Oaxaca (Dia de los Muertos)

(Mientras escribo esto, Bethra y yo estamos en el primer autobús de la mañana a la Ciudad de México. No tengo wi-fi, así que probablemente voy a publicar cuando lleguemos al hotel.)

I usually feel right at home in Oaxaca's vibrant ex-pat population, but this trip it was hard to not feel like an ugly American with the swarm of tourists who descend on the town for la Dia de los Muertos. I’ve been spending a lot of time with Bethra, so the last two days consisted of a lot of markets and eating, and we had to wade through the sea of people to get to our favorite food spots.

Friday, after the markets, we headed over to la Galeria Gorilla. Jason, from Gorilla Glass, played host for visitors from all over for this year's festivities. Many stayed at the Gorilla Glass factory, while a few of us bunked off-site at one of several hotels. I saw many of my good “traveling friends”: people from the body-modification industry and around who I only see a few times a year, but who I still consider friends—and several of them good friends. Bethra, (from Atlanta), Adam (from Brooklyn), Corey, Lysa (and Todd), and Andrea (from San Francisco and the Bay) Autumn Swisher and Shon (from Nomad in San Francisco), Kevin (from Phoenix), Jimmy Buddha (from Austin), Ron Garza and his wife Nakota (from Long Beach, California), and a few others I was meeting for the first time. While we waited, Corey, Meno, and Luna worked on the traditional alter in the courtyard in back of the gallery.

After dark, about ten of us followed Jason over to a group show (where he had a piece on display) in an amazing space that was basically a courtyard inside an abandoned, decaying building. After this, we headed back to la Galeria Gorilla for the performance scheduled for later that evening.

Around 8 p.m., we were led into the gallery for the evening’s performance: “Bridge of Mud and Feathers.” It was performance piece Japanese-American Shibari bondage practitioner and educator Midori and suspension artist Samar. In the small space, Midori, in Butoh-inspired costuming, adorned a rope-trussed Samar with flowers, and then Jimmy Buddha and Muffe, both gilded, attached red chord to Samar’s already-inserted hooks and suspended her off the floor. As she spun, Midori smeared ink over parts of her body, than pressed paper to her body, creating crude paper prints. It was quite beautiful.

 Afterward, Bethra and I headed over to the Panteon Antiguo.  It’s a cemetery fully-enclosed by a sort of mausoleum wall, and inside it’s a party as people visit graves and socialize, both in and out of costume. We’re both early risers, so we were in bed before midnight.

We visited the Gorilla Glass factory the next day for stories of the insane, all-night drunken march through the Oaxacan hills for the traditional celebration of mescal and food. Part of me wishes I could have seen it; part of me knows I wouldn't have survived it. It seemed like everyone else barely did.

(En el autobus, la pelicula “Spider-Man” in playing—en español—mientras Bethra y yo estamos viendo “Fuego” con Isabel Sarli en mi computadora. La turistas que estan detrás de nosotros estan dormiendo, y esta bien porque Sarli esta desnuda por mucha de la pelicula. Es un viaje estraño.)

Halloween (PHL to ORD to MEX to OAX)

 

I don’t know what I was thinking when I booked my itinerary for this trip: a 6 a.m. fight from Philadelphia to O’Hare, two hours in Chicago, then a 9 a.m. flight to Mexico City, then a five-hour layover before making my way to Oaxaca. It took me some time, in the surreal early-morning hours hours at the Philly airport, to realize why people were wearing costumes: It's Halloween.

I'm on the ORD to MEX flight, and I’ve started reading Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives—and become immediately engrossed. Ever since my 2003—or 2004, I don't remember—trip to Japan, I pack and read literature of the countries I’m visiting. On previous trips to Mexico I read through Juan Rufo’s Pedro Paramo, The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela, and others by Carlos Fuentes, Rolo Diaz and Paco Ignacio Taibo II. My favorite Mexican American writers so far have been Guillermo Arriaga and Pedro Juan Gutierrez. (Even though Gutierrez isn't Mexican; he's Cuban. Bolaño is also technically Chilean, but writes from his years in Mexico City.)

