Tattoo illustrates change of image. I am now a lizard.

 

I am currently negotiating a return to Rarotonga and my former job with the Cook Islands Herald. Which means I may soon face the toughest decision a man has to make: where to place my next Polynesian tattoo.

To help me get in the mood to add more ink to my body, I’m presenting the story I wrote for The Herald in 2001 about my first experience under the needle:

Years from now – SEVERAL years, actually – I can see my future grandchildren taking a break from whatever entertainment system is considered flash at that particular nanosecond.

They will gather at the foot of my rocking chair and ask me what I did during the early years of the century.

I could dust off an album of yellowing photographs, or dig out a wooden carving of Tangaroa from its resting-place deep in the attic. But, instead, I will simply tug up the sleeve of my housecoat and watch as the youngsters’ eyes bulge in disbelief.

“Grandpa!” they’ll squeal in delight. “You’re, like, so ancient and you drool quite a bit, and you’re a bit stinky but, whoa cool, you’ve got a tattoo!”

Cool isn’t exactly how I’m feeling as Tetini “T” Pekepo revs up the needle gizmo that is about to inject black ink into my skin. The owner of T’s Tattoos in Avarua, T explains how some people have fainted at the mere sound of this instrument, their brain equating the insectoid buzz with that other modern instrument of torture, the dentist’s drill.

Drugs, friends told me. Chow down a couple Panadols and you won’t feel a thing.

Sound advice, but I am scheduled to return to the office later, and I don’t believe my job description includes sleeping off the effects of painkillers while curled up under my desk.

Besides, I’m a Canadian. True North, strong and free. I’ve been hit in the head by ice hockey pucks. Wrestled a polar bear that wandered too close to my igloo. Elected the same prime minister for two consecutive terms. Pain? Bring it on.

A slick of deodorant ensures that the central image is in place, then T goes to work. As the needles dance over my arm, I realize the gravity of my decision. While I’m being transformed into a flesh-and-blood canvas — a scary thought, considering the price of laser surgery these days – I do my best to banish images of faded hula girls smeared across some ancient mariner’s saggy bicep.

Unlike a growing number of tourists, I have not come to Polynesia seeking a tattoo. The idea has flickered through my mind for several years, but it only took root when the thought struck that this would be a jazzy way to mark that part of my life now being spent in the Cook Islands.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted, the themes I wanted to incorporate, and T did the rest. That’s how the collaborative creative process works in this shop.

“People will have a rough idea,” T explains. “They’ll talk about things in their life, in their past. About people, desires, fantasies, whatever.

“I’ll design the tattoo around that, and I’ll use designs unique to Polynesia, and create what they want.”

Visitors often come to the South Pacific seeking tattoos in the mistaken belief that the art form originated in this part of the world. T sets them straight, tells them that his ancestors brought the handiwork with them when they migrated west.

“Tattooing started at the beginning of mankind,” he says, as my new armband develops before my eyes. “It was well-known throughout Europe. The Romans did it, the Egyptians did it.

“It was a form of identification, whether you were a witch doctor or a soldier in the army.”

In Polynesia, several of the tattoo designs derived from woodcarvings and were considered a form of fashion for the highest-ranking chiefs.

Fashion. Identification. These are still considered incentives for getting a tattoo. But the work should be as equally inspiring for the man behind the needles.

“It’s not about making money,” T says. “It’s about expressing oneself artistically. That’s what I believe artists are all about, not just pumping out things just to make money.”

That’s why T won’t repeat the same design twice, unless it has some connection to family, tribe or island. He also steers clear of the work being done in Europe and North America. Don’t even bother asking him to do a skull.

“I don’t like to do a lot of things that they’re doing in Western countries,” he says. “If you want something like that, go over there and get it.”

My tattoo is nearing completion now, two hours almost to the dot. Did it hurt? Hell, yeah. But not as much as I feared it would.

In fact there were places on my forearm where the skin simply went numb and there was very little sensation at all. That all changed when T moved to my underarm area, one of those little-used areas of the body that never seems to toughen up. Despite constant applications of ice and antibiotics, that section would bruise up quite ripely over the next couple of days.

And then it was over. There is no flourish at its completion, no great sweeping removal of the cape that denotes the conclusion of a visit to the barber.

The needles simply cease their whine and, in that great aural void, there is a quiet sense of some new permanency in my life, as if I’ve grown a new limb or fathered another child. Something has shifted and realigned in my personal universe.

I listen with particular intentness as T explains the meanings of the various elements, translated into English so the papa’a can understand.

