Everyone Has A Story

                                                                                      It was a hard day.

A hot day.

                   Burning and scorching his flesh. The sun was too close, too bright, ebbing away at his retinas.

                   Yet there he stood. A battered and broken human of thirty years. Standing against the day star and the o-zone with the weight of those thirty years pushing him down into the hot asphalt beneath his naked feet.

          Thirty years of mistakes.

                     Thirty years of heartbreak.

                               Thirty years of regret.

                                        Thirty years of insecurity.

Raining down on him like acid rain from the end of days. 

A whistle. From his right. Coming from no more than fifteen feet away. And he smiled.

That was life's wolf whistle in his direction. It wasn't coming to beat him down. It wasn't coming to teach him a lesson. It wasn't coming to challenge him.

With those last few steps, life whispered.

                        To help. To aid. To replenish. To restore.

Suddenly it was as if the things that were hurting him gave him the strength to turn to his right and put one foot in front of the other. Pushing against the asphalt, and creating his own wind to soothe the burning, giving his eyes a familiar form to focus on.

He ran to life and embraced it with the one thing he never lacked.

       Love.

That's exactly what should happen when life whistles. You run, because it's everything. Just like the people you love most. You love them in spite of the bad and the ugly and you love them because of the good.

So maybe it wasn't actually life that Eric was running to, and maybe it wasn't life he picked up and spun around. Maybe he had just gotten off his company plane and took a minute to bask in the California sun. And maybe that whistle was from his fair haired wife, who still looked as breath takingly beautiful as the day he met her.

       But every day.

                           Every single day.

She reminds him of what life really is.

Only to find she'd been covered in Georgia Tech gold and white a few banners too. 

Lenora: Clearly. Glad to know that it's doing wonders for you.

Lenora: Really? Well - Either I could swing by your place or you can come to mine. I have no problem with either one, plus - I've been dying to see you.

EJ: Our parents tax dollars hard a work.

Lenora: I had an idea. You practically drooled all over your desk - Kidding. You have such a way with words.

EJ: It's the AP English. It brings out the poet in me.

TATTOO #1

On his left shin is where his first tattoo is, and it was a drunken tattoo and quite frankly EJ is lucky that the guy who tattooed him actually cared whether or not Eric liked the tattoo in the morning. The man who tattooed him was a man who derived most of his inspiration from his culture, Native American, and his mother always told him he had the gift of seeing a person for exactly who they were. So he chose Eric's left shin to tattoo an in color tribal phoenix literally rises from it's own ashes. The ashes are dark greys and start a little bit on his foot and the head of the bird come just below his knee and the wings wrap around his calf.

TATTOO #2

His upper back is dedicated to his immediate family, meaning Artie, Keade, Donny and his sister who's name I can't remember right now. It's on his back because they are his foundation, where he came from.

TATTOO #3

His left peck and collar bone are dedicated to the everlasting friendship he has in Mary and Grey. Its animal related,because like they're favorite animals they are very different and yet someone perfectly fit together. In my head it's their favorite animals are fashioned into something of a flowing shape to represent fluidity of their relationship despite their differences and it's over his heart because that's what they are to him. Grey and Mary are his heart.

TATTOO #4

Then his right calf is dedicated to Daya the car that set his future in motion, and eventually why he names his first model of car a Daya and he gets her engine tattooed on his right calf but it looks as though this engine is a part of his anatomy. So it's like seeing his inner workings if that makes sense. And once I figure out the name of this damn car company of his that'll be on the engine as well. It's on his right calf because that car, or the idea of it set his entire future in motion. So it's on his leg, his strong leg as well, since he's a righty.

TATTOO #5

Then his right peck and right side of his body is dedicated to Lenora. The focus on the tattoo is over his ribs, symbolizing his soul, because that's what Lenora is to him. His soulmate, his everything really. Its of this vibrant beautiful detailed sun, and it's behind it is this figure with large tattered and barely hanging on wings. The right wing is beginning to wrap itself around the sun and you can see that that wing is healing a bit, while the other wing is outstretched away from the sun, and you can see the full extent of how worn and tattered this wing is and it extends all the way up to the tattoo he has that's dedicated to the Golden Trio. Lenora is his sun, he's always viewed her as such and she's always had this healing quality to her that seemed specifically tailored to heal him. Hence the wing beginning to heal as it is coming into contact with the sun.

TATTOO #6

The left sleeve that is finished when EJ is about 42 years old is dedicated to his children, Ryan, Izzy and Marc. It's located on his left arm because that's his weak arm and his children make him stronger.

TATTOO #7

Inspired by something that Lenora said about his tattoos and by that one sentence Roland said to him all those years ago. Lenora off handedly one day said something like, "Your tattoos are like you're armor aren't they? You're like a knight proudly wearing his armor..Instead of showing your life story they show who and what protected you and what gave you strength during your life." and Roland said something like, "Your armor may be cracked and dented but it will never fail you." and EJ because he was still a dick and had just finished detoxing from alcohol said very sarcastically, "In my Armor I trust" So this last tattoo he gets probably two years after he gets his sleeve done, so he's about 44, is a medieval styled flap of armor that's been a bit modernized I suppose, that ends up being about a quarter sleeve on his right arm and in all lowercase letter it says, "my armor my be cracked and dented but it will never fail me." and right below that in slightly larger all cap letters it says, "IN MY ARMOR I TRUST". He also got some detailing work done over the next few months after that to make the tattoos on his upper body look like they're part of that armor.