Prepositional phrases as Identifying Characteristics

An origin story of a tattoo

Late at night I was sitting in my bus listening to music. I’m asking you to go pretty far back in time for this. Back before cell phones were terribly prominent. Back before Bluetooth headsets. Back to a time when I wore a uniform and drove a bus at nighttime because:

1. It’s cooler at night in the summertime, and buses back then did not have air conditioning.

2. When you drive a bus at night the schedule is a lot tighter, so you can drive the speed limit and not have to drag your feet to keep from being early at the next stop.

3. There are fewer passengers, fewer stops to make, less traffic, and more racoons.

But driving a city bus at night also means you get to see the wild side of the riding public, for good and for bad. Now I never really felt that vulnerable as a bus driver on those nights, apart from that general understanding that any person who decides to be a bus driver is, by nature, going it alone with little more than a radio to connect them to a system that can respond to pleas for help. That said, I engaged in some behaviors out of the knowledge that I should keep myself safe. This meant little things like not getting out of the bus to take a long walk at 1 AM in a dark neighborhood on my very long break down at the terminal that backed up to the beach. And it’s a nice beach and a nice spot for a walk during daylight hours.

Instead, I need you to picture me in a short-sleeved light blue oxford shirt, khaki shorts, with massive Sennheiser headphones delivering deep bass jams to my brain from my 2^nd generation iPod, fingers drumming the beat on the steering wheel. It was a very warm summer night, and I’m sure the window on my left was open. I could have heard the waves lapping at the beach not far off had I not been in the thrall of Portishead or Everything But the Girl or Franz Ferdinand soothing my soul.

Did I see the dude pounding on the glass of the front door of the bus?

Sure. Peripherally.

Did I know he wanted to board the bus while I was enjoying my break?

Yep.

Did I open that door to let him on?

Absolutely not.

And when it was time to fire up the engine and start the next trip, he berated me loudly as the door opened. He cursed and he swore, he yelled and balled his fists in anger. The two other people at that bus stop stared at him, wide-eyed, shocked at his behavior. I couldn’t prevent the guy from riding my bus up the hill, and he swore at me again when he departed the bus to connect to another late-night route. I didn’t engage at all. Door open, door closed, drive on.

So (obviously) he called in a complaint about me.

He did not mention that I allowed him to ride up the hill. He didn’t say anything about how I drove or took him safely to his destination. There was no detail about how I silently went about my business and did my job. Nope. His words were personal.

“The driver was a young, angry white girl with an attitude problem and a tattoo on her arm that said, ‘upon my disgrace’.” My Chief read that comment to me a week later in his office. His eyebrows lifted as we stared at one another across his desk. I waited, nothing to contribute. “You wanna tell me what happened?” he asked.

“Well,” I scoffed, “clearly it wasn’t me.” I pulled up my right sleeve just past the elbow. “As you can see, my tattoo clearly says, ‘out of my disgrace,’ not, ‘upon.’ So I think it’s safe to say this complaint is about someone else.” You have no idea how many years of watching reruns of Perry Mason paid off in that moment.

My Chief did his best not to snicker. I think he might have warned me about having an attitude and where it would land me.¹

Never had I considered that my tattoo could make me more easily identifiable. Sometimes in the summer its presence would surprise me, usually on the first warm day when I wore a short-sleeve shirt. People around me would change in the strangest ways – they would all stare, craning their necks to see the words scrawled up my arms into the hidden safety of fabric. Their gaze would drift to my eyes, and then the questions would come.

“What does it say?”

“How far up does that go?”

“You have a tattoo? You don’t look like the type.”

“Did you get that in prison?”

And my personal favorite…

“Oh honey, you shouldn’t have put such a negative word on your beautiful body!”

