Qojak

Qojak is a Native American working at a casino, making zines, and giving tattoos.

Here, we talk with him about casino life, his early years reading comics, and his fear of becoming an alcoholic.


Chief Magazine: So what’s your name, man?

Qojak: Darius Kapayou-Carr. It’s called a hyphenated name.

That’s a pretty sweet last name.

I don’t like it.

No?

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Whenever I go to the liquor store, they would ask me if I was Muslim or something. Because my name’s really long; my middle name is Jebediah. My full name goes all the way across my ID. The guy’s like, "Are you some kind of Arab?"

That’s fucked up that you’re catching shit for that. So where are you from? Where are you located now?

I’m from Iowa. Tama, Iowa. It’s a little town with maybe four thousand people in the middle of the state, next to the Meskwaki Indian settlement.  That’s where the casino where I work is.

So you’re still there.

I’m driving back to the casino right now. My girlfriend just got hired as a pastry chef at the casino. So she came in and got her bag and her chef outfit and all that kind of stuff. I just took her home. I was going to go back to the casino, but now I’m just going to drive around, kill time until four o’clock when I can punch in.

That’s pretty cool. How long have you been working at the casino?

Probably three years. I first started working in surveillance.
I worked graveyard shift surveillance for a year and a half.
I originally applied to be a graphic designer but some woman beat me out.  They said, “We’ll give you a job in surveillance instead.” I worked up there. Then that woman quit, so I transferred last year. So I’ve been doing design there for about
14 months.

It’s cool that you just waited her out.   

Well, I had no choice really, there’s nothing else around here to do. I actually got paid more in surveillance, but I got bored of it, so when the offer came up, I took a pay cut of, like, two bucks an hour. But I get the opportunity to sit at a computer and work on my own stuff, and we have a print shop here at the casino. So for color, it’s one cent per side, and I can make zines, full color, for two cents per sheet.

That’s insane. You can make dirt-cheap zines.    
     
Yeah, and I can print posters that are on vinyl for like three bucks for something like 40 inches across and 70 inches tall. When I got that job I started hooking up my friends who were in bands for their concert posters.

It’s cool that you’re able to take advantage of the facilities like that.

Yeah, they’re really cool about giving employees discounts on the stuff, because, really, the print shop is fully functional. They even have an offset press. But a lot of that stuff is never used. They’re always kind of twiddling their thumbs.

Alright, so let’s start with the background of the art that you make. What were you into when you were younger? Where did it all come from?

I have uncles that are maybe five to 10 years older than me, and they all smoked a lot of weed and had Cheech and Chong albums, and death comics, and stuff you’d get at head shops, you know? I think there was a head shop in Des Moines.  They would go there and they always had Heavy Metal Magazine, death comics and some other Crumb stuff.

So how old were you when you were getting exposed to that stuff?

I was probably like seven, eight, nine.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, I remember seeing the Robert Crumb stuff when I was really young. But my uncle, he used to have all these Playboys and Hustlers. He would cut them up and hang them all over his walls. My grandparents would tell me I couldn’t go in his room.  I would tell them I was going outside to play and then I’d go in his room. I’d go in the closet and look at all his magazines and stuff, and plus they were artists and they could draw. So I’d look in the sketchbooks too, and they were all into Heavy Metal Magazine.

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So when did you get started making work?

I was always interested in zines and stuff, because you could go to Des Moines and Iowa City. So I got into it in high school; I started making zines and stuff.

So how many zines do you have out now? Were they long runs or one-offs?

I’ve probably done like five or six so far. I’m just now starting to do color stuff and real heavily graphic stuff, whereas before I would have short stories, and draw pictures, have my friends interview bands…

Cool, so it’s like a whole team.    

Well, just whoever would help me, whoever was interested in doing stuff like that.

So at the same time were you making posters?

Well, posters, I got into that when I moved to Chicago. That was 1998 or something.

What were you doing in Chicago?

I worked in a print shop. I went to Columbia College there for a year. I went there for photo-journalism. They gave me a course for video photography, and that’s when I started using Photoshop. I took a summer job at a print shop saying I could do graphic design, and they hired me on as a typesetter and then I started making posters.

