Hypogeous Tractatus 1
-or- I Was A Teenage Graffiti Writer
Mrs Johnson used to shake me down for magic markers. I already had a reputation as a graffiti writer but I wasn't wasting my ink on the bathroom stalls or school halls. If I understood that she would be the one to scrub it off, I still couldn't sympathize with her playing cop too. Seemed like a nice enough old lady, but based on the version of American History the brothers taught me in the yard, I couldn't fathom why she didn't want to see the whole damn school go up in flames. And when my first illegal graffiti painting magically appeared on the school exterior late one night it was of course meant as a big F-U to the principal and all the boring ball-buster teachers, but included this nosy janitor too for her participation in the tyranny.
Older writers put me on to the little printers shop, miles away from my house, where they would steal Flo Master ink by the quart. No sign on the dusty little store, so we just called it, "the Hunchback" after the proprietor. I didn't have the heart to steal from the guy, and seven dollars was easy enough to come by, every shelf and table in his cluttered shop piled high with meaningless papers and boxes of dead stock. He took so long to attend to me, possibly his only paying customer all day, and was unfriendly too so I could see why the other kids chose to liberate him of his inventory, his one pale eye drooped over by a blue lid, and his humped, stooped over back was right out of the pages of Poe, but back out on the street, in the light of the sun again, I'd take my ink out of the bag, red or black, and stare at the label with the white script letters on the red tin, wondering what dangers it would bring my way on my long walk home.
During my 8 or 10 year campaign as a graffiti writer I never came close to breaking into the ranks of greatness, and earned the intermediate grade just under the wire, but I was masterful at fashioning a "mop" or homemade magic marker. Those store-bought El Markos and Pilot markers that Mrs Johnson was obsessed with could be doctored to some effect but the young vandal strove not only for a broader stroke, but indelible signatures that oozed ink, dripping down over the competitions names. The Uni-Wide or Mini-Wide were good for a clean, calligraphic stroke, but by my time were seen as old-fashioned. State of the Art meant emptying a roll-on deodorant, popping out the plastic applicator ball, filling it up with Flo-Master, or Marsh ink when the former couldn't be found even at the Hunchbacks lonesome shop, and the tip would be fashioned from a wool strip torn from a blackboard eraser.
Police who specialized in graffiti prevention would spot us on the subways by the ink stains on out fingertips and nails so we would wear rubber dishwasher gloves in the train yards whenever we spent the night rocking insides, slapping our names down on every empty space, or else right over other signatures, because even the pacifist had any number of active wars with other writers, and these tit-for-tat erasures seemed to escalate into a physical altercation at least once a month so most writers walked around with a black eye or a band aid on their face even when they won. And even when you came out of a fight without a scratch, you might bust your knuckle on the other guys head, and walk around with a hand bandaged up like a prize fighter.
As I admitted, I wasn't the best, and definitely not the toughest but the life was full enough of action to keep even the most restless teenager busy, and what I was lacking in natural talent I made up for with tenacity, persisting through the hard knocks, and getting my name up, so that other kids who also wrote their names around town, and mostly hated each other, would see it.