The central motif, that of a moko poised vertically, that’s the guardian. Inside his body are spearheads, to add positive attitude. The actual band itself consists of several stylized images: People joined together (for unity), waves (voyaging), a bird (travel), and three small triangles inside a larger triangle, which is a blending of past, present and future.

And on the tender meat of the underside? A set of shark’s teeth.

“They represent courage,” says T. “The shark, to us, wasn’t something to be afraid of, but to respect.”

I return to the office a changed man, as if there is a talisman of great power barely concealed by my shirtsleeve. Look at this, I say, baring my new soul to the CITV ladies. Don’t ya think this is sexy?

There’s a lizard crawling up your arm, they laugh. You should have gotten a dolphin.

Oh, great. Now you tell me.

Iron man battles the Wicked Wrinkles to the death. It just gets ugly.

I may have given the impression, such is my skill at being obedient, that there has always been a woman in my life, from my mother to The First Wife and, now, Viking Woman. The truth is, I was a bachelor for six years.

By bachelor I mean I was free to do anything I wanted. And by that I mean leaving stacks of unread newspapers where they fell, not having to shave every day because “it scratches,” and not being required to share coffee. Here on Planet Man, we pretty much call that “heaven.” Or is it “paradise”? I can never remember.

There were challenges, I won’t deny that. For instance, when it came to meals, if I couldn’t nuke it, toast it or boil it, I ate it raw. I think I pretty much invented sushi in the process.

There was one stretch for, oh I don’t know, two days where I decided to be good to my body and eat nothing but salads. I would use no electricity whatsoever and thus also save on one utility bill. Except I quickly grew bored with eating leaves and shoots and tendrils and eventually defaulted to my standard fare: buns slathered with peanut butter. And a tall, chilled glass of Diet Coke. Are you envious yet? How about hungry?

I coped rather well on my own, if I do say so myself. I rinsed the dishes in cold water at least once a week. I vacuumed the apartment every other month whether it needed it or not. Sometimes I remembered to take out the rubbish before the place started to smell like an abattoir.

I also eventually identified the strange creature perched in the linen closet. The one constructed of metal and plastic, with holes in the bottom and an electrical cord trailing from its ass. My first thought was “Who would invent such a weird-looking door stop?” before having it explained to me that this beast was, in fact, an iron.

You use it to — wait for it — iron your clothes.

How crazy is that?

I did, in fact, learn how to operate that strange mechanism. Mostly out of necessity, which is pretty much the only reason us inhabitants of Planet Man bother to adopt any new skills at all

I donned a shirt, tie and dress pants to cover sports when I worked for the Langley Times. Yes, it was a uniform of sorts but it said “I’m serious about my job here, people.” It also said — because I covered a lot of high school games — “I am not a pervert. Honest.”

My opposite number at The Advance tended to show up at events looking like he’d just come from the beach. Or from mucking out the stalls. I firmly believe people respected me more because I dressed, well, respectively. Even if, clad all in black in the middle of the summer, I looked like I was on my way to a job interview.

That was when I learned the great secret to ironing: It doesn’t eliminate the wrinkles at all; it simply moves them around. Once you learn to shift the wrinkles to the back of your clothes, your job is done. Because, when you think about it, everyone looks at you when you arrive but no one bothers glancing over their shoulder when you leave.

So there you have it, another valuable Life Lesson brought to by the friendly folk on Planet Man. Next week: Fun with knives and toasters. You’ll be shocked. I know I was.

Publish or Die! Part 11: That’s a whole lot of blood for nothing.

“You should leave Brown Girls alone for awhile,” Viking Woman advised me the other day, “and work on your other novels instead. See if you can’t get those ones published.”

Yeah, good one, honey. Because, after 20 years as journalist, being reduced to washing soiled knickers in a seniors’ residence isn’t humiliating enough. Now you want me to return to banging my head against the front gate of the Ivory Tower of Publishing? I’ve done that for a dozen years now — I have so much disappointment stored up, I could bottle and sell the stuff.

I have a confession to make: I only write for money. That’s why I made such a good reporter — if someone paid me the big bucks, I’d put my blood and soul on the page for them. I’ve worked the equivalent of several months’ worth of unpaid overtime to polish those words into precious nuggets of stories. Pay me every two weeks and I’ll die for you. Or, at the very least, type very fast.

In basic terms, money = words. No money = I’ll be over here in front of the TV.

Except that isn’t how it works when it comes to publishing a book, is it? In that business, you put your blood and soul on the page and all you get in return is a stain on that page where the literary agent spilled his coffee when his secretary used a bit too much teeth while administering her boss’s morning blow job.

