“Bucket.” Les Claypool, bassist, singer, lyricist of the funk-thrash band Primus, cartoon-voice shouted into the wind toward me. We were on a boat in the San Francisco Bay fishing. Actually boat might be a generous description. Maybe dinghy, although it was big enough to hold four adults, fishing paraphernalia, and some buckets, one of which held a dwindling supply of beer. The other was meant to be used when you’ve consumed a lot of beer and have no actual choice for a toilet. I was not pleased by this notion, even though I know for certain my outward-facing person didn’t let on. It was 1991 and this was my second official assignment for SPIN.

My interview process at the time could be summed up in one word: embed. I wanted to flow alongside whatever band or artist I was covering, trailing, tailing, observing, occasionally arcing out to ask a question—usually one that didn’t quite disrupt—then I’d dip back down and continue swimming alongside. It feels to me now like a kind of Dolphin style. Somewhere in between Hunter S. Thompson and wallpaper with aspirational shades of Susan Orlean. Experiences ranged from squirm-inducing (see: Deicide), sublime (See: baseball with E.Vedder), transportive (see: Nirvana at Redding). Overall, my theory was: If I stay fairly invisible, I’ll catch something real. It only vaguely occurred that by the very act of being there, I was present and disruptive—not in a negative way but rather I wasn’t a ghost. I took up space. I was a journalist who, by an arrangement among many humans from a SPIN assigning editor to the artist’s record company publicist, had planned for whatever situation I found myself in.

With Primus it was hanging out with the band for a day doing whatever it was they wanted to do. At least that was the line. I mean, I knew they enjoyed fishing, but clearly their publicist, manager, etc., had put their heads together and settled on this as a fun way for a SPIN writer to catch them in action—other than just watching them at a show. And I was not at all upset about that. Fishing with Primus sounded great. Until I had to use the bucket, which was weird and didn’t make the story. (In fact, re-reading the story p.38, none of this made it in since the direction of the piece shifted completely. My first lesson in assignments changing constantly. The photo does kind of look like it’s taken from the bottom of a bucket though. So there’s that.). The other things, like squeezing worms onto hooks and floating around in the sun (I’d probably forgotten sunscreen, tho) were actually not terrible. The band members, according to my hazy memory, melted into something that seemed more real than stage presence with every warm beer and occasional caught fish. (I caught none. though not on purpose.)

After returning to shore, Les and I went to get tattoos because, well it seemed obvious why. It was next on the list of Favorite Things To Do. I didn’t think twice about this. I didn’t have any tattoos (yet), but it seemed as good a time as any to get one. A way to physically mark my full immersion into music journalism and SPIN, where at this point I felt I would work until the end of days doing various and random things with all sorts of exciting musicians while I perfected my Dolphin-ride-along interview technique and made a tiny salary that justified the starving-artist mindset I lived by. (Boy is there a lot of unpacking that could be done around that last sentence.) At the shop, Les decided to get a cartoon mosquito named Skeeter inked on his head. I chose a parrotfish because it seemed the most colorful of all the pictures I had to choose from. I asked the tattoo artist to make it no larger than a quarter on my upper-left arm, then concentrated on not screaming as the needle zzzzzzz’d because naturally I did not want to be uncool. I mean, if Les was having small needles rat-tat-tat into his skull, jeeeezzzuuuz, I could handle that same thing in a fairly flesh-intensive part of my body. The twist on mine was that the ink glowed under black light! Yes! You read that correctly: The colors of my little fish GLOWED. Under black light. I had no idea whether that was a dangerous thing to be putting into my flesh. I also didn’t consider that I really spent zero time in any environment where black light was a feature and I doubted I’d revamp the interior lighting in my apartment to include any nor would I be hanging out in any weird blacklight Grateful Dead/Jefferson Airplane–poster-filled dens smoking or tripping. But still, at the time, this little feature of my tattoo seemed cool and different and I bored many many of my friends and acquaintances with the fact of it. I also discovered that there was a blacklight in the bathroom of the SideWalk Cafe on Avenue A and Sixth Street in NYC and I would go in there fairly often just to make sure the thing was still working.

Now that I think about it, the slow fade of that ink was about parallel to the incremental diminishment and subsequent evening out my expectations around how I approached interviews. Somewhere between being personally frozen out by Soundgarden for the Ann Magnuson article and being yelled at for giving a bad review to a band whose album in truth I hadn’t really listened to, I realized I was more than a mammal who just happened to be along for the ride and instead an active participant in the creation of the story. Hrm, responsibility and stuff. That this realization bled into the rest of my life is not at all surprising. That stepping into my own story is very clearly still an ongoing process. Diving in and out of these stories as I write this blog helps to put things in perspective. Events didn’t just happen to me but were orchestrated and acted upon. This is always true and is increasingly helpful as I live inside family, friend, and Dennis relationships. Nothing is merely happening to me, but with me. And even understanding the really not-great things that have happened doesn’t drop me into a vacuum but with some work can crystalize where to place the anger so that it can be targeted and helpful. And with the good stuff, I can also claim that without some ah-shucks shrug-off, but recognize it with a Yeah, I did that. Hurray for me!

As for my little fish, these days it’s the landing pad for shots and vaccines of all sorts. Just between the pelvic and the anal fin. Also, parrotfish are awesome as I’ve now discovered after finally reading up on them thirty years later. I still don’t know so much about blacklight tattoo ink though.

• a great book