Last week, my parents both sent me separate Sorry for Your Loss e-mails. My brother called to say how regretful he was and friends of mine were messaging me the same sentiment. I even had two ex-boyfriends text me individual condolences.

Y’see… J.D. Salinger died.

I’m not a Salinger scholar. I’m not a Salinger historian. I’m just a fan. A silly little fan girl. Apparently a lot of the people I know were aware of it and, when Salinger passed away, I had friends and family telling me I was the first person they thought of, wanted to tell me they were sorry “your boy” was gone,” they knew he was “your favorite author,” R.I.P., all of it. My mother even said, “He’ll be immortalized for your lifetime – at least on your skin.”

This is, hands down, the only kind or positive thing my mother has ever said about any of my various tattoos, but she was referring to two in particular – I have the word “Rye” on my lower back (guess which Salinger book that’s for!) and the number 9 between my shoulder blades (for Nine Stories).

I guess I just liked Salinger’s work enough to tattoo my own mementos of it on my body.

I was 18 when I got the little three-letter word scripted as a tramp stamp on my back. I originally wanted to get the words, “Catch Me,” back there, and today I honestly give thanks for whoever the tattoo artist was in that shop back in Indianapolis who talked me out of it, compared it to the words, “Slippery When Wet,” shook his head at me when I tried to explain what it meant to me. I told him it was for Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, told him about Holden’s day dream about the rye on the edge of the cliff.

I remember asking the tattoo guy if he remembered that scene, the book’s name sake, if he remembered that part where Holden’s in charge of catching the children in the rye from falling over the edge, about how I wished someone was around to do that for me still, that I wasn’t ready to go over the cliff, I wasn’t ready to not be naïve anymore. I wanted someone to catch me (get the tattoo idea?) and I found my hero in Holden, this silver-haired teenager.

In Holden, I saw a boy very nearly feeling what I was at the time, but he was a person who wasn’t willing to fall victim to adulthood or, if he did, he wanted to save the rest of us from it, wanted to save us from the hard, bad stuff that comes with growing up. But Holden turned out to be my underdog after his nervous breakdown in the end, my failed hero.

The tattoo guy told me if I wasn’t ready, I shouldn’t be getting a tattoo. And he was right. I got the Rye a few months later via a different tattoo artist at a different tattoo shop, making up more meaning in my head, that with the word on my back, it was a little bit like being in the Rye, or having the Rye on me, or… Something to that effect.

My number 9 rests in the middle of my back and, I admit, as the years pass, I find myself going back to Nine Stories more than I go back to Catcher. I find myself relating to every character in Nine Stories. I still tear up when I think about Seymour Glass’s suicide in the first story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (no one understood him! Oh, GOD!), and smirking at Teddy predicting his own death in the last story, “Teddy,” (Did the little Buddhist boy get closer to nirvana?) and the whole book arcs from a death steeped in the loss of hope to a death rich with the best of hopes.

Listen – I have my own ideas of what these books are about. I don’t know if this was how Salinger intended for these stories to be interpreted or if there’s some article somewhere that validates my opinion. I’m just a fan girl. I read his work and still have a hard time putting it down or putting it out of my head. His dialogue is fantastic and believable and witty and cool. His characters are heartbreaking, or hilarious, or pathetic, or all of them, or two of them, and they are always – always – relatable.

Maybe these are the two biggest reasons I have loved Salinger’s work – I am in love with all of his characters. In love. All the way. Kablow. I wish I could write characters the way he could, write dialogue that jumps into your ears the second you read it, like you’re actually seeing this person in front of you, can hear dialect and inflection in their voice.

God. GOD. I love his work.

And that’s what I keep reminding myself now. I love his work. I STILL love his work, even when the man who put it on paper isn’t part of this life anymore. But we get to keep on reading. We get to keep these characters and these stories. Because even my tattoos will fade eventually – but those stories will always be there for us.

Tags:   Catcher in the Rye · J.D. Salinger · Lisa Battiston · Nine Stories · tattoos1 Comment