My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, when I woke up yesterday I was certain it was going to be a bad day. I had that dream, I was under the impression that my love, Monica, wouldn’t be around for my birthday, I really didn’t think anyone would be around. I was just going to go for the usual birthday dinner, hopefully get a quick tattoo and go home. I was pretty down about the entire affair, I wanted it over. Dinner, tattoo, home, done. Things, however, turned out differently

Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

We get to Ybor (home of Tampa’s fun restaurants, bars and tattoo shops), my mom goes ahead to see if our table’s ready at the Acropolis, this great Greek place. Apparently, the table isn’t ready, so my brother suggests we go get my tattoo real quick. We go next-door to my shop, Doc Dog’s Las Vegas Tattoo, and some things immediately strike me as odd. The front doors are wide open, then nobody comes to say, hi. This is weird because the double-door on the left is always locked, so someone in front sees me coming, they unlock that door, and I always get a “Hey, Mikey!” Generally, I don’t go by “Mikey,” but the way everyone at the shop says it is endearing, it’s not cutesy and weird. The way they say it, it’s like I’m “in,” I belong there. So, no locked door and no “Hey, Mikey!” seemed strange. Then, nobody’s behind the counter, the front of the shop is empty, my brother takes me straight to the back. Again, totally strange, but everything’s happening so fast I really only have time to think, “This is really odd.” Then I see Monica, and balloons, then people yell, “Surprise!” I’m shocked, I was completely had. Seeing Monica first, that makes me light-up inside. After two years, seeing her  after I haven’t, it still always makes my breath catch. She’s so much color, and light, and warmth. I started falling in love the moment I met her, the moment her soft brown eyes met mine, and I just keep falling. My friends who I didn’t think would be around are there, everyone from the shop, even my ENT, Doctor Padhya, is there. I feel perfect.

I so didn’t want to be without Monica. If she wasn’t there, I wouldn’t have been there either, not really. I didn’t know her not being able to make it was all part of the surprise, I just knew I felt awful that she wouldn’t. Part of me would have been someplace else otherwise, part of me is always with her. I love her so completely. We talk without words, no knows me so well. As soon as I saw her, I knew the night would be better than good.

Aside from the friends I hadn’t seen in quite awhile, it was really great having Doctor Padhya there. Almost four years ago, I almost died by way of pineapple juice, Doctor Padhya was one of the people who helped save my life. He cut the hole in my throat and he’s taken care of me ever since. I have a weird trachea, I’m not an easy patient, I know this. Whenever I need something, whenever the chips are down, Doctor Padhya makes sure I’m okay. Whenever I need anything, one e-mail to Doctor Padhya and it’s done. I really wouldn’t be thirty without him, so having him at my thirtieth birthday party felt really right. Since the trach, I’ve really needed my doctors. You can tell the ones who genuinely care from the ones who are just collecting a paycheck, Doctor Padhya genuinely cares.

The Las Vegas Tattoo Gang.

Everyone from the shop was great, Doc (the owner), and Belle (Doc’s wife, and the best piercer in town), and Colt (Doc and Belle’s son, my spectacular artist), and Fish (my spectacular backup artist), everyone. I started getting my tattoos there nearly two years ago, Colt has done at least twenty of them. I got two last night, on the house, I’ll write about them soon. They’re just good people, they let us take over the shop on a big holiday, totally welcomed everyone. From my very first tattoo there, they’ve made me feel like I belong.

I expected the night to be astonishingly bad, I just wanted to stay home and stream awful horror movies from Netflix. I’m glad I was wrong, turning thirty ended up being pretty perfect.

I think maybe 2011 might be okay, I want it to be okay. I’m thirty, there are things I want before I disappear. I often feel like such a failure, I worry about time so much, running out of it. I’ve made so many mistakes, I get scared I’ll run out of time before I make up for my mistakes, before I have the things I’ve wanted for so long.

