JESUS WONG
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Old Testament: Proverbs 4: 23

“Panama, Central America, 1976″ Cigano reads on as Jaco listens intently.

“Visual overload, tattoo art covering every inch of the humid cubbyhole, I stepped inside. The little tattoo parlor was cluttered with all sorts of weird objects and mementos, its shelves overflowing with books full of strange pictures in unknown languages. Hundreds of little scraps of transparent paper with complex designs dangled overhead like albino bats from a low greasy dark-wood ceiling. Hand drawn tattoo designs, hanging like dried out butterfly spirits, fluttered madly in the breeze of an old metal fan, reminding me of the first time I’d peeked into a mysterious little cave of dreams like this as a twelve year old kid.

“And that’s when I saw it again. The ship. That ship. Those words. HOMEWARD BOUND. Right there on a colorful section of wall under a low wooden staircase that creaked and moaned with the footsteps of sailors and whores coming and going from the cheap hotel above.

“And again the haunting little image spoke to me from the depths of a dream. I squinted into the glowing talisman shining there like an all seeing eye, calling me closer.

“That ship would be my first real tattoo, and this was the time and place. The steady monotonous buzz of the tattoo machine lulled me deeper as I slowly drifted away on a sea of hazy images and foreign lands, hypnotically carrying me off on that high-masted sailing ship cutting fast and strong through a perfect cartoon sea of paint and ink, sailing away forever with no fixed destination or port of call…”

Jesus Wong, an ageless, skeletal Cuban-Chinese tattoo man with longish jet-black hair sits in his cramped little work space, methodically carving a dragon into the arm of a dark-skinned sailor. Jonathan stands hypnotized by the steady buzz of that strange but familiar sound. bzzzz bzzzzzzz. He can see his ship cutting its shining wake across that shady section of wall through a sea of panthers and dragons, roses and hearts and anchors and naked ladies.

The young sailor looks down at his right arm, then his left, then the right again. He rolls up his sleeve to inspect his virgin bicep, then looks down at the compelling little icon on the wall. It has been waiting for him there.

Jonathan wanders over to watch as the Chinaman finishes the tattoo on the other sailor. The tattooer is talking non-stop in a soft low monotone, his hushed voice blending with the rhythmic buzz of that mysterious but strangely familiar tool, mumbling words Jonathan can’t quite make out, special words in a special language only for the initiated, the tattooed, those who’ve known that hazy rite of passage, those who wear the Mark etched into their skin in a painful blood-letting ritual. The young sailor knows there is no turning back now. Today he too will wear The Mark.

Jonathan turns and walks back over to the wall. He stares at the design. A wave of anticipation, excitement and fear attacks his gut. He is like a diver standing on a cliff over a dark blue pool stretching out over a glowing horizon. Invisible shadows jump inside him like Mexican jumping beans.

Jonathan senses the presence sliding up beside him, cool and graceful and aloof as a Siamese cat.

“So, Sailor, ju mek de journey home now?” the Chinaman says.

Jonathan turns to look into the catlike black almond shaped eyes. Jesus Wong. Friendly eyes. But oddly aloof and alien, like the orbs of a spaceman. The young sailor finds himself at loss for words, like a schoolgirl with braces and trembling knee socks waiting for an autograph.

“Uhh, no,” the he stammers, suddenly feeling confused and overwhelmed. “Well, I mean, I dunno… I guess I’m really just starting out.”

“Den ju have de long journey in front ju, sailor,” Jesus says, with a mysterious smile.

That voice is clear like a temple bell, warm as the lush, tropical air of Central America. Unhesitating and distinct. But it says nothing. The Inscrutable Chinaman. A distant freighter blows its horn long and low, the voice of the night speaking in this strange dimly lit place where invisible insect shadows stir. And Jonathan cocks his head like that dog awaiting its master’s voice. Jesus seems to read his mind as he fixes the young sailor with those knowing alien orbs.

“De tattoo ju chooses, he come from inside he-ah,” he explains with a Zen master’s patience, touching a hand to his chest in a delicate movement. The hand looks like a silvery spider landing softly on the dark tattooed skin under Jesus Wong’s open silk shirt. A jade pendant dangles from a golden chain there, frozen in space like an eternal question mark. The dog cocks it’s head another notch. “Even when ju thinks he come from in he-aaah,” the tattoo man concludes, pointing a long elegantly manicured finger to his perfect jet-black framed head.