The flight is like most other international flights: an interesting mix of people and languages between those returning to and those coming from. The guy the row in front of me to my right is, I’m pretty sure, from the U.S. He’s reading Never Trust a Liberal Over 3 (Especially a Republican), by America’s favorite liberal-baiting troll, Ann Coulter.

In-flight wi-fi is pretty cool, even if it is ten bucks.

Mis Nalgas Me Duelen: Session #6 (NYC)

Shinji was playing jazz today. I had to fight the urge to try to talk to him in Spanish.

Between my two Spanish classes per week at the International House (plus homework), my two tutoring sessions per week with Andrés (once in English, for him, and once in Spanish for me), and my correspondence with friends in Mexico about my upcoming trip, my brain seems to be trying to default to Spanish—even though my Spanish vocabulary and grammar are nowhere near up to the task.

I have those two languages fighting already, and then Shinji was speaking to his apprentice in Japanese, so my head was a strange swirl of Spajaplish (Jaspanglish?), with classic American jazz as the soundtrack.

We worked on my ass and the back of my leg today. I must admit I was a little scared of today’s session. I’ve been tattooed before—a lot—but getting that little amount done on my ass before hurt.

Yes; it sucked. A lot. But it wasn’t anything I haven’t been through before. It all sucks.

I was lying on my stomach while Shinji worked, with Spanish and English swimming and churning in my head like two different types of fish cresting to the surface before diving again: Fuck this hurts. Me duele mucho. Que me duele? What is “ass” in Spanish? Celo…? Culo? Cielo? No…. that’s “sky”—that’s Skylar’s name in the new Colombian “Breaking Bad.”* “Skylar” to “Cielo”….  Culo. I think that’s it: Mi culo me duele. My ass is paining me.... Fuck, this hurts…

We finished up the dragon’s body today.

“Next time, we do flames, Shinji said, pointing to the tail. “And then peonies.”

After I left my appointment I texted my employee, Eduardo.

Me: Mi culo me duele. Is that how you say it? Hice mas tatuaje.

Ed: Jajaja. Culo=ass. Nalgas=butt  cheeks.

Me: Which is better in this case?

Ed: Nalgas. Saying my culo could get you hazed and bring up jokes of taking it in the butt.

Me: ¿Como una prisión? Entonces, “Mis nalga me duele” es correcto, ¿no? ¿Mis nalgas?

Ed: Mis nalgas me duelen. Plural.

Me ¡Gracias!

Ed: De nada.

*Yes, they really are planning to make a Colombian version of Breaking Bad.

In Progress (Philly)

An outtake from the most recent Infinite photo shoot, by the amazing Autumn Swisher.

Philadelphia

“We have to study somewhere else,” Andres said. “They are, how you say…. All the people on the street are coming here for Octoberfest—in the back yard.”

Andres and I trade off tutoring sessions twice a week: one day he helps me with my Spanish, the next time I help him with his English. English lessons are usually at the house he stays at with his host family, in West Philly, and we study in the back yard when the weather is nice.

“Octoberfest; is it a big holiday here?” Andres asked.

“No, not really,” I laugh. “It is big with college students. In the United States it is really just a holiday to drink beer.”

We worked through the second chapter of Andres’ workbook on English idioms. Today it was to “take after” someone, “at all” (as in “I don’t like Italian food at all”), to “take turns” and “go to pieces.” As usual, we alternated our attention between the material in the book and discussions about language, travel and culture.

Partway through our lesson, an older woman (the neighbor from across the street) came over to see Andres’ host mother. As she walked up the steps on to porch she misjudged the height of the last step and tripped, grabbing the railing and falling to one knee. Andre (and I) both got up quickly to help her, with Andres coming over and (attempting to) support her arm while she got back to her feet. She was a little flustered but okay, and after she goes into the house Andres and I sit back down to study.