Sweet. I’ve looked at a lot of the posters on your site, like the one of that girl Alex that you were telling me about.

Thanks. I don’t even remember how I know that chick.

[Laughs] That’s kind of what I was getting at. How do you find your subjects? How do you pick these people? Are they friends?

When I started drawing girls it was when I started doing tattoos, and I’m real bad at talking up girls. But when I started doing tattoos I could ask them if I could take pictures of them and stuff like that. So I’d take pictures and draw on some photos.

That makes sense, gives you something to talk about. When did you start doing the tattoos?

I got my first set of machines in 2000 or 2001. I started getting tattoos when I was 17 or 18, and then I decided I wanted to start doing tattoos, and I just started doing it on my own. I was real bad. I was just fucking people up in my house. A couple years ago when I moved back to Iowa, there was a tattoo shop in a town like maybe a half-hour away from me, which was the closest one, and they were like, “Let’s see what you can do.” I just wanted an apprenticeship to learn, but they gave me a chair, and then I just started working.

Oh wow, they put you to work immediately?

Yeah, like right off the bat.

That’s fucking dangerous.

Yeah it probably wasn’t a good idea, but I really needed the money at the time and it helped me out.

Do you still work there?

I just quit a few months ago, well more than a few months ago, like March, that’s when I quit, because the guys in Modern Life is War [Marshalltown, Iowa band] told me the shop I worked at was pretty bootleg so I just quit. They asked me to start doing tattoos at their house, so I started going to work with those guys pretty much exclusively.

So what’s it like where you’re living now?

I live at my parents’ house.

And that’s where you were at before you went to Chicago?

No, I went to college in Kansas first at an Indian college that cost 75 bucks.

No shit. It cost 75 bucks?

Yeah there’s a Haskell Indian College in Kansas, if you’re Native American, and you have documents to prove it, you can go there for 75 dollars, room and board.

Was it any good? Did you have a good time there?

No, it was a bullshit college. It was like being in grade school again. And I pretty much just fucked it up real bad. I failed, and then I moved out of the dorms after a couple of weeks, and then I just dropped out.

And then you moved over to Chicago.

No, I stayed living in Lawrence for maybe half a year.

But you’re originally from Iowa, right?

Yeah, I’m from Iowa.

I’m just trying to get my head around it. You said you live on the reservation? Or near the reservation?

No, there’s a town right next to the settlement. The tribe has a settlement. I think there are two in the United States. It’s different from a reservation because the tribe actually bought the land, it wasn’t appointed to the tribe, the picked out the spot and they purchased it. And they’ve been expanding on that. I think they got 80 acres at first, and they’ve been expanding on it ever since.

When did they pick that up? When did they buy it?

Shit, I don’t remember my history. 1800s.

So just awhile ago.   

Right.

Is that where the casino is?

Yeah. They built a casino and as soon as they got their money from the casino, they’ve been expanding the land ever since, and now they own a large portion of the county. It just kept growing and growing.

No shit.

So the tribe is pretty wealthy right now because we’ve got this casino.

I’m just trying to piece it together in my head because this is like nothing I know.

Yeah, it’s pretty stupid.

I don’t know, a casino sounds like a pretty boss idea, but you didn’t seem too into it earlier, so…

No. I’m going to start talking shit about it. It’s a piece of shit place.

What’s wrong with it?

Everybody there, like all the supervisors and stuff, they’re all people from the settlement. I’m going to give you an example. It’s a bad example, but my girlfriend, she worked at a bakery—[to his girlfriend] How long ago did you work at a bakery?

Jacqueline: Like 12th grade.

When she was a senior in high school she worked in a bakery. Were you a cashier?

Jacqueline: Yeah, a cashier.

She was a cashier at a bakery. The dude across the hall from me is the head chef. And I know him because I’ve talked to him because he’s across the hall from me. So I’m like yeah, my girlfriend worked at a bakery, and so we ended up hooking it up when my girlfriend was looking for a job. So now she’s the head pastry chef.

