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.

So, I’m thirty today, and I don’t feel in good spirits.

I had this dream last night that I went for a fresh trach. They put me under for the procedure, I felt the drugs and I felt myself fall asleep, everything seemed so real. Then I started thinking something was wrong, I was someplace dark, and I kept thinking that I should be in the recovery area and I should have my computer and I should be talking to people, but I was just all alone in this unformed, incomprehensible, dark place. I kept telling myself it had to be a dream and I just had to wake up, but I couldn’t wake up. I kept trying, but I couldn’t make myself wake up. I was really frightened, if I couldn’t wake up, it had to be real. I started calling someone’s name, and calling, screaming. In all my dreams, even if I have my trach, I can still talk. That should have tipped me off that none it was real, but no. I kept calling for her in a voice she’s never heard before, but I was just alone in that dark place. I was terrified because I figured I really was dead, I’d never get to be with her again. That’s the part that scared me about being dead, I wouldn’t just wake up and go back to her. She always makes me promise to come back to her before trach changes, and I always promise.

I was so scared when I did wake up, my heart was pounding, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. She was next to me and I felt that warm, safe feeling, but not for long. I remembered she’d be gone soon, and I remembered some other things I don’t care to write, and anything that felt warm and safe went away. I just want today to be tomorrow.

I stare at these plank pages and I’m so fucking stuck, I’m lost. I used to be able to write and it wasn’t like carrying a sack of bricks uphill in the snow on roller-skates. The words were there, now they’re not. I hate December so fucking much anymore. I hate my birthday. I hate, ah, fuck it. I’m so fuckin’ eloquent, I know.

Tattoo by James, Stranded Tattoo Studios, Savannah, GA

This tattoo I got in Savannah, GA, the night before my brother’s wedding. Everybody else is off drinking and watching football, I’m getting a tattoo. That really says a lot, I think. At any rate, if you’re ever in Savannah and find that you’re in need of a tattoo, Stranded Tattoo Studios is the place to go. James, the fellow who did my tattoo, was spectacular, and I’ll just go ahead and say it, is probably the best damn tattoo artist in the entire state of Georgia.

As for the tattoo itself, the whats and the whys.. The lyrics are from an Alanis Morissette song, Hand in My Pocket, which is off her North American debut record, Jagged Little Pill. That’s the whats, as for the whys, they’re mine on this one.

(Again, the grammatical error in the tattoo was done to match the way the lyrics are written on Alanis.com.)

Tattoo by Colt, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo is from one of my favorite Nirvana songs, Blew, which is on their first record, Bleach. Nirvana songs don’t necessarily tell a story that goes, and then, and then, and then. روليت مباشر Nirvana songs are often a mix of lines that mean something and lines that mean absolutely nothing, so it’s a matter of picking out the important lines and figuring out what they mean as a whole. That’s one reason I love Nirvana so much, every song is sort of a puzzle to solve. اسرار لعبة البوكر

To me, Blew is about being stuck, feeling intensely frustrated, and wanting it to stop. I’ve felt that way for so long… المراهنات على المباريات One night a few months ago, I felt like making those feelings something external, marking them as part of the story of me.

Tattoo by Colt, Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

So, this tattoo… The lyrics are from an Aimee Mann song, King of the Jailhouse, which is off her record, my second favorite, The Forgotten Arm. If you listen to the record in order, the songs tell a story about this alcoholic, washed up former boxer, and his girlfriend, and the arc of their relationship from beginning to end. Few albums are perfect, there are always a few songs that are just “meh,” but I think The Forgotten Arm is as close to perfect as an album gets.

As for the tattoo, well, I’ll just say that if I’m stressed enough, and lonely enough, I’m guaranteed to do something stupid. I’ll do the worst, dumbest thing possible, and I don’t know how to fix that about myself.

So, I got this tattoo some months back, while I was in Cincinnati. I got it my first few hours in town, we arrived and by nightfall I was having these lyrics etched into my leg. The lines are from an Alanis Morissette song, Flinch, off her record, Under Rug Swept. The song is really a story, six minutes of flash writing about this connection between two people, this consuming, unrelenting connection. These two lines, they’re my favorite, I’ve thought similar thoughts so many times.

These lines always remind me of someone, this person who’s always with me, even when she’s not. I was thinking about her that dusk in Cincinnati, thinking about how she has this deep affect on me. It’s like she has a key to everything in me, and I couldn’t change the locks even if I wanted to. The affect is beyond reason, and even when it hurts I cannot make it stop. It’s so like the way breathing affects me, the way a lack of air feels miserable, terrifying, and there’s not a Goddamn fuckin’ thing I can do to quell that lack, or change the way it makes me feel. I missed her so much when I woke up that morning, I missed her before I even left Tampa, and it hit me, it really hit me when Flinch popped up on my iPod just as we crossed that line into Cincinnati, it hit me that this one person means everything to me, that no one else holds so much sway to render me so completely happy, and so perfectly lost and melancholy. It amazes me how lyrics can pull so much out of a person, like some sort of magic spell that make the world clear as a pane of glass.

That’s all I care to say about tattoo #41.

(Oh, the grammatical error in the tattoo was done to match the way the lyrics are written on Alanis.com.)

Well, December’s not going to be perfect, post-wise. لعبة الحظ الحقيقية I fucked it up yesterday. This is okay, I accept it. I need to get back to quality, I’m so far from quality I barely remember it. Still, past all the anxiety, and stress, and nightmares, is me. I’m in here somewhere…

Hi! So, the last part of November went badly. I had trouble with a trach change, and some Xanax, and a girl, and seven seasons Intervention, and my vent, and a rubber ball, and peanut butter, and some duct tape, and a kitten wearing a pashmina… I just didn’t feel like writing amidst that sort of chaos. December, however, is new and wide-open.

I wonder how much longer I’ll be stuck in this rut..