“Did you hear what she said?” Andres quietly asked me. “When I went over to help her, she said ‘Don’t touch me.’”

I didn’t hear her say that, and told him.

“Why did she say that?” he asked.

“It probably wasn’t you,” I reassured him. “It was probably her. When you’re in the United States and something like that happens,” I sighed, “you should probably say first, ‘Can I help you up?’”

“Can I help you up,” he practiced.

The day’s English lesson became a discussion on the cultural difference on touching others in Latin America vs. the United States. I talked about how, in the U.S.—especially in the Northeast—we have difficulty with touching.

“You see how men do it, yes?” I mined the hyper-masculine handshake, half-embrace and shoulder pat. “It is very… ritualized? Formal.”

“Yes, I have seen,” he said, and I (tried to) put into words our difficulty with showing affection with touch. I gave him my opinion; how I think in the U.S. we sexualize everything and don’t know how to separate friendly affection with sexual affection.

“In Colombia, it is different. With my friends, we are always….”  he mimed shoulder squeezing and affectionate pats, and draping arms over each other’s shoulders, leaning on each other. He mentioned meeting the sister of one of his teachers on the subway: he’s from Colombia; she’s from Venezuela.

“I met her, and it is like…” He mines kissing her on each check. He pauses, looking at his hands. “I miss it so much, and I never know,” he said, with a mixture exasperation and sadness. “It is, how do you say…. a needed… a necessary….”

“A necessity,” I said

“Yes!” he agreed.

We went back to English idioms, occasionally revisiting our conversation about cultural differences between here and his home country. At the end, as I was packing up my things, I said—knowing he wouldn’t understand—many of our problems with sex and drinking comes from the Puritans.

“Puritans?” he asked.

“The people who came over and founded our country,” I said, knowing that oversimplified things a bit.

“Ah yes, Puritanical!” he said. I was surprised he knew the word.

“We are told sex and drinking is bad, where in other countries people start to drink when they are young—and they think, ‘It’s just sex.’ We aren’t allowed to drink here until we are 21—so we don’t know how to drink,” I said. "In New Orleans they know how to drink—the people that live there. But when other people visit, they are peeing in the street and throwing up on people’s porches.”

Andres laughed, understanding what I was saying—at least superficially.

And this is why we celebrate Octoberfest, I thought, as I hopped on my bike.

Session #5 (NYC)

When I walked into Shinji’s studio for my appointment, Johnny Cash was playing, coming out of his computer.

“You like country music?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “You like?”

“Yes, very much,” I answered.

While I was getting undressed and into my fundoshi, he explained he’d recently gone to the New Jersey tattoo convention and saw a country band playing there, and he had been gone on to hang out with a few of the guys.

“They teach me how to play country music. I’ve been practicing,” he said, pointing at a guitar in the other room that I hadn’t noticed when I came in. I was trying to picture this, wondering what songs they had taught him, what songs he had been practicing. I didn’t ask.

“Stand up please,” he said, after I had my Japanese almost-underwear tied. I stood facing the wall and he started to draw on my back.

“You know moonshine?” he asked, continuing to draw.

“Yes,” I laughed.

“I try,” he said. “Is good.”

He tattooed me while Johnny Cash continued to play, interspersed with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson duets. (I remember “Luckenbach Texas” playing while he tattooed a particularly sensitive part of my spine.) There were a few ads between songs, so he was streaming music; it wasn’t from his own library. I wondered what “station” he typed in. I was most likely “Johnny Cash,” but the selection leaned decidedly toward his “outlaw country” period and contemporaries—as that was most likely the music the redneck-aspiring moonshine-drinking tattoo artists Shinji met would have introduced him to.

