A Tale to be Told

The boy found himself under the gun, ten minutes outside of town. As a seventeen-year-old, his first tattoo did not come from a professional. It did not come from much thought. It came on a whim, thirty minutes prior: the idea, born of his quick tongue, lashing against his parents’ biggest rule, boasting to his friends about getting a tattoo.

He does not bluff, and his friend, Marcel, did not believe him. The image of his self-expression manifested for the first time as he stepped between large mud puddles, leading to the double-wide. It no longer rained but the tree limbs hung low with the weight of water; large drops fell scattered from the leaves.

“Dead Men Tell No Tales,” the boy said, as he admired the skull and swords swollen on his thigh. Wayne, the tat man, etched the lettering. The boy loved it. The tattoo represented that part of himself he knew would remain eternally, he is a pirate; he always has been. He hasn’t sailed in years, but his great obsession breathes along the stretch of sea, just below the horizon.

Adrenaline danced through his skin’s nerve endings. His actions were instinctive. His mind was empty of anything at all. Once he saw the needles were new—individually wrapped—he relaxed and let time take its course.

A month and a half later, the boy’s mother discovered the ink. She cried in disgust and begged for an explanation. In her mind, he must have been threatening people to silence their words against his own; of course, that is the face value of the saying engraved in his skin.

His parents hated the ink and the saying in general; they pointed out imperfections he had not noticed in his excitement: the uneven lining, the slight angle which the image held on his leg, that the letters were too close together and unreadable from a distance.

It was a jail-tat to them and they spoke their opinions openly. Nothing swayed the boy’s admiration for the art; it was (still is) him. However, he could not conjure a reason for disobeying his parents. He gave no reply and held no regret.

His punishment lasted the entire summer before his senior year of high school: no phone, no car, no leaving the house—except to go to the gym. He spent four hours, minimum, each day training: two hours on the mat, two hours on the weights, then back to his dungeon. His room felt dimmer each day.

There was no triumph in getting the tattoo, or in being grounded or ungrounded. There was no triumph in the gym or in the classroom. His senior year, he dealt with ongoing concussion problems and overcame the grief of his grandfather passing away. He did not accomplish a decade long goal of becoming a state champion.

The boy’s only triumph: transcendence into higher self-awareness as an individual, separate from his family unit. In solitude, the boy gained confidence in his shifted perspective. He began to appreciate the cycle of knowledge, the moment of learning; after all, that was what the tattoo was all about—living in the moment.

Come spring, the boy, now a man, was eighteen, an adult.

Unable to express an adequate explanation for the coarse words across his thigh, the boy compromised with his parents. He covered the aphorism with clouds, stretching over a setting horizon; the uneven lines where professionally touched up, with color and shading; and waves were added around the perimeter, to give the art symmetry. The touch-ups were congruent to the original art, as a final poem is finalized over the skeleton of a rough draft.

When light reflects against his leg, just right, the banner remains visible—behind the clouds—and in these moments, his meaning is clear. One must give life to their story or take it to the grave. Live harmonious with the truest self—now. Do it now. Tomorrow is never guaranteed.

Live your story now; dead men tell no tales.