Having a tattoo is like being visibly pregnant. It’s an instant invitation to the entire world to get up in your business, whether they ask permission or not. I have been touched over and over from people trying to read those words slipping up past my elbows, their hands lifting my sleeves, pulling at my shirt, sometimes scaring the bejesus out of me in the process. And always the questions begin without a thought to how it sounds from a complete stranger.

I get the curiosity. You’re interested and want to see what it says, and I’m the sucker who had it done in English. And why – oh why?! – would anyone get a tattoo for themselves when clearly it’s meant for the rest of the world to see and comment on?

My answer to the “what’s it say?” question is almost always, “Oh, it’s really long…” <insert dismissive hand wave>. Because you don’t really want to know. You don’t give a shit about the skin under that ink. I’m a billboard. A concert poster. A flyer on the subway wall.

Why won’t I tell you then?

Because this isn’t for you.

I know you can see it. I know those tempting little words in old typewriter font are dancing in front of your eyes and taunting you with the possibility. Maybe you can see it on the left arm also. Are they connected? Is it all one long thing? Or two distinct quotes? Is it from a movie? A poem?

If you ask me a second time, I may grudgingly tell you. But I’ll start by mentioning that it’s a long quote, I have an impressive wingspan, and you really should pay attention because I don’t want to have to repeat myself. I’m impatient, and you don’t look like the type who will get it. And how could you possibly understand what this is about anyway?

A third time? Gosh. Maybe you are paying attention. Okay.

But before we get there, I need to explain a little. I was in a bad relationship. When I say bad, you’re picturing something in your mind, and I need you to turn up the contrast and make the dark parts darker. Death threats, physical abuse, financial imprisonment kind of dark. And it lasted for seven long years. The split was literally the hardest thing I have done in my life. I walked away from everything with nothing more than the bag I packed, and it damaged me in ways I never truly recovered from.

I lost the house. It went into foreclosure. I claimed bankruptcy. She sold my custom bicycle and destroyed my childhood possessions. I lost all of our friends, including my high school best friend who sided with the ex.² There was this whole exchange under the freeway of her cat (which I stole) for my dog (which she stole) which only ended up in the dog getting surrendered for adoption because my ex was stalking me anytime I walked the dog outdoors.

Come on. That’s pretty dark.

And in the end of all that crap, I was forced to rebuild my life from scratch. I slept on friend’s couches, I showered at work, I lived in my car when I had to. As long as I had my job, I could keep moving forward. And so that was my only focus for months and months. Until I got an apartment, bought a couple items of furniture, and finally started to turn my life around.

To reward myself for that hard work, I set about finding just the right words to inscribe on my body. They needed to be important. They needed to speak volumes without being wordy. I wanted them to be nothing short of magical. Tattoos are for life, and as significant as this moment in my young years felt, I needed know that my choice of phrases would carry through to all of the future versions of myself I hadn’t yet become.

When I knew I had the line I wanted, I printed it up, cut the paper into long strips, taped them together in a line, and plastered that line of paper over my body. I wore it around my little apartment and stared at it in the mirror. After a few days of trying that on, a friend of mine came over and wrote that line across me with a sharpie. Think of it like the ultimate test drive. Don’t worry, she’s an artist with a steady hand.

Then I picked out a shop and went inside, looking for just the right tattoo artist. His name turned out to be Ed. He had two amazing tattoos that made me snort laugh.

• The first was a heart with a dagger through it, and the name on the heart was “Your mom.”

• The second was a long list of women’s names written out on his arm, each one lined out, until you got to the last one on the list.

Jessica
Melissa
Nicole
Jennifer
Beatrice
Elaine

Ed listened to what I wanted, and we met several times until he was satisfied that I was really ready to move forward. We tried on a stencil three times to get the sizing and position right. Ed encouraged me to rethink where the line would land on my arms (back of the shoulder instead of top, avoid the elbow since it’s a wear point), and we ultimately picked out a position where the tattoo was in a straight line with my arms outstretched to either side, palms up and slightly forward. He set the ink in a single appointment. I thanked him, and then promptly went outside, walked behind the building, sat down between the dumpsters, and cried my guts out for ten solid minutes.

