Remember
the Survival
Kit? My husband Rollo made it for me as a present one Christmas; the contents
of the candy-pink pencil case spoke endearingly about his screwball sense of
gift-giving. But the nail clippers, Superglue, razor blade, miniature Swiss
Army knife, and other eclectic little objects aside, a tinny-sounding, 13-note
keyboard on the lid was its big charm. “You never know when you might need
musical accompaniment,” he would admonish sternly. The thing was, if you were
in a life-threatening situation and actually dependent on a pink plastic box
with nail clippers, etc., being able to play an off-key version of “Theme from
The Godfather” just might make the difference in survival.
Rollo’s artistic talents are nothing short of legendary. Mike Malone (Rollo
Banks is his nom de tatu) is one of the leading tattooers of the western world,
having brought world-class tattooing to Austin from Hawaii. He had moved from
Honolulu to Texas in the spring of 1984 with an aspiring writer/best
friend/roommate.
The roommate had big eyes to write for the Chronicle and submitted a bunch of
stuff recycled from a zine called Honolulu Babylon the two had masterminded
several years earlier. I came across the roommate’s submissions while rifling
through Louis Black’s desk. The cover letter mentioned that he wished to write
and his roommate/friend Rollo Banks was a tattoo, as well as graphic, artist.
Was this that squirrely writer with the tattoos who’d been coming around? What
was his name… oh, here: Michael Corcoran. Jeesh, they were from Hawaii?
Corcoran’s stuff sent me into hysterics, though. I complimented him on it the
next time he wandered all scruffy in the office. He looked at me with that
baleful hangdog face and said, “You’d make a good girlfriend for my friend
Rollo Banks.” That fat guy with the beard and tattoos? I snorted.
That was June. Rollo and I were married six months later on December 4. That
was exactly eight weeks from the day he’d asked me to marry him, which was four
days after he said he loved me, which was two weeks after we first went out. We
got married standing on the star in the floor of the State Capitol rotunda with
Louis Black, Corky, Lou Ann Barton, and a handful of friends. We never asked
permission because I figured it wasn’t permitted so I just sort of told
everyone to meet at the Capitol building. We just walked in, did the ceremony,
and went to Green Pastures for dinner. It was raining outside and the wet glow
enhanced the rainbow effect of the mushrooms I’d decided to eat before the
ceremony.
Rollo had mounted an incredible campaign to win my heart, as his roomie, my
friends, and the general public looked on. He was the ultimate cool guy,
driving a snazzy black-and-white 1960 Chevy Impala to the Wednesday gospel
shows at Soap Creek because he read my gossip column in the Chronicle and
figured out where I’d be. He came to all the shows Dino Lee played when I was
one of Dino’s Jam & Jelly Girls. He rented a Lincoln Town Car for us to
drive around when we weren’t holed up at the Driskill Hotel in those dizzying
days of new love. He made great, loving overtures. It was silly. It was
romantic. It was hilarious. It was memorable. I never believed in love in my
life as much as I did back then.
The tattoo trend had yet to
infect Austin. In fact, when Rollo opened China Sea Tattoo in 1985, it was the
“other” tattoo shop in town. In Hawaii, tattooing was native to the South Seas
culture that spawned the Hawaiian natives, and the islands’ heavy influx of
military personnel didn’t hurt. In Austin, Rollo’s tattoo designs took
beautifully to the Mexican influence and he turned out gorgeous madonnas and
Virgins of the Guadalupe. He also began his crowning career piece here, a
traditional full-body Oriental style “suit” of Godzilla and other Japanese
movie monsters on Atomic City toy store owner, the Prince.
Rollo’s first tattoo shop in Austin was next to the Burger King on Guadalupe,
around the corner from the Chronicle offices at 28th and Rio Grande. Rollo took
advantage of the fact that Nick Barbaro and Louis Black hung around there a lot
to suggest that they start running his art celebrating the Chinese New Year on
the Chronicle cover, even though about 11 people paid attention to the holiday
in town. Pretty soon, Rollo became the Chronicle’s official covermeister.
None of this, however, offered the security or the challenge of the tattoo
trade for him. Besides, he chafed at Texans. The Texas heat and the Texas
winters. And Austin music. At musicians’ rising interest in tattooing. At
business in general. The local economic boom had busted, and after a while it
became clear he needed a drastic change. In 1988, we moved to Honolulu.
I tried Hawaii with about as much effort as Rollo had given Austin but on an
island surrounded by the ocean, I was a fish out of water. Its bounteous
physical beauty did not make up for the vibrancy of Texas that was genetically
imprinted in my soul. I found a Texas-like zen in the ocean, its endless
horizon reminding me of the wide open plains as the lonesome wind swept by. Out
by the ocean, looking up and out, you could get that big-sky feel of Texas. And
I adored the volcanoes, their primeval atmosphere and bleak splendor; their
fiery nature reminded me of the feisty Texas spirit. I stared out at the blue
Pacific waters endlessly, looking so hard for my Texas that I barely saw
Rollo’s Hawaii.
