Tagger

“Hey, Bro – wake up! Class is over. We’re gonna be late.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, you got Ms. Taylor really angry. She put the timer next to your ear and you still didn’t wake up!”

My eyes were beginning to focus now. I wiped some drool off my mouth. My friend, Roberto, was talking a mile a minute, his silver chains swaying to his movements.

“You mean Testy Taylor tried to wake me up and couldn’t? Man, that’s lame.”

“The whole class was cracking up. That alarm buzzed right in your face and you didn’t even move. You were breathing heavy, like you was snoring, and your face was resting on your forearm and your lip was all pushed up like a duck.”

“Why didn’t you shake me or something?” I asked him, as we walked to our next class at Sunrise High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

“I couldn’t – I was on the other side of the room. Marisol tried to say something to you, but nothing helped,” he laughed. “I have to admit, it was funny, watching Ms. T getting more and more angry and you just sleeping away like a baby.”

Oh, Man, I thought to myself. Marisol had to see me like that! Marisol . . . I could just see her big brown eyes watching the whole thing, the same big brown eyes that have me so into her. Again, I was the fool. Tiny, puny Luis, the laugh of the classroom.

You see, at 14 and only 5’4”, people always called me by my nickname, “Tiny,” the same tag I used in all of my graff drawings in my Black Book. But lately, I tagged by my new name, Rheōno. My drawings were getting sick, and through them, I was becoming recognized as a talented graffiti artist. They had a strong hold on me and many nights, I was up until early morning, drawing sketch after sketch, perfecting different styles and techniques. Like last night – I must have finally fallen asleep about 3 a.m., so no wonder I fell asleep in my intensive reading class at 7:30! Who wants to read at 7:30 in the morning? All I wanted to do was work on my Black Book.

It was hard to explain, but graffiti had become my life, my soul. I had spent hours and hours on my computer researching different graff styles, first here in America and then overseas. As an artist, when you look at another artist’s work, you usually can tell what he’s feeling, and when I saw graffiti, I saw soul. I would always get lost looking at it because I’d always try to find out what the artist was saying or what message he was trying to get across, and after a while it became really easy for me to read graffiti, so I got into it. I started comparing styles from New York and Los Angeles; it was very interesting, the way that Graff would look in one region and then look totally different in another region. I did some research on the internet. I started with the art style in Florida and then New York and Los Angeles and then after that, I realized that the American population has their own style and colors. Then I researched French graffiti and I started checking out their style and they were more about imagery, but they also used caricatures a lot. Once I explored the art work in France, I researched all the art work in Germany and their colors are full -- they use a lot of red; they are very strong. Then I studied Mexico, and they’re all about their culture, basically Mayan, heavily influenced by the revolution.

“Hey dreamer, what are you in such deep thought about?” Marisol asked me. How could I describe Marisol? She was gorgeous with smooth, caramel-colored skin from her native Dominican Republic, curly shoulder length hair and big brown eyes that just connected with me. I had a major crush on her, but so far, we were just friends.

“Just trying not to be late for art class. Ms. Zacker is cool, but she doesn’t like you being late.”

“Just try to stay awake for her class!” Marisol laughed, hitting me on the shoulder, playfully. Her touch ran through me. “Ms. Taylor was really angry with you this morning when you didn’t wake up.”

That image of me stung – me sleeping when Ms. Taylor put that alarm clock next to my ear with the whole class laughing at me, especially because Marisol had to see it all. I tried to play it off, like it didn’t matter.

“Hey, I was up until 3 a.m. last night, working in my Black Book. I got involved in a collage drawing with lots of different images – couldn’t stop if I tried,” I said. It was the truth, graffiti was my thing. It’s what I do. It was slowly taking up more and more of my life. Would I be ready to go to the streets with my art? I felt the time was coming, soon.

“Okay, see you at lunch,” Marisol said. I didn’t have to explain myself with Marisol. She totally understood. That’s why we’re such good friends and why I like her so much. I’d like to see if we could be more, but if it hurt our friendship, then it wouldn’t be worth it. Marisol was just too important to me. She was one of the few girls I knew who appreciated graffiti for what it was – art and expression, not a criminal activity. Sometimes, after school, we’d just sit together and draw. She was partial to monkeys and loved to draw monkeys, while I loved to draw everything – people’s names, symbols. I got lost in my drawings, and took great pride in them. When I’d do a piece for someone, I’d think about that person and use the colors I thought they’d like, the shapes that would appeal to them. I wanted to venture out into the streets to do my work on a more public arena, but couldn’t stand it if the city officials painted over my work. My designs were like my babies, and I couldn’t bear to have people shun them and try to paint over them.

As I sat in Ms. Zacker’s art class, listening to a lecture on Expressionist Art, our Assistant Principal, Mr. Docker, strode in. He was one of those APs you didn’t want to mess with – 6’7”, African-American, and not prone to smiling much. He had a few words with Ms. Zacker, showed her some papers, and then said, “Luis Arteago, come with me.”

I grabbed up my Black Book, stuffed it into my backpack, which was huge enough to fit all my graff supplies -- markers, shoe paint, spray cans, my Black Book. Kids called me the Ninja Turtle because my backpack covered most of my back! What did ol’ Docker want with me?

Once outside the classroom, it was just me and Docker. I looked up at him, feeling like a dwarf, my 5’4” frame puny under his 6’7” presence.

“Arteago – you’re in trouble, big trouble. You see some wise ass kid around here keeps marking up our bathroom walls with graffiti – goes by the name of Rheōno. Sound familiar to you, eh Arteago?”

With Docker you didn’t have a first name, just your last -- especially if you were in trouble. He flashed some photo prints of the tags around our school, all bearing the tagger name, Rheōno. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I felt like a fish caught on a line. I just stood there, speechless, and then I shut my mouth.

“I plead the fifth,” I said, not knowing why I even said that. I didn’t even really know what it meant, but I think I saw it on a movie once.

“Don’t get clever with me -- you did it, and now you’re going to have eight weeks of Saturday School to pay for it, starting this Saturday!” He shoved some paperwork in my hands, and I walked back to class, my head down. Naturally, all the kids around me wanted to know what I’d gotten in trouble for, and I passed around the pink referral notice for all to read, even though they’re supposed to be confidential. Ms. Zacker read it too. It’s hard to explain my relationship with Ms. Zacker. First, she is my teacher, but she is also a fellow artist, and she always expressed faith in me. I kinda felt dumb, someone believing in me. She thought I was a good artist and her faith in my talent had always been so important to me.