Simply put, I’m a mercenary. I don’t possess a burning desire to write. I don’t have words bulging out of my brain demanding to be committed to paper. I’m not awakened in the middle of the night scrambling for a pen because a fully-formed plot arc burst forth from a dream like one of those Alien chest-bursting things.

Writing is hard slogging and I like to be rewarded for my efforts. I once had a student job where I was paid at the end of each workday and loved it. It’s all about instant gratification, baby. I want it all and I want it now is, I believe, how Freddy Mercury once put it.

Even this blog was started with the idea of scoring cash via Google ads. Except, according to my sources, only one blogger in the entire world — Heather B. Armstrong — actually makes any serious money from ads on a blog site. That’s because she’s not afraid to — figuratively speaking, of course — put her vulva on display for her fawning mommy fans. And, one suspects, because her husband spends his time using random computers to log in 50,000 times a day. Lucky bitch.

So the only reason I bother writing this blog at all is to embarrass my children and leave a legacy for their offspring. Good ole Gampy Bitemymoko, they’ll all reminisce one day, he sure was a miserable old fart. But cuddly in a lumpy sort of way.

Having the tenacity and the ambition to stick to a writing routine no matter what the future of the project is why I admire my UK friend at newtowritinggirl.wordpress.com. This English rose is participating in the annual NaNoWriMo competition. I’m not quite sure how that abbreviation rates on my Lame Scale, but it stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal, according to nanowrimo.org, is to complete a 175-page (50,000 words) novel between 12:01 a.m. Nov. 1 and midnight Nov. 30.

NeToWriGir (as I like to call my UK friend) is keeping track of her daily output in her November blog postings and, to date, appears to be doing her best to bang off the 1,667 words she’ll need to average each day to reach her goal. I have no idea what her novel is about but maybe, if I send e-chocolates, she’ll let me read it when it’s finished.

While I wasn’t involved in a competition at the time, that’s pretty much how I wrote the first draft of Brown Girls. My goal was to average 1,000 words a day and thus be finished in 120 days. I maintained that average for several long stretches at a time, amazing myself in the process because I don’t nornally tend to be very disciplined, especially when it comes to coffee and O’Ryans sour-cream-and-onion chips.

In the end, it took me some 270 days to finish the book, but that included a number of drafts and several weeks of editing and snipping and polishing.

Was it worth nine months of my time? My bank account would issue a resounding no. But I (and several others, including the Langley library) now own a book with my name on it. When it comes to having your ego stroked, nothing feels better (and you won’t spill your coffee in the process).

Should I turn my attention to the Brown Girls sequel and the other five or six novels I have stored on my computer in various stages of completion? I’m going to say yes.

And I’m going to start tonight — right after I check what’s on TV.

***

You can buy Brown Girls at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1937.

I no longer bootleg alcohol. Or tampons.

It may have been perfectly innocent.

It may just have been three guys shooting the breeze.

But, damn, if it didn’t look like a drug deal going down.

OK, yes, I will admit I’ve never actually seen drugs being exchanged for money in real life. Oh, sure, every second long-hair in Amsterdam offered to sell me something potent when all I was interested in doing was playing tourist. And one fellow traveller did accompany a shady character down an alley when we were both in Hawaii, in an effort to score some Maui Wowie. But I stayed on the main street and wondered if the next time I saw my friend he would be a) behind bars, or b) floating face-down in Pearl Harbor.

Because my addictions are limited to caffeine, The Hockey News and the Internet, I’ve seldom found myself in dubious places where laws might be broken.

Yes, I did say “seldom.” As opposed to “never.”

Years ago, as I rounded the corner of a building in my hometown — deep in thought, intent on my errand — I nearly walked straight into into a large First Nations lad.

“Will you bootleg for me?” he asked and I found myself nodding. Don’t ask me why. My mind was still addled by how close we’d come to blindsiding each other in a collision from which I definitely would have emerged second-best. And I did mention he was big, right? More like huge.

The next thing I know, I’m in the nearby liquor store, the fellow’s $20 bill clutched in my hand, scanning the shelves. He’d asked me to buy a bottle of rye. So, naturally, I’m looking for rye. Except, in my ignorance as a non-drinker, I didn’t realize that what I should have been looking for was rye whiskey.

Several years later, a cheeky girlfriend sent me into a supermarket to buy her tampons. It was like deja vu all over again — that helpless, panicky feeling that I had no idea what I was looking for, while, at the same time, blushing crimson because I knew I looked like an idiot just standing there and staring blankly at the displays.

I did finally grab the first bottle of rye whiskey that caught my eye, paid the difference out of my own pocket because it cost more than $20, and then shoved the paper bag into the waiting fellow’s hand right in front of the store. The smart thing would have been to meet him around the corner — bootlegging being illegal and all — and ask for the rest of the money. But all I wanted was for the embarrassment to be over.