And she’s supposed to have a college degree from a culinary institute, she’s supposed to have at least four years of training in culinary arts or whatever, but now she’s the head pastry chef. That’s how it works, you know. You don’t have to know shit. Just talk to anybody that’s from the area, especially if you’re Indian, you can get a job. All of my bosses have like no college education, some of them maybe have GEDs, but they’re my bosses, and they’re stupid and they don’t know anything about their job description, but they can tell me what to do. Like all my bosses in the marketing department, all of the advertising, the advertising manager is a girl that’s younger than me, she barely graduated high school, but she’s in charge of advertising for this multimillion-dollar company. She’s in charge of advertising.

Jesus.

And I’m the graphic designer there, and I get paid 12 bucks an hour; I’ve been trying to get a raise ever since I fucking get there. I’m like, listen, when I was in Chicago, I was doing ads for like R. Kelly and CRYSTALS record label—not that that means anything, but I know a little something about promotions, and they think I’m retarded. They won’t listen to me.

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But it sounds like it worked out for your girlfriend.

Well yeah, but that’s—

Sounds like you guys are doing alright.

[Laughs] I guess. Well like, today I got a work order for all the billboards that are—this is a crazy thing I learned today. All the billboards in Iowa are owned by Clear Channel. So she gave me a work order for all the Clear Channel billboards in the state of Iowa that my casino bought, which is like hundreds of thousands of dollars and we have to but up these advertisements that go across the state of Iowa. Which, I don’t know—I’m going to go off on a tangent. Before, you had to have a riverboat casino, like it had to be on the water. But they changed the law, so now any town that wants a casino can have one, and they can just be anywhere, near a city or whatever. So in the last couple years, ten other casinos opened up in our area, where as before we had no competition.

Oh, shit.

And we just got like a multimillion-dollar expansion on our casino, but now that’s all fucked up, because there’s, like, ten other casinos in all the cities around us. So I’m really trying to tell the people that are my bosses, like, “Listen, we need to do better advertising, we need to start some kind of marketing campaign to mark our territory, because there’s always billboards around saying, ‘Why travel up to Tama when in your city there’s a casino opening up?’” People used to drive like, a couple hours to come to work at the casino, but now—

Well, they have one next door, so why bother?

Exactly. But no one wants to fucking listen to me because I’m a retard. They’re like, “Fuck you.”

That’s fucked up that they deregulated. So now they can just open them up fucking anywhere.

Yeah, and in the town next door to the casino, the town is maybe two miles away, and they’re talking about opening up a casino now. So it’s like everybody is trying to get a piece of that. It fucking sucks.

So how long has the casino been there?

Since probably 1994 or something. They had a bingo parlor. Then it turned into a casino, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Now it’s pretty much like a resort type place.

Gotcha. So clearly you hate the casino, but do other people hate the casino? Are people into it because they can get jobs there? Or did it fuck shit up?

There are pluses and minuses; I have mixed feelings about it, because the people from the tribe get money from it. They’re not on welfare anymore. I remember when I was young, some people didn’t even have cars; they would have to get rides to town and stuff like that. But then it went the total extreme, so now kids who are 16 years old have Escalades with 22s on them. People are ridiculously rich. So like, my cousins have no survival skills. They’re just living off this money. That’s the reason I’m so hell-bent on trying to get our marketing department up to speed.

You’ve got to save the fucking thing.

Yeah, I don’t want to see us get caught by all these other casinos, because they depend on it. None of these kids have education beyond high school.

What jobs are they offering up to kids?

Well, those kids don’t get jobs. They don’t think they need jobs, because they can just live off what they’re given.

Oh. Fuck.

Wait. This interview is going in the wrong direction.

Okay, yeah, we moved away. We moved away from any of your art at all. Started talking about that shit. So you’re still doing the tattoos, right?

Sometimes at my house or at people’s houses. Yeah, after I quit the shop I pretty much just started doing it on friends and people who know me.

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That’s cool. And that’s just your original designs?
Or are you doing everything now?

Yeah, well… like, most people that I know that want tattoos just want like names or praying hands or crosses and that kind of stuff.

Okay. So are you just focusing on the zines now? I’m just trying to figure out what you’re working on now. Because I look at the site and I see a lot of the art, but I’m not really clear if they’re posters, or pages from the zines, or if there’s a difference?

I’ve never done a gallery show or anything, because there’s nothing around here like that. And really, there’s no audience for zines around where I’m living. Art is—I mean, nobody around where I’m living cares about that kind of stuff. So, I don’t know.

