This blog represents many things for me. To write it out simply I was a disgruntled veteran who had watched his generation shipped off to die for profits or come home to kill themselves to stop the horror of their own memories and minds. I came not to blame them. I left my home in Chicago and a shit job bussing tables to go backpack the nation and finally be “free”. What a fucking joke.
I hitchhiked and bamboozled my way around this dead nation on the couches of fellow disgruntled veterans who had become associates through anti-war activism with the Iraq Veterans Against the War. 7 years I was homeless, coughing up dreams as I died of my own pride and pain.
If you go a few posts deeper here you will find how troubled I had been. These aren’t even my private journals which are worthy of serious ward time. I’d been so steeped in myself and my ability to craft around me a cozy dream to live in to protect me from the world.
That dream eventually shattered. I came to see myself as I was. Trash floating and forgotten.
In a few now embarrassing tirades I declared that I was going to give my all to tattooing. Well I did.
I persevered through an apprenticeship while lying to a landlord and stealing food to eat. I watched one of my mentors succumb to his addiction. I was the last one to speak with him before he drowned himself in a park. When he died, when Paul died, I was consumed with rage that his position was not granted to me so I left.
I tattooed in a trailer park where my family was staying and taught myself. I did a miserable job. I moved to Philly and worked on my friend Ronin for 3 months almost every day. I became better. More comfortable.
I got an offer to move back home to Michigan to help a friend fix up a home he’d purchased cheaply. I had dreams of myself tattooing out of a tiny room in the apocalypse that was the Detroit of my mind.
The Detroit of reality was not the thing of dreams. It is just dead and grey. That house became an infamous tear between 3 friends and we never speak of it. I ended up staying on my friends couch and got a job bussing tables.
I met a woman with a child. I told her I was not to be trusted. She loved me anyway. She loved me while I tattooed strangers in the back office. She loved me while I played video games all day to avoid reality and money. She loved me for 8 months of poverty while I finished getting my 6 year disability claim through.
Through my responsibility to her son I found something to live for. Before my disability cleared I went into a small shop on the East side and begged a stranger to look at my still quite poor work. He told me he liked the cut of my jib and that I had 2 weeks to prove myself.
That was six years ago. I charge $100 an hour now and I’m worth every penny. I’m clean, fast, efficient. I am, however, terrible with other human beings.
I have been through almost literal hell and high water with the family I have made at our tattoo shop. My boss has become my best friend and my mentor. He saw a soft and scared and nervous boy and found a way to make him hard and mean and ready for what this city would ask of me. I love him dearly. He is one of very few people whom truly get me.
And so if you, my dear reader who followed me for such a long time, were looking for a happy conclusion to this story that I introduced to you; allow me to present to you my life fully realized.
I fixed my credit. I have a nice new car. I make great money. I’m a good dad now with a great partner and we’re raising a dope little fellow. I’m proud. I’m proud I didn’t die. I’m proud I didn’t kill myself. I’m proud I finally found something to stick to.
As a veteran I need a deeper sense of family than is traditional. I think we’re all looking for people to die for. I have that with our business and my actual family.
I did it. I got out. I got off the road. For anybody who was reading back then…. thanks. I think this journal helped me sort out a lot of things that were eating me alive and knowing that a few of you were keeping tabs on the real me was something that gave me a lot of warmth in the dark and the cold. You’ll never know what that means to somebody like me.
Help the homeless ya’ll. It kills you.
The Paper Trail 