Riding the bus home from my job as tourist magazine editor one day in early
1990, a young Japanese tourist got on wearing t-shirt. It had the wavery
outline of the Lone Star state and words that read: Texas My Wild Heart. Before
I got to the word “heart,” the tears were sliding down my cheeks.
Being back in Austin, as I
was by June of 1991, things turned out differently than what I hoped for. I
came here first, ostensibly to settle us, then he would follow. Instead, in
1992, Rollo came to Austin and announced to me that it was time to put our
marriage to rest.
We spent about a year and half excruciatingly estranged; the darkest moment
being just before Christmas 1993. I was determined not to let this marriage go
without a final, heroic effort, and flew to Hawaii. It was disastrous. Rollo
was cold and unforgiving; I was weepy and miserable. Six days and one
hysterical phone call to my mother later, I was on a plane for Seattle instead
of back to Austin, or back to my job. A few days of sedation and
round-the-clock sleeping passed, and I came back to Austin ready to put it all
behind me.
That bond that existed between us was tenacious, however, and by spring 1994,
we were, inexplicably, quite friendly again. The phone calls grew longer and
more frequent, and in April we met up in Chicago for an art exhibition in which
he was participating. This was a familiar scenario in a place we’d never been
together before, he was again the funny and tender man I fell in love with, the
cool guy rebel who’d shrugged off the conventions of society as a tattoo artist
and with the rebellious tattoo world, rejected the admiration of other
tattooers.
We were charmed by each other, finding each other’s company enchanting. He’d
bring me hot chocolate early in the sleety cold morning; I found fresh Gummi
Bears for him by the pound at a shop around the corner from the hotel — here,
you take the red, I’ll take the green and we’ll split the yellows. I massaged
his travel-weary feet, finding waves of love washing over me as I rubbed the
cracked, dry skin. We couldn’t get enough of each other, prowling the
unfamiliar downtown streets in the wet April cold, ducking into tiny stores. It
was deliriously happy.
Over the next year, his visits to Austin were just as fun. I got up the nerve
to announce to him that he was stuck with me; there would be no divorce, no
more fucking around with are-we-or-aren’t-we, damn it, I was his wife even if
he was in Hawaii and I was here in Austin. He was lovingly agreeable and the
marriage was on, to hell with the phone bills. And it worked for a while, until
last fall, when the distance became longer and the calls shorter.
Still, this should have been an uneventful phone call. He and I had been
trading Kinky Friedman anecdotes for several days, as I had sent him a passel
of Friedman’s books for Christmas. The media-bred Arctic blast led to some
unexpected days off work so I called him for fun Saturday morning. Ten minutes
of chit-chat led to an urgent statement… “I gotta talk to you about
something” followed by “I’ve become involved with another woman.” He quickly
spilled forth some sketchy, stinging details, and waited for me to respond.
“Please say something,” Rollo pleaded. “Something,” I replied emotionlessly.
There was an underlying irony of timing, not just that this should occur only
days before the time to celebrate love and romance, but because Valentine’s Day
was also Rollo’s favorite holiday. Like the Survival Kit, he had designed and
created an imaginative legacy of Valentine’s presents that had come to be
metaphors for each of the years we were married. Now, for the first time, it
truly seemed as if they were the visual history of our marriage, too, this
collection of hearts: painted, wooden, inked, jade, plastic, gold, foam-core,
candy, paper, and tattooed.
As we talked on the phone I turned and looked at the shelf the heart
collection sits on and noticed it was dusty. After we hung up the phone I took
my wedding rings off, and slid my gold Irish claddagh in its place. I put the
diamond ring and the simple band in the Survival Kit, wincing at its off-key
retort when I snapped the pink lid shut.
What is it about human nature that sometimes allows us the grace of
experiencing profound change with a lucid heart? In the same way that the birth
of love gives life a soft glow, so does its death. Just hours before, I could
have looked at the diamond on my left hand and smiled at its glacial
significance. Now it was a reminder that circles are infinite but love is not.
I held the Survival Kit in my hands and turned on the TV numbly. Click. Shelley
Long’s character writing He Said It Was Going To Be Forever after being dumped
in Irreconcilable Differences. Click. Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind: “Oh,
Rhett! Whereever shall I go? Whatever shall I do?” Click. Jeez, that silly
movie with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz I saw on our honeymoon. Click. Oh, Nat
King Cole singing “Stardust” — hadn’t we once heard that on the sands of
Waikiki in one of those frozen-in-time moments? The purple dusk of twilight
time really did seem near for this marriage and Cole’s tender voice caught the
feeling: “…Love is now the stardust of yesterday …the music of the years
gone by.” Click.
My husband Rollo. Once
they were the most precious sounds I could utter. Now they are words that seem
to have the hollow echo of the past in them. Not bitter though perhaps
bittersweet. Just words to let fall from my lips like the leaves of winter and
be swept away by the Texas wind blowing through my wild heart. n
This article appears in February 9 • 1996 and February 9 • 1996 (Cover).