Carved Bark
Personally, I would never carve my initials into the trunk of a tree. I tried once when I was much younger, still acclimating to the weight of the world carried in fragile branches. I went second, waiting and watching as my only friend took the knife I stole from my father, and plunged its serrated blade into the wooden flesh. Maybe it was sap, who knows what kinds of fucked up trees they planted out there, which flowed thick and green down the black carbon blade. The sight of a plant bleeding like that, like I had, from that same blade no less, put me off of the entire concept for good.
Narcissistic arboreal violence. What would my initials matter to a tree? I didn’t like the name they gave me anyway.
Apparently, if you dare immortalize yourself in this manner, your wooden signature will climb the tree as the trunk grows. New bark, new xylem, new cell structures and knobby branches emerge, but your mark remains. If the tree grows tall, your mark will ascend along with it. If the tree remains stunted, so too will your mark upon its trunk. You may not be part of the tree, but the tree’s bark will remember you so long as it lives. You and the tree are intertwined.
While I find the act of tree carving repugnant on a spiritual level, I also see the beauty in wanting to be remembered. Something deep in our animal brains understands that trees stick around for a while, we see them everywhere and they don’t seem to be going anywhere fast, therefore, they make a perfect canvas upon which to grasp at immortality. They stand resolute, extolling the virtues of staying put and caring for the creatures around them. All the while, they grow upward, taking our carved messages with them, defiant against gravity and entropy’s inevitability alike. Time and space and life are interwoven fabrics.
The tree bark and the mark it carries are testament to this relationship.
It’s hour two and I’m drenched. The ceiling is high but not that high, so the air is thick with body heat and sweat from the girls stunting on stage. Everyone is cheering for the beautiful body currently suspended by the crook of an arm and the friction of skin on cold steel. She’s fucking killing it. Electric atmosphere. Money was everywhere: the stage, the floor, the audience, all was papered over with green. As it should be.
I was nervous but not really. Selling sex is just work, and performing in front of a crowd is second nature. A born theater kid, I am crowned with fiery waves and riddled with ink unique to me and me alone, sigils up and down all six feet of my transsexual body. A vision. I am constantly observed, and most aren’t even subtle about it. I’ve learned to love the attention, to wield it. Always performing. A formative turn of phrase from the poet Kay Gabriel: “Show ponies are bred that way.”
I am an exotic animal, you voyeurs. Go ahead, gaze upon me, you may not get another chance to stare.
Honestly, the nerves mostly came from my worry that I didn’t really belong here with all these women, these goddesses of desire. A foolish anxiety for a girl serving in a gold bikini but what can you do. “Even baby giraffes get imposter syndrome” I tell myself in the green room mirror. At least, I think that's me in the mirror. I don’t wobble like I used to. I just hope I do right by those who invited me here.
The instant I emerge to work the room, striding confidently from behind the curtain to survey my prospects, one of the audience members stops me to chat. I turn the charm up a click, but they aren’t interested in my services. Rather, they inform me that they are already familiar with me, specifically my body, and gesture to the artwork sitting mid thigh on my sweat-slicked skin: a deeply horny portrait of two lesbians about to make out. It takes my brain a moment to switch tracks from saleswoman to human being; this is not the first time in my life, let alone in the past hour, someone has stopped me dead to discuss my tattoos. I’m still slow on the uptake. We chat briefly, I wrack the conversation for context clues before it dawns on me. This was the artist who tattooed those lesbians! My dissociation yields and I am brought up to speed. They thought they recognized me from somewhere, and this close encounter confirmed their inkling.
5 years prior to this moment, all the way across the Bay, they stabbed this sigil into me.
I was almost knocked off my heels.
It is a surreal experience to be transported back in time, but to be kicked back to the beginning of the bizarre events which landed me at this club on this particular night with this particular person made me feel like maybe magic was actually really truly real for a second. It felt like all the beauty, bloodshed, drugs, cash, love and nonsense over the past 5 years had culminated in this specific moment.
This moment where I presented my new, shimmering form to someone who had seen me at my most vulnerable: a freshly minted transsexual with no job or job prospects or friends in a new city during a plague, a woman dead set on spending her last dollar to at least leave a beautiful corpse because fuck it. I can see the expiration date but the year was scratched off and I’m enjoying this borrowed time so fuck it.
We had a great conversation back then, on the day they etched this art into me. I spilled my guts about being newly trans, we talked about living in the Plague Years, and what it meant to make art amidst all the tragedy and chaos. Now, I was towering at such heights that their work was practically level with their eyes. They carefully observed every detail of my sweat-soaked sigil-spattered skin; I stood proudly before them, hip cocked. Smirking. A monument to possibility and the boundless talent of the Bay Area tattoo scene, a shattering of all notions regarding what I thought a doomed girl could become in this stupid world.
At once I am the same person from 5 years ago and a completely new being. 5 years ago I was a cocoon on stilts, now I am an elegant baby giraffe. Truly, anything is possible.
At the end of the night I sat on the cold concrete floor of the green room, counting bills for what felt like an eternity. I had almost finished when the DJ gracefully parted the curtains to hand me a huge wad of cash. “This is for you, all of it.” I asked who had been so generous, hoping I could at least leave them a lipstick print on their cheek as a memento of my appreciation. She responded that they had already left, and that they were adamant every dollar ended up in my hands. I knew who it was; my ink had paid for itself.
