my father had two tattoos

today is my father's birthday
i realized that
at some point today
when i had to know the date
and

i thought about it
a little
but
strangely
not
like i thought about him
more like
i thought about how
i was not going to let it freak me out
that it was his birthday

he would have been 81

which means he had just turned 30 when i was born, right

that's just crazy

i think you overheard me talking to him on the phone once
he had just turned 70
and i was asking him if he had ever thought he'd live to be that old
it wasn't a health related question
it was
something that seemed natural for me to ask him
a perpetual child at heart

he started loosing his hair somewhere around the time i was born
and
he was very vain about it
it really bothered him
he wore all sorts of hats
although
usually nautically themed

and then
one day
when he was separated from deborah
one time

he shaved it all off
and came around beating on gran gran's door
i didn't recognize him
and
none of us had known where he was
he turned out to have rented an apartment
a block away
this little tucked away place that looked like a tiny motel

he was full of the flamboyancy of it
he looked like yul brynner
we all seem to look like movie stars somehow
he seemed crazy
dangerous
maybe he was drunk
but it didn't seem that way
and

he had a scar on his forehead
it was weird
he'd always had a bump
and now it was flat
and he had a scar
that looked just like my exact-o knife "pbs whittling" scar
which you really can't see anymore on my left hand

what happened there
i ask, pointing to his forehead

oh, that
he says
it always bothered me
i decided to get rid of it

he had "lanced it" with a razor blade
and squeezed out the cyst {or whatever it was}
he demonstrated the squeezing

it was like the void of something
much less natural than the bump
vaguely manson-esque
now, i'm being melodramatic, but still

he looked good
he did
in terms of attractiveness
he seemed freed from the heavy weight of the baldness
not with an if you can't beat em join em kind of thing
but rather with the full-on masculine bravado of a new look

i was afraid of him, a little


i've always wanted a tattoo
did you know that

my father had two tattoos
one on his upper arm
he had gotten it as soon as he was old enough to do that sort of thing
so 21, maybe
his parents had deeply disapproved i'm sure
but
he had probably done it for that reason
plus
it's what he would do, obvi

that's one of the lessons he gave me in cool
when i was maybe 6
whenever you're going to do something
think
is that what she would do
{because i'm a girl, obvi}

now i assumed
this she person
was the character i was designing for myself
because it never ever would have occurred to me
that it would be cool to model yourself on anyone else
but
that may just be the only proof we need
that i was way cooler than my dad, naturally

the tattoo on his upper arm
was a hot stuff devil with his initials B.B.
and
the other was a really beautiful centaur
with a bow and arrow
Sagittarius

i was fascinated with the way it didn't look like a tattoo
it blended in with his perpetual tan
so well
it looked like it was naturally occurring
at least to me
it did

i always intended to get one
but i was never sure
what i'd want to look at forever
i decided i'd wait

and
i guess i'm still waiting





if you go here
go to page 61
this is the thing i have seriously thought about
for about the last 10 years
this image
what her interpretation of the card says
it resonates with me