& Me

 

So I went out for a dad and daughter day today, a bit of sushi lunch, some book shopping, we love books, oh and a tattoo session. My daughter, at 18, is onto her sixth. Some with meaning and a few pieces of flash, little tats.

Me, I got my second tattoo ever. The first one is 39 years old, got it when I was sixteen, a junior recruit in the Navy, on the upper side of my left breast, it's barely seen the light of day. Today's tat, though, is the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) ampersand, &. Seven centimetres by seven centimetres on the upper inside of my right forearm, below a short sleeve line for all to see.

Now, here's the dilemma. To the public eye, I am more than a middle-aged white guy, unblemished, a senior executive who wears short sleeves, now with this blemish before them. This is for the D&D players, and there are more out there than you would think. It will be recognisable and will draw different questions to those of the majority, some of whom are my extended family, brothers, sister and parents-in-law.

With this latter group, the new conversation starter now tattooed on me will begin, no doubt, with what and why? Tattoos are pretty permanent, conceptually a big thing, you can't erase or remove them, nor can I, short of wearing long sleeves all year round, hide it from everyone. So they're going to ask.

What is easy? It's the D&D ampersand, for a game that's been around since I was a kid. In fact, it was on the infamous Red Box, the box that started it all for me. Although it will be easy for those to see what the ampersand is, the symbol that looks like a broken number eight, found above the number seven on a standard QWERTY keyboard.

Drawn as a dragon whose body and tail form the main part of the symbol itself, with flame making the dropped right tail of the thing. The detail of the eye, its horns landing at the centre-most piece of the symbol, and something small, vestigial wings lying flat on its back, are located on the bottom left curve of its body.

It's the why of the thing that makes it interesting. On the surface of things, it seemed a cool thing to go out and do with my eldest daughter, a shared experience branded upon me, which we will be reminded of for eternity. That and I already had one, so not such a big thing.

That sentiment belies the truth, as this was spoken about for weeks. Daughter inspired, I went with her recommended artist, socials entailed, with proposals made, outline only, or shaded, and a custom tattoo made. This was no simple fickle thing.

So again, why? Well, it could be that in 2019, just before the pandemic, I'd had a nose job (deviated septum) and while sitting on the couch, I came across the 2014 version of the Red Box and rang that lifelong friend who'd played it with me.

He and I then conspired to give it a go, have a single geek weekend, a one-off, a novel reason to get some friends together. We managed to land on a March weekend in 2020. As the time approached, the 2020 fires had abated to be replaced with a pandemic, which at the time of the weekend was working up to a crescendo that would become COVID-19.

COVID-19 hit, and post-weekend, we decided to commit. From our homes across the east coast, from Melbourne to Sydney, several of us met online weekly throughout the period, with the emergency in Australia being declared ended in September 2022.

Yet as a group of friends, we continue to meet weekly, and this gets me to yet another why. With work and family, and the drift of society in general, it is known that as we get older, our friend groups get smaller for no other reason than that people drift or are pulled away.

Stresses come from all areas, relationships with family and work get strained and challenged, and the philosophy of stress coming from what you cannot control gets, in some ways, stronger as you get older. It's now May 2026, 74 months since we began, and we're still going strong.

Commitments and turmoil have come and gone, with some having to step away for short periods of time to deal with commitment and challenge, but the core group keeps catching up, meeting, and making sure it's still there when you return.

Through this, friendships have extended, and true love and endearment have evolved through the shared storytelling involved. It's really a bunch of old men staying connected and well. We all have our digs, our inside jokes, yet it gives us a space where we can let others know what is going on for us and put it into perspective and reaffirm it'll be ok.

We've openly discussed that this is a good and healthy thing. As we get older, and in a society of social demise and purposeful malaise, it gives us a chance to stay connected and clear.

Yet there is still more to the why. For me and my mind, it has been and is a healthy place. A release for an overactive mind. I'll be honest, before my return to D&D, my wife, as wise as she is, had already set me down the path of creative writing as an alternative to the predilection to workaholism. This is what actually brought me to Story a Day, and eventually a reconnection to my D&D way.

As a committed DM (Dungeon Master) to the group, you could say I've found that avenue that keeps me well. There's not a day that goes by that I do not look at or think about D&D, be it sending a jab, joke or poke at one of the guys, reading lore, writing a plot or building a scene, it is an everyday thing.

Our first and largest campaign ran for four years and produced a tome of D&D notes comparable to The Fellowship of the Ring. I made story beats and ideas never before seen. I overproduce stuff that is never seen, as the players, my captured audience, do something else unexpected by me.

So the true why? It's part of my identity, an identity those closest to me know, those in proximity may be aware of. But now it's just out there, on my arm, for anyone to read, as even at its face value the & alone means connection, continuation and addition, and as a tattoo it will cause exactly that, D&D or not.