SCABVENDOR

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 […]

by Jonathan Shaw The first time I saw the kid, he was sitting in the front row of the smoking section of the midnight AA meeting downtown. The only reason I even noticed him at all when I walked in the door was probably because he was sitting there, legs sprawled across the floor, leaning […]

Rio De Janeiro, 1973 As if on cue, a loud discussion broke out among the guys playing cards at the table off to the back as one guy with an enormous gut protruding from a frayed open shirt produced an enormous butcher knife and began waving it around drunkenly. The two armed guys who’d been […]

Rio De Janeiro, 1973. I stood watching it cross the straight little bridge high up in the air and clatter off rhythmically around a corner up a windy street into the hills and on the other side, disappearing behind an ancient faded yellow building that emerged through a jungle of banana trees and billowing clotheslines. […]

Rio De Janeiro, 1973. Losing all track of time in my aimless wandering, I soon found myself on a series of winding labyrinthine narrow streets in picturesque Bohemian-looking quarter, bordered on one side by the looming shadows of imposing 1930’s style office buildings. A real old-time flavor… businesslike efficient shoeshine stands, snack bars with a […]

Rio De Janeiro, 1973 Not knowing or really caring where I was, or having the slightest idea where to go, I simply chose a direction and started walking, instinctively choosing the shady side of the street, slowing down briefly here and there to glance in a shop window. One place in particular that caught my […]

Veracruz, Mexico. 1974. She seemed to be thinking it over now. “Don’t worry about the money, nena” I repeated. “I got enough to cover the night. It’ll be worth it to ya… Vamos?” Her eyes rolled back like a cash register for the briefest tenth of a second… Like a cartoon character, rolling up twin […]

Here is a short chapter from Jonathan Shaw’s upcoming memoir Scabvendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist: “A man becomes like those whose society he loves.”  – Hindu proverb Voices singing, bottles breaking… A ship blows a horn nearby. A rum-soaked, tropical night emerging from yellow shadows. Lively open-aired cantinas click into focus, eyes clicking new […]

Scabvendor.com is happy and proud to introduce Amy Fields as a guest writer today. Amy, a native Texan, for many years was a fashion model, designer and writer in New York City. For the next few days we will be featuring excerpts from her book-in-progress in between our regular blog programming. Amy is not only a […]

When I was nine or ten years old, I lived among a thinly disguised psychotic little group of alien beings laughably referred to as a family.  This pathetic, dysfunctional neurotic little tribe of psychic pygmies inhabited a big sterile empty house on a heartless tree-lined street in a heartless upper-middle class section of the heartless, sprawling sub-urban wasteland […]