Growing up, I was really straight-laced. Until I was 18, I didn't drink, smoke or do any illicit substances. Codeine after my two knee surgeries was the extent of my "dabbling" with controlled substances.
I was a competitive swimmer and an excellent student; near the top of my class in high school. I quit swimming in the middle of my junior year. That story is for another time. The short version... my new coach was a prick and I'd rather focus on school and having a real social life for the first time in my 17 years on this planet.
Not going to swim practice twice a day 5 days a week and once on Saturday, or spending my weekends at swim meets across the country allowed me to really focus on school and finally have some real teenage style fun. I went to countless live shows with my new-ish non-swimming friends.
I remained straight-laced even though many of my friends were drinkers and pot smokers. I didn't care. Good people all of them. Many of them friends to this very day. I chose to stay sober at a time when most of my friends dabbled in altered states because my parents trusted me. As long as I maintained my stellar grades, I could pretty much do what I wanted.
Drive from Los Gatos to Oakland on a Tuesday night to see Fishbone at the Omni, getting back home after 1am with a 1st period class at 7:25am? Sure! As long as I was the driver.
I'd pack upward of 8 people into our 1982 Toyota SR5 pickup with a camper shell, fill up the gas tank for $.75/gal, and charge into The City, or Oakland, or Palo Alto, or Petaluma, and see a killer show. If sobriety was the price for this level of trust and freedom... at this age... fuck yeah I'm going to be sober!
My grades never wavered. I got A's in my honors and AP classes and my parents were satisfied. Having their trust meant everything to me. Now that one of my nieces and my nephew are teenagers, I've made a point of passing on this wisdom to them.
"Your parents are about the coolest parents that may ever exist on this planet. They trust you. That trust is a valuable commodity. More than that, they deserve the respect that earns you that trust. If you maintain that trust, your teen years are going to be a blast."
They are the coolest kids and I think my words have sunk in. Not only are they cool kids, they're good kids. Interesting kids. People I'd enjoy hanging out with even if we weren't related.
When I turned 18 my senior year of high school, life was easy. I only had 4 real classes. I'd basically already graduated. I took photography, journalism, AP English and Civics, German 2, and served on student council. I was done by 1pm every day. I had a lot of time to fill up.
I was old enough to call myself in sick. I knew that I could have 14 absences in my classes before failing them by default. I called myself in 14 times over the course of the year. Mostly to go skim boarding with Andy in Santa Cruz. Even with all these absences, I was all A's all the time. Never missed a test. Always got the homework done... I mean, I had the time!
My senior year was a blast. Being 18, I could buy lottery tickets and cigarettes... and vote, but 1989 wasn't a major voting year.1990 would be a much more interesting year voting-wise. It would be my first time voting for Diane Feinstein!
18 was also the year that my sobriety streak broke. I was curious what being drunk was like. My friends seemed to have fun doing it and I trusted my willpower, so one night in May 1990, Greg, Theresa and I decided to get drunk at Greg's place while his parents were out of town. Light beer and wine coolers. Too many. I puked, but managed to stay up for Headbangers Ball. HAD TO STAY AWAKE because Death Angel's "Seemingly Endless Time" from their new album "ACT III" was debuting.
The next day sucked, but I had had a blast with my friends. I enjoyed inebriation. For the remaining month of my senior year, no more drinking. Just get through to graduation. Work for the summer, and then start my new life at UC Santa Cruz!
September 1990. I'm a banana slug! I live in building R8 at Kresge College, "The Zoo". Aptly named. I'm on my own. Cooking my own meals. Setting my own academic schedule and becoming a brand new person.
Santa Cruz changed me. Sobriety was a thing of the past. I was still ever the student I was in high school, but I played in the world of the non-sober on a college campus where you'd expect to see Wookies and Ewoks on your way to classes every day. Hell, I got my ears pierced! Two in the left. One in the right.
On the regular, I was doing all the things that would have totally washed away the trust my parents had afforded me as a high school student. I was an adult now and wanted to finally have some fun.
The one thing I never did though was get a tattoo. Wow. Dad would have HATED that. Mom would have begrudgingly accepted it, but wouldn't have cared for it either.
What kept me from getting a tattoo for decades to come wasn't that my parents would have disapproved, but rather, there was nothing I wanted to get in my late teens and early twenties that I was sure I wanted to live with for the rest of my life. If I was going to get something permanent, I wanted to be 100% certain I would be cool with it until the day I die.
Over the coming decades, I would consider, then dismiss the idea of getting Norwegian and Swedish flag tattoos. After visiting both countries in 2013 on our honeymoon, the idea surfaced again, but this was 2 years after some asshole Aryan, neo-Nazi shithead killed a bunch of kids at a Norwegian summer camp.
