, the exact replica of his own dark, piercing pair. The whole ‘eyes in the back of my head‘ thing.

I told him I wanted eyes, on my lower back. Being in New York, virtually abandoned by the only person in that area that I knew and knowing that my friendship with her was waning anyway just reiterated to me what I had told myself since I first stepped out of my house and onto my road of ‘independence’: “You’ve gotta watch your own ass, Maria, because NO ONE else is going to watch it for you.” I was only 17 years old, but I had seen so much, and felt so much. So much pain and death and hurt that I’d become emotionally numb. I still am today to a point, but becoming a mother has made me…care? more.

But that seemed boring. So he and I brainstormed about what would compliment it. As I pondered embellishments I studied his other tattoos. He was quite literally covered in them, every visible patch of skin black and green and grey. And as I looked at the ones that littered his head and cheekbones he looked back at me and said “You have very sad eyes. They’re almost dead. You’ve been  through a lot of shit haven’t you?”

I was taken aback, and hurt by it. It didn’t sound like a compliment, ya’ know? But I told him yes, that I had been through my fair share. “Skulls.” he replied. “You need skulls.” And from there, we worked. We drew it up: a pair of eyes with dramatic lashes and glowing skulls for irises. I had it done. Of course I sat there for 15 minutes saying ‘hold on, hold on, I’m not ready’ before he spun me around and said “Fuck this, I’m starting”, but it got done. In the mirrors, reflecting my back around me I saw the blood, ink and petroleum jelly he was wiping away at the end and told him “Tears. I want tears. Of blood. At the outside corners of her eyes – not in the right spot.” He added them quickly, and without question. I had my reasons for getting those, but those I won’t share with you today, and maybe not ever. It’s a long story, and one so wild that you wouldn’t believe it anyway.

As I stood up and looked at my first tattoo’s reflection, oiled and swollen and new I felt an almost indescribable feeling of satiety. It was as if now I knew that no matter what I’d be fine. That I had me and that that was all I needed. That I could take care of me, and would take care of me, forever. That I shouldn’t depend on anyone else and that I wouldn’t have to because I didn’t need to.

After I paid Michaelangelo he put his hand on my waist and told me “You have beautiful eyes, mami, and whatever that is behind them will fade with time – trust me.” I’m still waiting to see if he’s right.

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