Sweet Tattoo

Last Saturday night, Melanie and I went into Manhattan for a small holiday gathering. We were going to see her old high school friend Vibeke at her mother's apartment on the Upper West Side. It had been quite some time since we had last seen Vibeke. We weren't sure, but our best guess was 1998.

Vibeke had been living in Los Angeles, had recently married and moved to Houston. It was great seeing her again, and it was nice meeting her husband Matt.

Invariably, Melanie asked Vibeke how she and Matt had met. She explained that, in the early '90s, she had been living on a boat in St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. For a while, the only way she could get to shore from the boat where it was moored was to swim. I'm guessing she also occasionally hitched a ride on someone's dinghy, but her primary shore-to-ship mode of transport was her own arms and legs.

As one would imagine, this proved to be problematic. So she invested in an inflatable dinghy and a small outboard motor to more practically transport her to and from dry land.

When the motor developed a problem, she took it into a shop for repairs. A gentleman named Matt was the proprietor and he repaired it. A little tension developed when, as Vibeke tells it, the repairs were less than satisfactory. More work was done, apparently to her standards and from this initial meeting, a romance blossomed.

After six months, Vibeke decided, for various reasons, that she would return to the states and move on with her life. The relationship with Matt abruptly ended.

Cut to the cinematic technique of a calender shedding pages like a tree in autumn, as time passed.

Then 9/11 happened. This prompted many Americans to feel the need to check in with past acquaintances and such. Vibeke looked for Matt, but he has a common last name and she couldn't find him. She was having, and continued to have, "where is he now" moments. She never found him.

But he found her.

Earlier this year, she was proctoring a test for students at a public school in Southern California where she was teaching. The phone rang.

It was Matt. He was beside himself. He had found her. Vibeke was stunned, but she was otherwise occupied. She gave him her number and told him to call back.

He did. He lived in Houston, she was dating someone else. The next time he came to town she was single. They met. The rest, they say, is history. They were married in June and are now newlyweds in Texas.

"What a great story," Melanie and I collectively thought. We were very happy for her, and him.

Later that evening, Melanie and I were chatting with Matt near the kitchen.

Matt asked about Melanie's ankle tattoo. He seemed interested. I mentioned Tattoosday. "Want to see something?" he asked. He motioned us into the kitchen, away from the rest of the party guests.

"You've heard how Vibeke and I met, right?" he asked, touching a button on his shirt. We nodded. And he began to tell his story, similar to his wife's version, only he paused after speaking of her leaving the island way back in 1995.

The month after she departed, still devastated from the abrupt end to their relationship, he returned to his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And there, he told us, unbuttoning his shirt and revealing his left shoulder, he went to Route 66 Fine Line Tattoo and got this:


See, dear readers, there was a relevant point to this story.

And Matt pointed out in this subtle aquatic tattoo, the marks of his true love. Here in the undulating leaves is a V for Vibeke, a C for her middle name, and an H (at the top of the piece) for her maiden name.

Woven into his tattoo of lost love and despair were the initials of the woman he loved. And he had no idea where she was.

But the years passed for Matt, as they did for Vibeke, and this ink in his flesh was an anchor reminding him of his love. And when people asked him about it, he explained it was just an aquatic-themed piece, an homage to his love of the ocean.

And fourteen years later they reunited and picked up where they had left off in 1995. Now married to the woman whose initials were subtly inked into his flesh, the tattoo has changed.

When fresh, the piece was a memento of loss, the missed moment of the road not taken, a reminder of a relationship that ended too soon.

Over the years, the tattoo meant hope that some day, the two would cross paths again. It was a daily reminder of what was lost, and what Matt hoped to regain.

Seemingly miraculously the two souls were reunited, and the tattoo, in its simple black and gray tones, represents perseverance and success. The ink may have faded in the sun, but the love only became more clear.

Matt and Vibeke's story is quite remarkable, and the time they were apart has faded. Togetherness always defeats the pain of separation.

I want to thank Matt and Vibeke for sharing their tale with us here on Tattoosday. It's not every day that we get to hear a full-blown love story on this site, and the fact that Matt's tattoo is at the center of it makes it even more wonderful.

Late last December, we posted about our friend Paul getting some cover-up work done on his upper right arm. Revisit the report here.

We recently checked in with Paul to see how things were going, and he updated us with the latest efforts by Horisei, who is about a session away from finishing this beautiful work:




Horisei tattoos out of the Chelsea Tattoo Company, formerly the home of Rising Dragon.

Thanks again to Paul for sharing. I'm guessing we'll see the finished product some time in 2010!

Today is a sad anniversary for us here on Tattoosday, for it marks one year since our friend, Tom Wacker, passed away unexpectedly.

Tom was an early supporter of the blog, from its fledgling days as a once-a-week feature over on BillyBlog, and he watched us grow with a mixture of excitement and pride.

The camera I use was a birthday gift from Tom and his fiancee Sephora, and he was always first in line to see the pictures I took whenever I had new material for the blog.

A week or two before his death, Tom was hanging out at a friend's house in New Jersey. He took pictures of his friend's sleeve and e-mailed them to me. The photos are still in my mailbox, unposted. I still haven't the heart to call his friend and talk tattoo with him.

There are times I am hesitant to approach people, for whatever reason, and I overcome whatever resistance I may feel, knowing that's what Tom would have wanted me to do, and that somewhere, he is watching, urging me on, applauding my efforts, admiring the ink.

As a tribute to Tom, I am reposting his tattoo, which he shared with us here, back in 2007.

It's not the best tattoo, but it's Tom's, and his spirit is infused here in Tattoosday. It's the least I can do for the friend that supported us so much in the early days. Here's to you, Tom!


Tattoos I Know: The Grim Reaper (originally posted September 11, 2007)


This is the sole tattoo of my friend and co-worker, Tom Wacker.

Tom designed and drew the art upon which this tattoo was based.

The Reaper is posed on Tom's biceps/deltoid and has resided there since 1984, when its host was a young lad of eighteen.

This is Tom's only tattoo and he has no plans to get more. He is proud of the fact that, because he designed it and because he then tore up the original design, it is a one-of-a-kind piece...

The tattoo was inked by Dean at Lola's Tattoos, then in Cliffside Park, but now in Bogota, New Jersey. Tom got this tattoo "because it was cool," although the tattooer tried to convince him not to get it because it was "too mean" for him. Twenty-three years later, Tom says he has no regrets about his ink.

Thanks, Tom!

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