Then he cackles like a little jungle monkey sitting on a lost statue of Buddha.

Jonathan gets it. He obediently follows the skinny Chinaman over to his cluttered little tattoo area. He takes his seat across from Jesus Wong and surrenders his arm to the master’s practiced hands.

A straight razor runs coldly across his skin like a lizard and he winces silently as the buzzing needle pierces his trembling flesh, uniting his body and his soul at last.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010.

He comes to a stop before a hut with signs of commerce. He gravitates to an open door, desperate now for a life-saving short bottle of rum, a beer, something, anything, fuel, sustenance. An old man leaning on a wooden post stuck in the mud there stares at the traveler, unblinking, expressionless, with the look of a dumb domestic beast. A silver dollar sized birthmark dominates the side of his balding forehead. He continues staring with eyes like a guilty rat. What could he possibly be thinking? Who gives a fuck? Jonathan stands by the door and waits. Nobody comes out. No sale. Growing irritated now under the guilty rat eyed gaze, he wanders off again, feeling those rodent eyes behind him, following him down the muddy road like a beggar.

He walks on as if he really knows where the fuck he is going. But it’s always worked before. He can feel his boots sinking sadly into the red clay earth that permeates his cells in this place which is like an unwelcome part of his own lowly being. And this red clay earth knows his despair, knows his interminable irritation, frustration and unease, taunting him in the subtle molecular frenzy manifesting all around him now, as if conjuring and creating these perfectly irritating visions of scrawny mutts barking behind rusty barbed wire fences where tough bald skinned chickens run in circles of futility like tiny alien beings. Naked children gape and point and giggle like a horde of demon runts as they follow the strange looking traveler. Their numbers grow steadily as he trudges along wearily like a pissed off plague-ridden condemned sideshow attraction.
Dull-eyed gaggles of locals point and gawk at him like a spaceman as he approaches a mud-hole of an overgrown plaza, only recognizable as such by the crumbling monument to some ignoble looking military honcho. Indians are sitting around. They seem to be too bored to stare or even see the traveler as he passes. And he is invisible again now, standing finally in front of a ramshackle building with a weathered hotel sign and a glaring bare light bulb surrounded by bugs. Jonathan ducks inside quickly, as though afraid it will fade away like a mirage if he were to wait any longer. And then he is facing a counter where a wrinkled old mummy of an ancient woman takes some limp bills from him and hands him a bundle. There is a folded hammock, a towel, a tiny bar of white coconut soap, he notes as he hears her grunting something unintelligible at him. She hands him a key, pointing a skeletal brown finger down an unpainted wood hall. He goes.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009

The traveler sits in the humid stew of another day, taking notice now of all sorts of little things. He is like a slack-jawed prisoner whose cell has becomes his universe. Details carve themselves like graffiti onto the walls of his prison cell, his mind, his memory, his dreams. The smell of wet earth fills his head like a dose of alien laughing-gas until he finds himself slowly going mad in this place without definiton, lost in the labyrinth of hammocks crowding the slippery wide riverboat deck like rows of alien pods growing on a sleeping monsters back in a troubled fever-dream.

The tiniest, most minute details are blending together now in a timeless montage of spectacular sunsets and sunrises, storms and the constant comings and goings of a surreal cast of characters occupying the hammocks around him. A group of Argentine boys are chattering in his ear like drunken parakeets, then they are gone, replaced by whole families of Amazonian Indians bundled together under grey blankets in their hammocks, cowering before the elements.

A brown skinned boy with a sunken tubercular chest eyes as black as the night sky is standing by the rail. A small monkey with a long tiger-striped tail is sitting on his shoulder picking lice from the boy’s hair, eyeing the curious traveler defensively. The boy turns to look off into the water and the monkey pivots like a camera to continue it’s staring match with the strange traveler under the imposing glare of a fantastic rising moon. A bare chested thirteen year old Indian girl breast-feeds a baby not much larger than the monkey. What do these people think about, what is this place, this life? Who are these strange traveling souls with faces like monkeys and minds the traveler does not know?