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This guy paid me to make a zine so I made one, and that’s the first one I’ve made in a couple years. I made one before and I made like 500 copies, and I ended up hanging on to a lot of them for a long time.

Right. So who is the guy who paid you to do them?

This dude named John Piche'. He’s from Cleveland, and he does a zine website called Love Bunni. He goes to like zine conferences and expos; he uses comic shops that sell zines.

Cool. He was just a fan of your work?

I got a hold of him somehow. We started talking, and I told him the idea he just sent me a check. A Batman check [laughs].

He sent you a what check?

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You know how you can get personalized checks, of your favorite sports teams or whatever?

Yeah.

It was a Batman check.

Okay.

I needed money at the time, so I ended up spending all his money and then I didn’t finish his zine for like four months. So I had to come up with the money and I ended up doing it. I sent it to him and he was pretty happy.

I guess you were saying earlier that the print shop at the casino helps a lot. And you draw a lot from pictures? The only things I’ve seen—it’s mostly girls, right?

Yeah, I like drawing stuff like that.

They’re fucking dope. I’m into them. I’ve got no complaints. I was just wondering if you have any interest in drawing other stuff?

Well I like Higher Chrome, Robert Crumb. I always liked how he drew a lot of women and a lot of stuff like that. I like looking at it, so I guess I like producing that kind of stuff. Whenever I make something I think of if I were to give it to myself when I was 13 and 14. I wish I could go back in time and show me this stuff, like, “Check this out.” That’s the whole inspiration.

I know I’m happy with whatever I’m doing when I know my 13 or 14-year-old self would be impressed with it. I feel like it’s more honest, and that’s clearly who I am.

Yeah, I think a lot of guys are like that. People who read comics and stuff like that. The age when you are who you are. I wanted to ask you—because in one of the first emails you sent us it said something about drinking beer—do you remember the first time you got drunk?

I didn’t actually start drinking until I was over 21.

Really? You’re a legal one? You started drinking when it was legal.

Yeah, yeah. I never drank before I was 21.

Really. Why?

Because I was scared of becoming an alcoholic.

Okay. So how has it worked out since? How old are you now?

I’m 27 years old.

So in the last six years, have you become an alcoholic?

Man, it happened after the first time I got drunk, you know. I got it.

I don’t see why not. It tastes really good and it feels great.

I’m just worried about when I get older and I don’t want to get diabetes or liver failure.

I rarely think about the fact that I’ll be doing the same shit in 30 years that I’m doing now. So that will probably fuck me up eventually.

It can go either way though, because I know a lot of people who are like 70 or 80 and they drink every day [laughs]. I just hope I’m one of those guys that makes it a long time.

[Laughs] You and me both, man.

I have a friend, he’s the same age as me, and he has a drinking problem and he got all bummed out because one of his uncles told him that after 30 it’s all downhill because you start having health problems. He’s calling me up and he’s all bummed out about the end of the road being 30.

I just notice more and more that I’m not young anymore. I’m 26. Yeah, it’s kind of depressing. We’re not young. I mean I don’t feel old but I sure as fuck don’t feel young.

I sometimes think of Charles Bukowski, who was 40 when he started publishing his first shit. So that makes me feel good sometimes, like maybe I’m not even born yet, you know?

Right. Like one of those late bloomers.

It happens.

Yeah, it happens! That’ll keep the fucking spring in your step; that ain’t bad. So what are you working on now, if you have the zine you just finished—or when did that zine come out?

I just did it and the guy who published the zine, his website sucks real bad. When he first gave me the money and told me to finish it, he gave me a list of all the places he could put it up. Really, my goal is just to be able to jump from project to project, just to be busy, I just want to be working. And the guy gave me the check so he kept me busy for a couple weeks. That was like a wet dream, I guess. But I have it available on my website and on PayPal. It’s only like three bucks. He got it and he sent it out. I was just concerned that it went out to the comic shops in Minneapolis and Chicago and stuff like that.

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So what are you working on now?