(I’m assuming they were urban-living—or at least suburban—tattoo artists aspiring to a sort of rural downward mobility. At least this is what I expect from attendees to a tattoo convention on New Jersey. I could be wrong—and he may have encountered some authentic, Southern good-ole-boys—but I’m betting the moonshine most likely was the type you buy at a liquor store, in an “authentic” mason jar. Where is the nearest corn-liquor still to New Jersey, anyway?)

By the second hour, the music took a surreal turn, as he tattooed while we heard Elvis’ “Hound Dog” followed by “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” and then Kenny Roger’s singing “The Gambler” a few songs later—the last two giving me mini-flashbacks of being a kid in the late 70s, wondering what the nine-year-old me would make of the current setting. I remember thinking that the only thing stranger would be if “Dueling Banjos” came on—and sure enough, a few songs later, it did. It was one of those times where you just take a step out of yourself and try to make sense of the place you’re in. For me, it was being tattooed by a Japanese, newly-converted country music fan in New York while  “Dueling Banjos”—a song I probably heard last in its entirety coming out of my parents eight-track player when I lived in Georgia—was playing in the background. Weird.

Between tattooing, during one of the drawings sessions, he said, “I said maple leaves last time, yes?”

“Yes,” I said, having gotten used to the idea since my last visit.

“You already have peonies on the front,” he said, “So it should be peonies.”

“Okay,” I said. “I like peonies.”

I wonder how much of this he already has planned, and how much he’s deciding as he goes.

“Maybe green fire?” he said, showing some excitement at the idea.

“Green fire?” I asked. He pulled up a picture on his computer.

“It looks like…plants,” I said, picturing a dragon/Christmas tree hybrid across my back.

“Plants…? Aah…plants,” he said, as he understood.

I didn’t say any more, knowing that I had some time before he would decide.

We just worked on scales today, which was fine with me. I wasn’t really up to him continuing on my other ass cheek. “We do that next time,” he said. Sitting on the two-hour bus ride back to Philly would be a lot easier this time than next.

At the end, as I dressed, he said to me, “I need to reschedule next visit. Is okay?”

“Is okay,” I said.

“I need…vacation,” he laughed.

I laughed with him. “Where are you going?”

“Maybe to the beach,” he said. “Maybe to…Tennessee.”

“There’s a lot of country music in Tennessee, I said, surprised.

“Yes, I know,” he laughed again.

“You can see Elvis’ house,” I offered.

New York City

Session #4 (NYC)

So much for consistent updates....

Above are two pictures from today's session. The first was after about an hour of drawing; the second is after about two hours with the machine. It's really starting to show character now.

We talked more about the background again. The last time we spoke about it—several months ago—Shinji was talking about doing several more peonies with the dragon, and suggesting maybe just a black background....? Today, he suggested maple leaves. He said with a white dragon (a "high" dragon), he said maple leaves will maybe be best. And definitely background too. "With white dragon needs background. Black dragon, maybe no. But with white dragon needs background." So with background it is.

I'm into the maple leaves too. I was visiting garden centers and nurseries last month to try to find new plants for the shop windows, and I can across one place that had Japanese maples for sale. I didn't get them because they really don't work indoors, but I did fall in love with them a little. They're quite beautiful, so I'm thinking maple leaves are good.

The worst part of today's session was standing in one place for an hour while he drew on my back. The first half hour was great; after the two-plus-hour bus ride, standing up was a relief. By the end of it the long trip and too little sleep hit me hard; I could feel myself getting flush and had to sit for a bit. I broke into my pick-me-up food before we even started tattooing! Shinji asked if I was okay, because I "look blue." I definitely did.

But the tattooing part sucked too. My friend Jason, the one with the full tattoo suit from Horiyoshi 3, always dismisses questions of how much the process hurts in certain areas with an, "It's not too bad." ("The crook of the arm?" "It's not too bad.") Every area, that is, except above the crack of the ass, over the sit-bone. This he admits to being horrible. I didn't go quite that low this trip, but holy hell that area sucks. The ass too.

The next session we do the other cheek, where the dragon's tail continues.