Paper towels. Vaseline. Ceran wrap. Buzz buzz buzz. Tiny cups. Latex gloves. Dental chair. Buzzzzzz. Shaking hands, shaken bottles, colors blurring filling cups. Buzz buzz buzz. Sweat. Blood. Heavy breathing. Shaking hands, shakier breaths. Bitten lips and eyes squeezed shut. Buzz. And then the pain.
Stories are far too often forgotten. Fragments that live in the memory of someone, told once or twice, perhaps written down, and then… gone. Life shattering events tend to be drawn back a bit more clearly, but how often do you truly let them out of just your mind? Memorialized, eternal, a daily reminder of things that you desperately try not to forget?
My best friend died when I was 12 years old. I did everything I could to remember him as he was, not how he went with a needle in his hand and a heart that just couldn’t beat anymore. So I focused on everything I could remember, but in time those things faded; first his voice, then where his eyes creased when he smiled, then his walk, then his smell, lastly how it felt when he hugged me. When all those were gone the needle began to creep back in, so I had to keep trying, trying to find something to remind me of when he was here.
The roses.
When he first got out of rehab, he said all the time that he needed something to keep his hands busy. He tried everything you could imagine, from stress balls to his old Game Boy, to reading and even tried knitting. Nothing stuck, and his hands would start to shake the way they always did when me and his mother knew we had to worry. But one day he came over, hands steady, a smile with the creases exactly where I try to remember them, and told us he figured it out. And every six hours on the hour he would hop on his bike and go back to his dad’s garden to water the roses that had become his new addiction. He would tend to them painstakingly but lovingly, and on the rough days he would spend hours on his knees in prayer to his new red goddesses, the only thing keeping him tied to us for then, before his shaking hands took him from us…
I needed to remember. I needed something real, something solid, something that would never leave me. Something that would tie him to me for all eternity, beyond death, beyond the grave, beyond anything within comprehension that could take him from me again. It was the needle that took him from me – it would be the needle that tied him to me.
The roses.
And so at a measly 18 years of age, brand new ID in my hands blazing brightly the month and day that said I could sit in that chair alone with no consent and no supervision, I asked for roses. Three roses specifically, for the past I didn’t want to forget, the present I had to accept without him, and the future hope that we would someday be reunited. And barely visible through the vines, the hearts, the leaves and thorns, a small banner on the bottom showing a mere 4 letters – Nuti – for my Michael Louis Benvenuti; benvenuti – meaning welcome.
With shaking hands and a sweaty brow, I moved up slowly in the dental chair, latex gloved hands positioning my arm exactly where it needed to be. Reds, greens, yellows and blues all put into their separate cups, bottles shaken carefully to even out the hues. Shining needles taken out of sterile packaging, foot tapping a pedal out of site creating the buzzzz that I grew to love. “Are you ready?” he asked with a smile on his face, and I drew in a shuttering breath before the pain hit. The roses. Now there forever.
I got used to the pain, after time. And my garden of the flesh grew. Nuti wasn’t the only thing I never wanted to forget. I wanted to always remember the first time I read to my son, his little tiny hand squeezing my finger as I read him the first two acts of Hamlet aloud – buzz from shoulder to shoulder, across my spine, etching my message of love to him forever into my back. The wound on my thigh was at first to honor the man who stole my heart, a sparrow in flight bearing his name to show my eternal gratitude for him being a part of my life. Then a meager few months later, buzz to reopen the wound to cover that name, an attempt to forget what I swore I always wanted to remember. My dear aunt Beverly, who taught me to bake, buzz across my shin in the shape of a butterfly as to not ever forget to thank her silently for ever cupcake that leaves my kitchen. Every drop of ink a story, every inch of flesh a monument to every moment of life I have lived, and will not forget, will never forget. The eternal buzz of carrying those memories with me to the grave, bled into my skin for all eternity.
A mind is such an faulty thing to rely on to look back at your life – skin is so much more reliable.
