Tattoos are great. I
can’t have any more due to religious reasons, but I love them nonetheless. If I could, I’d have half sleeves and ink on
my shoulders and back and everything.
That’s just me. I know some
people don’t much care for them. My wife
is always saying, “Oh yeah, it looks great now, but what happens when you are sixty?” And my response to that is, “Well, when you
are sixty, you get it touched up or redone or removed.” And I know that’s not the most difficult
thing in the world to do. I had a tattoo
removed once—10 sessions at $200 a pop to laser that thing off. That was almost a decade ago though, and
nowadays they are cheaper and require fewer treatments. I know some guy that had one removed this past year for only
a couple hundred bucks—only a little more than the tattoo itself cost.
Why am I talking about tattoos? Because Trev Gearhart is the owner of Ice
Serpent Piercings and Tattoos, a fictional tattoo shop in my new novel, Terminal Restraint. Trev is a big guy, covered in body ink, with
long hair and a big heart. Not unlike
many other tattoo shop owners and artists I know. And people judge him.
When I wrote Terminal
Restraint, my number one goal was to tell a compelling story that my
readers would enjoy. That’s my number
one goal always, really. But in the back
of my mind, I had several subtle messages that I wanted to get across to my
reader. And one of them was acceptance. Acceptance of those who are different from
you.
I know what it’s like to be different. On the outside, I’m a Caucasian male in his
mid-thirties living in Small Town, USA.
There are probably a million others that look like me on the outside. I’ve even seen a few Ryan Doppelgangers
around my town. Get to know me though, and
you’ll find I’m not quite what you expected. For one, I’m in a mixed-race marriage with a biracial son. I’m also a Muslim. And unfortunately, I’ve witnessed and experienced hate and discrimination firsthand.
I was actually at a restaurant one time when
an employee loudly said to another, “Look at that Chinese girl with that white
boy. That’s not right.” We complained, but of course that guy was
still there the next time we visited. Now THAT’S not right.
I can understand the concept behind why certain people hate. People don’t like things that are
different. When a particular person, say
a woman in her fifties with two grown children and a husband who is a business
executive, sees a person in his teens or twenties or thirties covered with
tattoos and piercings, she’ll become a little reserved and will probably judge that kid as a miscreant. She doesn’t understand how someone can poke holes in themselves or cover themselves in permanent ink. Perhaps she
feels it’s not right for religious reasons.
Maybe she thinks that person is into drugs and rock music and devil
worshipping. Who knows? Oh yeah, by the way, that’s Trev Gearhart from my novel:
a tattooed guy who loves loud rock music and is a member of the Church of
Satan. No, really, that’s him. Seriously. A bit cliché?
Possibly, but all written for a good reason and worthwhile reason.
The town I live in is predominantly white. And unfortunately, the only African Americans
most people see are the arrested ones on the news who have drifted in from New York or
New Jersey to peddle drugs. Some people
in this town actually raise their children to distrust black people. Racism and hate and intolerance is horrible,
but when you are raised to feel that way from the time you were born, it’s hard
not be intolerant.
Take another issue: gay marriage. I really struggle with the reasoning behind the
opposition to it. I know people say that
it’s not what God wants, and the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin, and
blah, blah, blah. But didn’t the Pilgrims
come to America to avoid religious persecution?
Isn’t the freedom of religion one of the many principles this country
was founded on? So yeah, you may not
agree with gay marriage because of your religion, but what right do you have in
telling someone else—who possibly/probably does not share your beliefs—what
they can do and who they should be able to marry? That, to me, seems like religious
persecution. And anyway, it’s not like
two gay people getting married has ANY ADVERSE EFFECT ON YOU. Their marriage is not going to make your
taxes go up or the cost of gasoline to rise or anything else. Yet so many people are against it.
Really, I don’t think people are against gay
marriage. I think those people are just
against gays, but it’s not illegal to be gay—it’s just illegal still in some
states for gays to marry. Now THAT is
intolerance. THAT'S not right.
Everybody the world over is different, but people instantly
judge others based on appearances. People
may see me and think I’m just some big white guy like them or their husband or father or brother. And I get judged as that. This guy won't care--he's just like me. And then they’ll
maybe talk bad about other cultures or religions or whatever right in front of me. I once had a coworker send a company-wide
email making fun of the way Chinese restaurant workers speak. Naturally I reported her to HR. I also had another coworker send an email out
blasting Muslims and the US government for issuing an Islam postage stamp. I reported her to HR as well. Neither gave any thought to the fact that I’m
not just some big white guy, that I’m married to an Asian and that we are
Muslims. THAT'S NOT RIGHT.
My new novel is about a half-Asian IT guy who, after having
what is thought to be a Satanic black magic spell cast on him, is killed and
comes back as an undead monster. My
characters are diverse. I talk about
Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, which is probably not what most people think it
to be. I write about rushing to unfounded
and biased judgments. It’s a book filled
with intense action, but there is also a very clear message there: ACCEPT.
Do you accept those who are different from you? Or do you judge them and instantly write them
off? Or worse yet, belittle them or
utter hateful remarks when those people aren’t around? If you’re one of the latter, I pity you.
