My tall, slim buddy with a cane I met today had quite the tale. Seems like I keep meeting up with dudes who want to “shuck their shirts” in order to share some artwork of one kind or another. I am touched every time. I have come to realize their bodies are the living canvas of a story to be heard; their story.
His thin back had an amazing illustration of an imposing dragon whose wings literally spanned his entire ribcage. Upon the dragon’s back was a man I easily recognized; it was an image of this man’s face riding the impressive creature.
Lowering his shirt, he turned back to me, eager to share the details of his ink. He’d spent two and a half years inside a prison in Arizona, having been caught for possession. Previously he’d spent twenty years on “the high” with a needle in arm for any kind of drug to deliver his pleasure. He extended his thin arm to show scars for where he’d blown veins. The ink, he said, represented how “he’d ridden the dragon and overcome”. In conversation he was honest to admit that now and again he missed it, but still he hadn’t gone for another ride.
He had been a war veteran but he didn’t seem to be asking anyone for any honors. Today I understood just how many wars this man had been fighting, and it was an honor to serve him.