I’m still working on and finishing all the Modern Life is War stuff. That’s cool, because they paid me a lot. My buddies keep telling me that little bands will probably want me to do their stuff after they see my name in the liner notes, demos and stuff. I’m down to do all that stuff, I just want as many projects as possible. I have a day job, so I’m not worried about making money, I’ll do layouts for like a low-budget brand for like, fifty bucks.

No shit. So how did you initially hook up with Modern Life is War?

John, he’s the guitar player, he lives upstairs from the tattoo shop, like it’s an apartment complex, it’s a two-story building. He lives right upstairs from the tattoo shop, so that’s how I met them. They came downstairs to put up flyers. I told them their flyers sucked and I’d do them for free. I didn’t know who they were; I was just doing flyers for everybody, everybody who was doing shows in Marshalltown. As long as they would advertise the tattoo shop on the flyers, I would do them for free. So I did Modern Life is War. And then I was talking to one of my friends and he was like, “Did you know those guys are on Deathwish?” And I didn’t even know who they were. After that, they were asking me to do more stuff for them, and after I met them, a few weeks later I finally heard Witness and I was like, “Holy shit! That’s a great album.” That’s the kind of music I listen to, so I was all embarrassed because I was impatient with them and I wasn’t spending any time talking to them or anything. I mean I had two full-time jobs, so every time they came down to the shop I’d be busy doing a tattoo or whatever, and I’d just be like, “Look, your shit’s done. Here it is. I don’t want to hang out.” And it wasn’t like I didn’t want to hang out with them, but I had shit to do.

Yeah, you were working.

I was always tired. Then I found out who they were, and they were my heroes after I heard the album, [laughs] Then after I heard the album I wanted to hang out with them all the time. It was pretty funny.

That’s dope. Did you do other work with them besides the flyer?

I made some posters for them, then I started doing tattoos on them, they asked me if I could do tattoos. I was like a fan boy after listening to the album. I was like, “Listen, man, if you just give me like ten bucks or buy me lunch I’ll do a big ass tattoo on you.”
 
That’s fucking awesome. So are you covering all those boys?

I think I’ve done Sjarm so far. I’ve done like three on Sjarm, like, two on Jeff, and I have one in progress on Jeff but I don’t know if he’s going to let me finish it because we had a falling out, kind of. I did John’s girlfriend. I think Tim’s going to get one next.

That’s pretty fucking cool. It’s cool that the whole fucking band is going to be wearing your shit. On flesh.

Well yeah, I like them a lot. I liked the album so much I was like, “I’m going to do as much as I can for these guys just to be able to sit next to them and talk to them, hang out, I guess.”

Yeah, you see somebody’s shit and you really respect the hell out of them. It just clicks, man. That’s awesome. Is there anything you want to bring up?

I don’t know. You could ask Jacqueline about me, because she could probably tell me more about me than I could.

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Jacqueline: I’ve actually got a story.

Qojak: The last zine I wrote was about domestic violence. It was about a guy who beat the shit out of this chick because of drinking and stuff. A lot of the people around here, like my friends, they believe me, they’re reading it and they think it’s true because I like stuff that’s kind of like—but all these people are starting to send me texts and they’re telling me like, “What the fuck? What happened? I heard you beat up this chick!” And it’s just a stupid short story. The actual reason why I wrote that story was because Jacqueline just moved down here from Minneapolis, and the day I was moving her down, her dad came up to me and was shaking my hand. He just started squeezing my hand real hard, like crazy style, like he was trying to break my hand. [Laughs] And I’m like 6 foot 5, 260 pounds, and her dad’s probably like—How tall is your dad? Like 6’1?  But I was like oh this is pressure, this guy is trying to bruise my hand real hard. He looked me in the eye and was like, “Listen, man. I don’t want any domestic violence going on; I don’t want you beating her ass.” And I wanted to cry. I was offended that this guy would think I’m capable of—

Jacqueline: Well, look at you!

Well see that’s the thing, I don’t think of myself that way. I like art and stuff.  I like to listen to pretty music and stuff. I’m not—and her dad was totally sincere, like, “I don’t wanting you hitting my baby.” And I’m like, “What the fuck, I’m not that kind of guy.” So then today Jacqueline and I are watching a movie. The guy stabbed up his wife, and so I asked her, “Do I seem like the kind of person who would do something like that?” And she’s like, “Yeah.”