So, today, I’m walking home from downtown and I see these three guys at the far edge of a petrol station’s property. The white guy, judging by his uniform shirt, works at the station. The other two are scruffy-looking Maori males. Now I hate to sound racially insensitive, but you look at the local paper’s Most Wanted ads, and nearly 100 per cent of the felons are Maori or Polynesian. It’s a sad fact of life here in New Zealand.

One Maori man, the fellow with the backpack, is pulling something out of a bag to show the petrol station attendant. It looks, from my vantage point, just like a brick of dope.

But it can’t be, right? I mean, they’re standing right in the open, for chrissakes. If I can see them, so can everyone else driving by or filling up. Surely no one would be that brazen. Or stupid.

I have no idea what was being displayed but I do know it wasn’t Michael Jackson’s latest CD or All Blacks players’ cards.

It just looked suspicious is all I’m saying.

Seconds later, as I continued walking, a cop car cruised past. For a nano-second I thought about flagging it down. But I didn’t. I just kept walking.

If what I saw was innocent, then there was no use wasting the police’s time. If it was something illegal and these guys make a habit out of being so blatantly obvious, then they’ll eventually get nabbed without my help.

Because, whether it’s rye or tampons, helping tends to come back and bite me in the arse.

Festival provides photo fodder. The sushi was good as well.

I learned very early on in my career as the Sports editor at the Langley Times to never attend a game without taking along my own camera. While such talented photographers as John Gordon, Rob Newell and Ted Colley graced my pages with their artwork — saving me a thousand words each time — they also had other assignments and priorities. If the hospital was on fire, there was a very good chance I was on my own at the Grade 8 girls soccer match.

I’ve continued taking photos even as my journalism career has stalled. In fact, over the past year, I’ve sold more photos than stories (the 2009-2010 issue of Napier Life features seven of my photos — not that I’m bragging. Or anything).

I’ve made a habit of taking my camera whenever we attend various events around Hawke’s Bay in an effort to add to my collection and challenge myself to improve.

That was the case again Friday when Viking Woman and I drove to the nearby community of Port Ahuriri for its primary school’s Food and Wine Festival. The fundraiser included a cake-baking competition (the topics were Earth or The Planets); pony rides; musical entertainment; a barricaded area where, for a nominal fee, you could take a hammer to a wrecked car for several uninterrupted minutes of pure fury; and food stalls run not by Mom and Dad but by actual restaurants.

Ahuriri is blessed with one of the few sand beaches in Hawke’s Bay and is slowly luring tourists away from downtown Napier with its own Art Deco charm and a tasty collection of cafes, eateries and bars. The folk there tend to be a little more laid-back and that easy-going attitude was on display during the Festival.

We admired the imaginative cake decorating, listened to the bagpipes (for as long as we could), ate sushi and did our small bit to help Port Ahuriri School meet its budget.

I kept my trusty Nikon close to hand, looking for that interesting shot — the baby sampling its dad’s beer; the little drummer girl who also sang and played the ukulele; the toddler who ditched the boring hotdog bun and went straight for the good stuff.

I’ve included some of those photos here, cropped and sharpened for best effect. Enjoy. Comments always appreciated. (And, yeah  know, the design of my blog page is not exactly conducive for photo layouts. That should be rectified soon.)

Rugby players, cougars and alcohol. It was always going to get messy.

In the end, it was always going to be a recipe for disaster. Call it serendipity or an act of a bored God or pure, stupid chance. When I look back on the event now, it was like watching a river of lava flowing towards the stalled gasoline tanker.

I’m referring to my latest shift as a bartender at the Old Mill Napier. The occasion was the hosting of some 60 ladies at the conclusion of a day spent touring a selection of Hawke’s Bay’s finest wineries. These exemplary examples of estrogen were already several sheets to the wind when they arrived but that didn’t stop them from descending like parched locusts on the outdoor bar.

From what I could gather, these were members of some sort of professional women’s networking group which gathers once a year to make contacts, exchange business cards and chat about their various entrepreneurial ventures, all while getting totally shit-faced.

Anne Vink, the owner of the Old Mill, had recruited a young German chap to assist me in pouring wine and cracking beer bottles. He and his girlfriend were visiting New Zealand as part of the WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) program, meaning they provide slave free labor in exchange for room and board.