There was, unfortunately, this white supremacist association with Scandinavia that I wanted to avoid, despite the fact that 99.99999999999999999% of Scandinavian folk are the nicest, most welcoming people you will ever meet. I pushed aside the idea of the flag tattoos.
4 years pass. Sadly, in November 2017, mom passed away. My brother and I no longer had parents. That's was a difficult concept for us to accept on an emotional level. She was 80, in poor health, and ever the stubborn fucking Norwegian farm girl 'til the end.
Despite the overflowing support and love from family and friends, depression digs in deep. After about 4 months of just not wanting to leave the house, I start therapy. Wow. It helps. It really helps. I unload on my therapist and he just lets me talk, occasionally giving me some great advice to help me put more structure into my life, and to be more socially available.
Early'ish 2018, Kasia decides to get some tattoos during a fundraiser for a local cat adoption organization. I go with her for the session and love the work she has done. As she's having herself permanently marked, I start seeing the red and blue, and yellow and blue flags of Norway and Sweden again. I'm 46 and have the confident realization that I could now live forever with these flags on my forearm, but not on their own. I would have the dates of mom and dad's lives included with each flag. 1937 - 2017 under the Norwegian flag for mom and 1938 - 2002 under the Swedish flag for dad. Now these flags told a story. They weren't just symbols that people could read what they wanted into them.
In May of 2018, I got my first tattoos. The aforementioned flags and dates. I instantly loved them and knew they would stand the test of time for me. I even got the feeling that mom and dad would have appreciated, if not actively liked them were they still with us.
Now I had the bug. I wanted another one... and another, though I didn't have the idea for what I wanted to live with on my skin forever. August 2018 would change that. That was the month our beloved Montana mutt, our brown embodiment of love in canine form would pass from this Earth. Roscoe. He was the best. Made of magic. He loved everyone and everything. He was just the best.
Not long after his passing, Kasia and I knew we would be getting matching tattoos of Roscoe's paw print. I had mine on my left forearm and Kasia on her thigh. Mine simple, all black. Kasia's black with shading. Roscoe will be with us to the end!
In late November 2018, I took a trip to Zagreb, Croatia for a film festival organizers conference. Well, not really. I booked a non-refundable trip to Zagreb for a film festival organizers conference that had been postponed. I decided to take the trip anyway and make it a stock footage/photo trip. I'd seen a lot of Croatia years earlier, but not Zagreb, so I was excited to go.
Zagreb is only 90 minutes from Ljubljana, Slovenia... one of my favorite European cities. I have good friends there. I arrange to hang out with Tea. I met her while I was on tour with Kultur Shock in 2011 and we became instant buddies. We meet up at her place. I park my rental car and we head out into the city. Visit the castle. Eat roasted chestnuts along the river. Enjoy the vibe that is Ljubljana. For dinner, she takes me to her favorite pizza spot in town in an effort to wipe from my memory, the pizza I had fallen in love with at Trnovski Zvon years earlier. Mission accomplished!
We then head to a screening of a sci-fi films at the Ljubljana film festival where she knows some folks who can get us in. The film is an incel fantasy... total garbage. We leave before the film ends so Tea doesn't scream at the director during the Q&A.
Over the course of the evening, we'll visit three local pubs featuring local ales from the burgeoning microbrew culture in Ljubljana. They're truly making some stellar beer here. Like Portland and Seattle in the mid to late 90's.
The culmination of the evening is stumbling to a Fatboy Slim concert and hanging out with Yanni from Laibach! It's truly an absurd evening and I'm loving it.
We get to the venue. Tea introduces me to Yanni. We shake hands. He notices my flag tattoos.
Me, "Hey Yanni. Nice to meet you. I'm a big Laibach fan," I lie. It was nice to meet him, but I was never into Laibach.
Yanni, "So, you're a nazi?"
Me, "Dammit! Of course not. I was wondering when someone would finally make that stupid comment about my flags. The commemorate my parents if you'd care to look a little more closely."
Yanni, "Just fucking with you. pleasure to meet you too."
The rest of the night is probably the last time I was ever seriously, stumblingly drunk. We head out after the show into the frigid streets of Ljubljana. Take some goofy pictures in front of the EU building. Find a late night burek cart. Fill up on warm, pillowy Balkan goodness and finally pass out at Tea's apartment.
Even though it was in jest, Yanni's comment threw me a bit. I would scrutinize my future tattoo choices a little more thoroughly for a while. Even though I had the itch... pun fully intended... it would be another year and a half before I would get my next tattoo.
That is a story for another day. Stay tuned.
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