She leans over and kisses you, and it’s like lightning. You close your eyes and fall into her, or she falls into you, or maybe you’re falling into each other. You close your eyes, her lips touching yours, and the world doesn’t go black, you’re not wrapped in darkness. You’re wrapped in light, white blinding light, complete, and radiant, and so right now. You’re enveloped in this radiance, totally fucking lost in it. Her lips wrap around yours, yours wrap around hers, and with every touch the light gets hotter, even more total. Your lips brush her cheek, her neck, she grabs at your hair, pulls harder with every kiss.

Electricity flies through her and into you, burning away all the fear and loneliness that’s been enfolded around your heart for so very long. Every nerve in your body is alive and screaming. The current from her touch runs down your spine to the tips of your toes, and for this series of perfect moments you know what it’s like to feel truly happy, truly in love.

You’ll fall asleep holding her close, dazed from feeling what it’s like to be struck by lightning

Tattoo by John, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, I’ve been admittedly kind of lost for awhile. Just look at my general lack of writing, I clearly don’t know what the fuck I’m doing much of the time. A year ago, the road felt so much clearer. I wanted this, and this, and this, and then I’d be happy. It’s difficult when you have this plan, this map of your life, and that plan doesn’t work, and that map catches fire, and you pour vodka on it trying to put out the blaze. You end up lost because you only had one answer to the question, “Well, what would make you happy?”

This all sort of hit me one day when my favorite Indigo Girls song, Closer to Fine, came up in my shuffle. Life doesn’t have just one answer for every question, and the sooner you figure that out, the sooner you open yourself up to everything if something else isn’t working, the closer you are to fine. Hence my thirty-eighth tattoo.

Tattoo by Fish, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

This, my thirty-seventh tattoo, is from one of my favorite Aimee Mann songs, Susan, which is from her album, Bachelor No. 2 (Or, The Last Remains of the Dodo).

Susan is a song about a relationship. This woman, she meets a fellow, and he makes her really happy, keeps the storm clouds away. Going in, she knows it’s not going to last, that she’ll be lonely again and he won’t be able to drag her out, but none of that matters. She goes anyway. Happiness “may be pure illusion, but it’s beautiful while it’s here…”

It’s a very melancholy, but often very true idea. It’s an idea that’s true of absolutely anything, any human experience. Nothing good in life is guaranteed to last until one drops dead. There’s always the risk of lost love, or rejection, or failure, or returning loneliness, or any bad thing imaginable, but the risks are worth taking. Everything good that we feel is potentially temporary, potentially an illusion, but that illusion can feel pretty fuckin’ awesome when you’re smack in the middle of it. Illusions always have the possibility of turning out to be real. Illusions and possibilities are reasons enough to keep breathing, reasons enough for me anyway.

Sometimes, I just think too far ahead, I think about endings more than the beauty of right now. I’m always trying to remember to enjoy the good things right in front of me. Tattoos are good reminders of things that shouldn’t be tossed away and forgotten, they’re reminders you carry wherever you go.

I’m Aimee Mann’s Goddamn fucking moth. I’m fueled by need and anger desperation. I need the life I want. I’m angry it’s so difficult. I’m desperate not to fail. I’m sick as shit of people telling me what’s “best” for me. I’m sick as shit of people pretending to know what’s in my heart and in my head. My biggest fucking mistake is trying to please everybody while not pleasing myself. I’m done. I’m out. Fuck it. Fuck doing what I’m told. Fuck juggling everybody’s happiness. That doesn’t get me anywhere but miserable. Fuck wasting time. Barring something incredibly stupid, everybody I know is going to outlive me, so fuck not pleasing myself. Fuck feeling guilty about the things that I want. Fuck it all. I’m a good Goddamn person, flawed like anyone, but good. I’ve endured a whole Goddamn fucking lot in my 27 years and I have held up pretty fucking well. The same people who tell me what to do would have broken by now were they in my place. 

I stumble, but I don’t quit. I beat my wings till I burn them black, but I don’t give up.