Jacqueline: I’m sorry!

At the casino, too, I go into the café to go get my coffee, and I heard them talking. They don’t like me going back there because I scare the waitresses.

Jesus. How fucking tall are you?

Like 6’5”. And I’m like a teddy bear. But people who think—

I get it, you’re on the inside. You can’t see how big you are. Shit’s just natural, you’re just you. But to other people, you’re a fucking mountain. 6’5”? You’re a big dude! Jesus Christ.

But I think that’s kind of something I wrestle with; I’m trying to do the stuff that’s the opposite. I know a couple things about design and advertising, but I think they think I’m just a big, dumb—a big, dumb Bigfoot or something.

That’s got to be frustrating.

Well yeah. What’s that book, Of Mice and Men, that big dude who fucks with that chick—well, I’m not a retard, but—

Yeah. I’m not sure that’s the right book for you. I don’t think that dude was doing so much art. So the last question I usually ask, has there ever been a time in your life when you thought your life was in danger and you just thought, “Oh shit, this is it. This is the end?” Ever had a day like that? Or a moment like that?

When I first moved back from Chicago, there was this guy. I don’t know how much I should tell of this story, but there was this guy named Tyrone Roberts, and he used to fight in UFC [Ultimate Fighting Championship]. I forget what they call him, the Native Warrior or shit. So I came back, I went to a bar. I was with my aunt and they were like, celebrating me coming home from Chicago. And they gave me a ride. And this girl, she was all wasted, and I remember she was like singing that Nelly Furtado song, “I’m Like a Bird,” she could sing it in Meskwaki. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. And she was like, “Do you want to come into my house?” And I was probably like, 23, something like that, and I’m like, “Holy shit, I’m going to get laid!” We go into the house, and we were drinking a little bit more and she was like, “Oh, I have to go to bed, my boyfriend’s in there.” And I’m like, “What the fuck?” So I slept on the couch. And her boyfriend was this other guy that did fighting and stuff. And I’m not interested in that. I like to watch fighting. But I’m not a violent person.

So I lay down on the couch, started going to sleep, and all of a sudden this guy came in and it was Tyrone Roberts, who is a fighter. And he saw me on the couch, and went back into the bedroom, and I was scared shitless because it was crazy. There were rumors going around that he was on meth at the time. And his girlfriend’s another chick, I’ve never even seen this chick. But she was in the bedroom, he goes in there and starts yelling at her, and trying to check me out, and he’s like looking at me. And his eyes are all bulging like he’s all methed out. And I stand up, I don’t even know him, and he doesn’t know me, and now he’s looking up at me and I’m looking down at him and I can tell that he’s tripping out about the fact that I’m taller than him and I probably weigh more than him. But I’m looking at him, just scared shitless of this guy, because I know he could beat the fuck out of me. But I’m like, what am I going to do, what am I going to do, so I take a cigarette out and start smoking it, and I’m like, “what’s going on man,” and he’s like, “What the fuck are you doing here?” So I take a cigarette out and I put it in his mouth. I shoved it in his mouth and I was like, “cool it,” and he started moving towards me, and I lit his cigarette, and he was like what the fuck? [Laughs] In my mind I was scared shitless, but I was like, I’m just going to act like nothing is happening. I’m going to try and fix the situation, but I could see him like turning around. And in my brain, I’m like, “Wow, this guy is scared of me,” and we’re just starting at each other, and it’s super awkward, so I’m like, “Allright. I’m going to pass out.” And I’m in his house. And the next day I go to tell all my cousins, you’re never going to believe this, I was in Tyrone Roberts’ house last night and he was all stoned and fucking trying to fight me but I put a cigarette in his mouth. But no one believed me.

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Jesus fucking Christ.

And then in the morning some dude showed up, and he brought groceries, which I thought was weird. Because in the morning I woke up and I was on the couch and those guys were all awake already. I don’t even know if they went to bed, and some guy pulled up with groceries for them, he had eggs and bread, bacon, orange juice and all this stuff. And they take him into the kitchen, and the one dude opens up this loaf of bread and it was all hollowed out and there was just all this methamphetamine.

That’s fucking insane. Thanks so much.






Website
www.qojak.com

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