This is an email I received from a kind fan of my website, spotfire.org.
I became a rebound boyfriend to a hot-n-wild young thang, divorced with a baby. Didn't last long. I wanted the best for her, but didn't endorse her desire to tattoo a half-moon her skin, under her breast. Still, I escorted her to the parlor to see that things went safely for her. She masked her anger of my non-approval under her anger with society and life, albeit poorly. I told her I could not disapprove if the tattoo was her own artwork or at least had the signature of the artist included. I recalled the fate of Jews and dissidents who were tracked with their markings to certain destiny by the Nazis, but she had little sense of history or did not want her reality to be breached. I noted the lamp-shade production enabled by recycled byproducts. She was not amused. Many years later I ran into her sister's husband and asked him how my former lady-friend was doing. He said they had not heard from her for many years.
This was my reply.
My family had already moved two times. I had not yet, nor never would, meet my genetic father. I had made one friend and would make 2, maybe 3 more in the next few years, but I would never fit in. I was learning to read from Sesame Street and had already chagrined dresses and skirts. I'd seen my half brother hit my half sister with the phone, and another half-sister leave the house with her boyfriend on a motorcycle. I would get up with my brother Buddy as he left for school, watching the yellow bus take him far away. I would hammer nails into spare bits of wood outside of the building my father was working on at the time. We moved to Ocean City, because my parents thought I'd be around more kids, which I wasn't.
By the time I was five, I'd seen Halloween on TV from under my parents bed. I was scared of night and the dark it brought so much that I would make little lunches for myself and hide them in the bathroom, so I could turn on a light and look at picture books. I was fascinated by an oil painting of my father's mother, a woman I never met because she died before I was born. Once, while walking our German Shepherd/Golden Retriever mix Rusty, his long chain wrapped around my ankle and he took off, dragging me behind. My parents owned a scanner to listen in on police CB's (my father was an ex-firefighter). They had a small restaurant that made steamed crabs and french fries. It never turned a profit. It was called Laura's Kitchen West. And I had not yet seen or known there was such a thing as a tattoo.