Between the stinging, the burning, the itching, and the peeling, I felt (for the first time in my life) those words wrapped around me, holding me, tying me together as a whole person. It was amazing. It was uplifting.

And yet the work of those words was far from done.

Over and over in my life, I have come up against points that have turned my path right or left, always due to challenge and adversity, always through tears and difficult growth, and I see these words staring back up at me from this skin I have carried through each moment. They speak differently to me in each incident, through each new year. I thought I knew them when we started out together, and here we are still growing and changing as coconspirators, as best friends, as cheerleaders for one another. I am not done hearing these words to myself, this gift of freedom I scratched into my flesh to remember – always remember – that I made myself out of nothing, and that I can do it again if I need to.

This is what resilience looks like.

I am facing another fork in that road today, a challenge I didn’t anticipate or ask for (aren’t they all like that?), and when I glance down, I am greeted with a warm message that wraps me up in its protective embrace. Someday I’ll be the cool guy in the old folk’s home in a wheelchair with the faded words across his arms, and some young nurse will shake their head at how silly I was in my youth to put the word “disgrace” on my body, and I’ll shake my head right back at them for not knowing the long, long story behind it all. Cuz, y’know, I’m not the type to get a tattoo.

From left wrist to right, in a single line across my arms and back, my bodily words are…

But the years will bring a bigger scheme of things

and make a pretty memory out of my disgrace

You were so cruel
I hated being your fool
So I got a little bit more mud on my face
But the years will bring a bigger scheme of things
And make a pretty memory out of my disgrace
I don't believe there is such a thing as saying too much
There are those who like to look and
Those who ain't afraid to touch
Oh baby don't you know that the
Time will do the talking
Years will do the walking
I'll just find a comfy spot and wait it out
Time will do the talking
Years will do the walking
Time will tell you baby what you can't hear now
Well we dig our heels in
And wonder who's gonna win
Who is gonna win it or wear it out
I change the lock on the door
Or learn how to take a little more
I can outrun all of the devils there
But never the doubt
Try not to throw all your money into 20/20 vision
For the world won't wait on politics or indecision
Oh baby don't you know that the
Time will do the talking
Years will do the walking
I'll just find a comfy spot and wait it out
Time will do the talking
Years will do the walking
Time will tell you baby what you can't hear now
Can you hear the voice inside you
It calls you back to where you belong
Can you see the one beside you
Who's been standin' there all along
Baby, well you were so cruel
I hated being your fool
So I got a little bit more
Mud on my face
But the years will bring
The bigger scheme of things
And make a pretty memory out of my disgrace
The time will do the talking
Years will do the walking
I'll just find a comfy spot and wait it out
Time will do the talking
Years will do the walking
Time will tell you baby what you can't hear now

If you haven’t heard of Patty Griffin, there’s a long discography for you to catch up on. This song is from her first big label record many years ago. And I fell in love with it the moment I listened to it. My tattoo is only an excerpt (as many a good lyric tattoo must be), but the guts of that song is in those two little lines.

Favorite part? The word “disgrace” that rests just over my right wrist. It’s usually the first thing people see, and it always catches their attention. They think it’s negative, insulting, self-deprecating, and I always smile at those remarks.

Other funny bit? One of my shoulders is “bigger,” but the other one is “pretty.” 😉

Your trans friend,

Robin

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1. The part of the story I’m not telling you is how that same Chief then told me I should get off the bus at midnight and take a walk, and leave the bus doors open so that passengers like that one could board and not have to argue with me. Now I was never one to push the issue of a female out walking alone in the dark at night and all the inherent dangers that involved, but I do recall staring at him like he was a crazy fool. Because that’s seriously crazy talk right there.

2. Until that ex showed up at the friend’s house with a gun looking for me, and then the friend realized who the “crazy one” was.