kivioq

My most meaningful tattoo is a dot on my leg made by a ballpoint pen.

A good friend of mine died about fifteen years ago. We were best friends in middle school, he moved away when his mom got remarried. Faced with trying to fit in, he started doing crazy things. One night he drank too much and "borrowed" his stepfather's car for fun. While joyriding with some hockey teammates, he crashed the car. Three of them were killed, one guy lived. The worst part is that they were videotaping while they drove, counting up with the speedometer as they went faster and faster. You don't see any elements of the crash, just the countdown (or count up?) to 110, then the tape stops.

Chris was a great friend. He was everything I wanted to be -- athletic, good looking, charming. In seventh grade, he was the best player on our YMCA basketball team, and I was the worst. Yet he would take himself out of games claiming he was tired just so I could get some time, since I was his back up. He was a clown, but in a good-natured way. He would tease people, but no one got mad because they knew it was good natured.

Strangely, I had a life he wanted as well. I had the best grades in my class, my parents were still married, I could talk to everyone -- parents, teachers, kids, police officers, thugs. Chris was shy for some reason, and I was often his mouthpiece. I helped him write reports on bobsledding and sharks. I hung around with him at his house when no one was home.

In seventh grade, I wanted to borrow his pen, since it was an Erasermate. Eraseable ink was cutting edge technology, something to be coveted. He jokingly held it out, but wouldn't let go. I pulled harder, he suddenly loosed his grip on it, and it stabbed me in the leg. A couple of microns of high-tech, eraseable ink made a bloody dot over my right knee.

He moved to Northbrook, Illinois a couple of years later with his mom and her new husband. We talked on the phone, but each time he got more distant. He told me about how he was playing running back, about how he had missed an assignment and got yelled at. He told me about how he had discovered hockey, how he was good at it. He told me about high-school parties in Northbrook (not all that different from the parties I was going to), about the friends he had made, about how he showed some girls his dick on a dare. He said he was having fun but I could tell he didn't like it up there. I didn't say anything. It wasn't cool to mess with your friends heads, and what could I say. I thought I should ask my parents if Chris could come live with us.

I fogot about the blue dot on my leg. I was in highschool, trying to navigate through ninth grade. Chris and I spoke less frequently. I learned how to unsnap a bra, that I liked drinking and getting wild at parties, that I wanted to learn to drive. I started taking pictures for fun with a SpeedGraphic camera I found in my Grandfather's closet. I won a photography contest. Then Chris' mom called me. Chris had died. They were having a funeral that weekend. The casket would be closed.

I didn't go. My parents would have let me, but I couldn't. I was afraid I wouldn't cry, or I would cry too much. I didn't want to see his brother or his mom. I didn't want to watch the people mill around in silence, trying to fill the void with knowing looks, with sad glances. I rolled up my pant leg and looked at the dot. It was still there, still blue. Micrograms of jailhouse blue. I rubbed it to make sure it wouldn't rub off. I stared at the TV, remembering all the stuff we had done.

Life, for me, went on. I went to college. I met a girl, got married. Along the way I developed a love of racing motorcycles. I still think about Chris, about how he might have turned out. He might have been a professional athlete, or a telephone repair guy. Maybe he would have had kids. He surely would have ridden bikes with me.

This past weekend I was riding around a track and I crashed. I slid in my leathers, flipping around and sliding into the grass. Something tore a hole in my pants just over my right knee, gashing my leg. I lay there, numb, checking to make sure everything seemed intact. Since I brained myself a bit going over the high side, my ears were ringing, and my vision seemed blurred. I had grit in my mouth. Some people came and helped me slowly sit up, and I saw my leg was cut and bleeding. My first thought was whether the blue dot was still there.

A day later, I am sore and have a big bandage on my leg. Whatever cut me missed the dot by a fraction of an inch. The skin is inflamed from the cut, the dirt getting rubbed into it, but the fact that I can still see that dot makes me very happy.