Carson is my first cousin, on my mother’s side. Her mother and my mother are sisters. I was twelve years old when Carson was born, an age difference that meant less the older we got, especially the older Carson got. She has three kids now, and a lot of tattoos.
She knew early on that she wanted tattoos, starting with a small Playboy logo on her ankle in her teens. “I got that when I was sixteen. My mom has a matching one, it was actually her idea. Her first tattoo, and only tattoo. And she was going to go get it with your brother, he was getting, I think, something on his knee or maybe the back of his calf, I don’t remember. But they were going together to get a tattoo, and I was just enamored by the idea of a tattoo. And so I begged to go get one, and she said no for a while. And I was I guess annoying enough that she decided to change her mind and we got matching ones.”
In the early 2010s, Carson and my brother Robert started going to Friday the 13th events at All For One Tattoo, a shop owned by our friend Dave in Richmond. If you don’t have Friday the 13th tattoo events in your town, imagine sheets of flash designs priced at $13 (and in All For One’s case, $31 and $113) and long lines trailing down the block. I was still on my “all my tattoos have to mean something” kick and didn’t want to pick something off a flash sheet, so it would be a few years before I joined the fun, but Carson and Robert were early revelers.
And it is a bit of a party, at All For One anyway. Get there early, make friends, choose something that speaks to you. Like the webby little heart beside Carson’s Playboy bunny.
“It was black and grey, and I colored it to be Spiderman. It’s a nod to my boyfriend Darryl. Love him, but I don’t really want his name on me or anything too much like that, so I liked that this was subtle and it’s not screaming Spiderman, but if you know, you know.”
“I got this at seventeen after I got the Playboy bunny. This was the following year. I decided I wanted this to memorialize our grandfather. Grey ribbons mean a lot of things, but it’s for Parkinson’s. It’s also for like some brain disorders. Like other people have come up to me and been like, ‘Oh, do you have this or do you know someone?’ My mom signed for that one too and she said, ‘This is the last one, I’m not doing anymore. This is all you get. Once you turn eighteen, you can do whatever you want.’ And then that’s when I got them back-to-back, and she started to worry a little bit that she’d created a monster.”
“All of these butterflies are Friday the 13th tattoos, and I’ve gotten them to represent different people in my life. I used to self-harm, and I joined the Butterfly Project on social media, back like Tumblr days. And it was just, you used to draw butterflies with Sharpies and name them after people to try to keep yourself from self-harming, if that’s what you were trying to do at the time. And so, I’ve gotten the butterflies throughout the years, ones that speak to me, and name them after people.”
“Alexis [her daughter] is the bottom one, purple, orange, reds. And then the next one is Devonte [her son] which is like these greens and yellows and blues. Which is funny because when I got that, he was a bitty baby and he didn’t know colors or what he liked, and he likes yellow and green best out of all the colors. And then I got this one for Abuela, this little green and yellow guy, but she probably wouldn’t like to know that because she always told me not to get a tattoo for her. It just reminded me of her, it was tiny and dainty. This one was next, this was for my mom, the big one. And this one for Zoey [her daughter] and this one for Darryl.”
“The moth was a Friday the 13th, you have it too. And I’ve always kind of thought that this was for Andy, because he’s not really a butterfly, he’s a moth,” Carson told me, referring to our cousin Andy who passed away in 2020.
Opposite the moth at her elbow lies a line of script twisting into a small blue character, the word Ohana spooling alongside the outline of Disney’s Stitch.
“I got this in Atlantic City for my birthday. We kept the kids with Nana, and me and Darryl went to Atlantic City. I wanted a boardwalk tattoo, so I walked around until I found a shop that looked like a boardwalk shop. This was $100, Darryl thought it was way overpriced. But he paid for it because it was my birthday! And I wanted it. I got the Stitch to be this blue. It was supposed to be kind of fading, it doesn’t really fade from black to blue. It’s just black and then blue. And also he doesn’t really look like Stitch, so he could use some work. But he’s cute! Some shading could happen.”
The family theme runs strong in Carson’s ink.
“Dave drew this and did this for me after I had Devonte. My grandmother’s middle name is Encarnación, but I always thought that Encarnación meant carnation. I think somebody told me that, or I just made it up in my childhood head. And it doesn’t mean that, it means incarnation. So I have always associated carnations with Abuela, but that’s false, wrong Spanish. So, I got carnations for her, and I got roses.”
(That’s my Abuela too, fyi.)
“The carnations are down here, and these are my mom and Abuela. And then I wanted three roses. I didn’t realize until he put it on that there were four roses, and then I had Zoey. So I think Dave knew before I did that I needed four roses. It was a happy accident because I don’t have to add one now. These were supposed to be me and my kids.”
“This is a phoenix that I got on a manic episode, love her. I was in a little bit of a dark place when I got her and I was feeling like I was going to be reborn, and I like everything that the phoenix has to say.”
“I got the star first and then the mushroom. You were with me for those.”
“The birds I got when I was eighteen with your brother, on a Friday the 13th. I had just turned eighteen, and I had just gotten a tattoo for my 18th birthday. And my mom was already like, ‘Oh no, don’t get addicted.’ Like, what are you doing? And I went with him to the Friday the 13th and got this one. Dave did it and I liked it so much, I couldn’t imagine not having the other one right here. My other wrist just looked empty, like where was his friend? And he [Dave] skipped me ahead in line because I had to go to dinner, Robert was supposed to get me home. He [Robert] was in the chair so I had a little bit more time, and he [Dave] took me right after he did Robert real quick and did his friend [the bird]. Carl and Craig, he named them for me because I asked him to.”
“My semicolons I got at Loose Screw Tattoo. Jen did it when she was apprenticing. And those are for suicide awareness. I’ve had two attempts. And I’m still here. That’s why there’s two.”
Surrounding Carson’s semicolons are four black-line astrology symbols—three on one arm, and one on the other. “I got this and this a while ago when it was just me and Alexis, and then I got these two recently. So mine is on the left and my kids are on the right. It’s Libra, Leo, and Taurus. And for a little while before I had Zoey, it worked because me and Devonte are both Leos, so I was like that’s fine, double meaning. But then once I had Zoey I was trying to figure out how I was gonna incorporate.”
Carson has so many tattoos, and so much to share about them, that we need a second post. Stay tuned for part two of my cousin’s tattoo stories soon. Also, in a tattoo story series first, there are two digital photos in today’s set. To date, I have shot all other tattoo sets entirely on film, but when I photographed Carson, I misjudged how many frames I would need and ran out. I happened to have my digital camera with me, which is incredibly rare. I never take it along as a backup, and usually only pick it up a couple times a year. Can you guess which shots are digital?
Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.