When you are from a small town in rural Mississippi, there
is this feeling that you are supposed to rebel in order to escape. I grew up in
a small house on a big plot of land. I had a drunk, absentee father and
terribly over-bearing mother. I was the youngest of three boys. This meant I
always got dragged into whatever bad ideas my brothers came up with. It was
never my idea to go swimming in the river after a big storm but you bet my
brothers made me come with them. It wasn’t my idea to steal all the neighbor’s
clothes off the line and turn them a nice shade of pink but the stains the dye
left on my hands made me just as guilty in my father’s eyes. Eventually I
realized that I was going to get in trouble for whatever stupid things my brothers
did so I started to go along with it. By the time we got to high school, my
brothers straightened out. They joined the football team and were too busy
hanging out with jocks to do stupid shit with their little brother. I never
changed though. By the time I was a junior I had all but given up on school
with little idea of what I wanted to do. My dad pressured me to join the
military but that was never in my plans. My senior year of high school, I
planned my big escape out of town. In small town Mississippi, no one locks
their door. My plan was too watch my neighbor and see when he went to go out to
tend to his crops. I waited for what seemed like hours when finally, he
strolled out the back door. I snuck around front and slipped in without him
seeing. I scrambled around looking for the keys to his truck, all the while
praying he didn’t come back in. I found the keys under a newspaper on the
kitchen table. I ran as fast as I could to his rusty, old truck. I floored it
down the driveway, kicking up so much dirt with it, I didn’t know and didn’t
care to know if he saw me. I made it out of the town limits, I was safe. My
plan was to head to New Orleans, get a job working in masonry and start over. I
started to smile to myself, thinking how sly I was to get away with this. It
was a little premature because sure enough, I look in my rear-view mirror to
see a trooper speeding my way. That was the first time I went to jail. My
cellmate convinced me he was a tattoo artist outside of there so I let him
tattoo this stupid little bat on my shoulder. I thought it was cool but when I
got out of there and went back to my parent’s, my mom didn’t feel quite the
same the way. She went on and on for ages, talking about how much she hated it.
One day I came home with the big eagle on my chest and I thought she might die
of shock. Eventually I moved to New York City and started getting tattooed with
whatever money I could scrape up. It felt like every other week I was adding
some piece of art to my body. A couple years after moving, I decided to go home
and visit my mom. When I moved to New York, we lost touch. My parents didn’t
have a phone and writing letters gets tedious. When I pulled up to the house it
looked exactly the same as the when I left but something was different,
quieter, like something was missing. My dad strolled out on the porch when he
heard the car. It was the first time I ever saw my dad cry. When he finally
pulled it together, he told me mom was gone. She never told him she was sick and
by the time he figured it out, it was too late. I stayed with my dad for six
months and helped him get the house together, helped him bring the farm back to
life. Eventually I went home to New York. One night I got really drunk and decided to go
visit a tattoo parlor. I get this piece on my shoulder for my mom. When the
artist was done it didn’t seem right. I asked him to do this little star on my
cheek. I know my mom would have hated it but for some reason, I think that’s
what makes it better. Once you have one face tattoo, people on the street look
at you like a monster so I thought, hey, why stop at one. I guess I got a bit
out of hand and now I’m here.
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