The young fellow was nervous enough about the whole tending-bar thing anyway and, when I ducked out at one point to restock, he was literally paralyzed by the boozy demands of howling cougars, some of them just as intent on sampling German wiener schnitzel as the wine he was selling. One member of the pack, taking pity on the poor fellow, hiked up her little black dress and hoisted herself through the open window to take over the dispensing duties. My young apprentice was grateful for the assistance, even if he nearly filled his lederhosen at the sight of her less-than-ladylike entrance.

While the gaggle got stuck into ruining their livers, by pure coincidence a member of the Hawke’s Bay Magpies rugby club, who lives on the property, was hosting an end-of-season soiree for his teammates after the squad was eliminated from the Air New Zealand Cup playoffs. Needless to say, more than a few bottles of beer were sacrificed to the rugby gods at that gathering.

Cue the molten lava and the trapped tanker.

Lured by the high-pitched vibrations of excited/drunk female voices, the Magpies wandered into the dining room where the women were sitting down to a meal, intent on consuming something that wasn’t fermented.

The squeals of delight grew in proportion to the attention the guys paid to the gals. Or, in the case of one player, how many clothes he was willing to shed.

Shortly afterwards, the sound system was fired up and the dance floor turned into a seething, wriggling tango of sweat, desperation and hormones.

I could only watch, mouth agape, as women of a certain age latched onto studly athletes who, in turn, sought out the small number of younger lasses in the crowd. Yes, the players were hosed to the max but their hunting instincts remained intact.

I spotted one player, trapped in the midst of this besotted mess, simply swaying in place, hands over his head, as one woman rubbed her ass into his crotch while a second woman shimmied her crotch against his ass. A Magpie sandwich, as it were.

As fascinating as all this gender interaction may have been to observe, I felt as overwhelmed as my young German friend. I have never known how to deal with people once their brains have been addled by alcohol. I tend to be a logical sort and so have never understand the attraction in drinking until you’re cross-eyed and vomiting.

Having said that, I must note one of my journalism colleagues was never so effusive about the wonders of my writing talents as after the wine started to flow. So I may have to concede there is an upside to this whole getting hosed thing after all.

The players and the ladies were still intent on full-body contact and assorted dry humping by the time my shift ended, but I had no desire to hang around and watch their antics on my own time.

Along with a new respect for sobriety, I also came away from the event with a souvenir: one of those plastic wine glasses that light up at the push of a button in its base.

I now sip Diet Coke from it while wondering what it would be like to be admired and desired, not because I was a pro athlete, but because I’m a nice guy and possess a keen sense of humor.

Yeah, right — must be the aspartame talking.

Market Day brings out the crowds. And the fake snot. Coincidence?

The annual Arts in the Park Haumoana Market Day is a circled event on the Hawke’s Bay calendar of local activities. A major fundraiser for Haumoana School, it’s held the first Sunday in November at Memorial Park and tends to attract crowds in the thousands.

We missed it our first year here because I was, ahem, lying on a beach in Bora Bora. (And, yes, travel writers are to be envied. And worshipped.)

Normally, I’m not a big fan of crowded venues, having begged off our family’s annual pilgrimage to Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition as soon as I was old enough to say no to my parents. But Sunday presented us with a generous serving of warm spring weather and so Viking Woman and I opted to continue our quest to experience the wonders of our new community.

In doing so, we decided to forgo our usual Sunday morning foray to the flea-cum-farmers’ market on Napier’s Marine Parade, and so I was hoping to pick up some fresh local produce in Haumoana. It was not to be. This Market Day may have featured more than 200 stalls, but it was all about goods and services and less about healthy food. Unless by food you mean corn dogs. And by corn dogs I mean deep-fried mutton sausages. Thanks, but no thanks.

There were hundreds of wares on offer, most of them of the variety Viking Woman refers to as “dust collectors.” Things like decorated boomerangs or inflatable caveman clubs or some kind of wonder mop; even a child-size grandstand so your brood can sit and cheer Dad on while you mow the lawn. I was momentarily tempted by the packaged samples of “slime” and “snot” but, in the end, realized I could probably produce the real thing at home for free.

You could bid on alcohol or artwork — and not much else — at an auction, or ride the ponies if you were, like, six. Have your face painted or receive a massage. I could have had my hair braided if I’d had enough, um, time.

Entertainment was promised, but all we saw during our two-hour stay was a group of indigenous people from South America playing their traditional bamboo flutes while dressed as North American Indians. Because nothing draws a crowd like a chief’s feathered war bonnet and the possibility, no matter how remote, of a good, old-fashioned scalpin’.

In the end, all I spent was $4 on two soft ice cream cones. Because, at least as far as I’m concerned, sunny days are all about ice cream, as opposed to ceramic skulls or fake shrunken heads. But maybe that’s just me.