We Still Breathing, Dogg

There was a joke between me and Anthony that he’d pull out every year, without fail.

On our birthdays, he’d hit me and say:

“We still breathing, Dogg.”

And I’d laugh every time. Because when we were younger, coming up in the streets, running with the gang, watching everything around us turn violent, I genuinely didn’t think either one of us would make it to 50.

That was just the reality we knew.

In the 80s, in our world, you didn’t know anyone whose house or car hadn’t been shot at. You didn’t plan for 50. You just tried to make it to tomorrow.

So when we both got there—past 50, both 54 now—that joke meant everything. It was proof. It was a miracle neither one of us said out loud, but we both felt it every single year.

He won’t be making that call again.

And I don’t know how to make sense of that yet.

Anthony Agoncillo. Ant. My brother.

41 years.

41 years we moved through this world together. From kids on the street to men with families. From the gang life to building something real. Through prison, parole, garages, shops, states, versions of ourselves neither of us would recognize anymore.

He knew every version of me. The one I’m not proud of. The one I was trying to become. The one I finally got to be.

Not many people can say that.

When I got out of prison in ’95, the first tattoo I ever did was on Anthony.

He didn’t even flinch. He sat there like it was an honor. And in his mind, it was. He wore that tattoo like a badge for the rest of his life, told everyone he was my first canvas. Bragged about it every chance he got.

That was Ant.

2012 at the first Pacific Ink and Art Hawaii Tattoo Expo

He didn’t want credit. He just wanted to be part of the story. He was always happy to be along for the ride.

That’s who he was from day one. When I didn’t have a shop, he lent me his garage. No contract. No conditions. No angle. Some of my most loyal clients to this day came through that garage. The whole foundation of Skin Design traces back to a man who had my back, before I even had a name for myself in this industry.

I was tattooing out of houses—Anthony’s and other close friends—selling pagers and cell phone plans, doing presentations at parties with a bullet-point pen. He was right there, watching, believing. Never laughed at me. Never questioned it. Just watched me go and supported me along the way.

When I moved to North Carolina and needed someone to come with me, he came.

When I moved to Vegas and needed someone to hold it down, he was there.

Front desk. Phones. Booking. Piercing. Laser removal. Whatever the shop needed, he became. Not because it was glamorous, but because he was invested in the dream. My dream. Like it was his own.

25 years with Skin Design.

25 years could never be enough.

Even at Rock Bottom

When things got tight in the early Vegas years, I had to let him go.

That’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. It wasn’t just business. It was personal. He was the one person who’d uprooted his whole life to follow my vision. And I had to sit across from him and tell him I couldn’t keep the lights on.

That kind of decision doesn’t live on paper. It lives in your chest.

The first chance I got to bring him back, I did. No hesitation.

Because you don’t forget who stood next to you when you had nothing.

There’s something I’ve never fully put into words until now.

Ant didn’t have big financial dreams. He wasn’t a hustler in the way I was. He didn’t need the biggest car, the nicest things. He was a minimalist in the deepest sense, not because he lacked ambition, but because what he wanted out of life was simpler than anything money could buy.

He wanted to come to the house and BBQ. Watch the baseball game. Hang out with Vanna.

That was enough for him. That was everything to him.

And watching that—watching a man be completely, genuinely happy with just being present—put weight on me in the best and hardest way. I always wanted more for him. I’d tell him, if I come up, you’re coming up with me. I meant that. I still mean it. But he’d just smile and say he was blessed to be here for the ride.

I bought him that black Dodge Charger years ago. He was so happy. Drove that thing until the very end. His wife still has it to this day, even if he can’t drive it anymore.

He was always so happy to be tattooed by me.

Some people carry joy inside them that doesn’t depend on anything external. Ant was built like that. And sometimes I wish I could be more like him—because in business, you see how fast things change people.

You see ego creep in, relationships sever, people leave on bad terms. It’s one of the fastest ways to make enemies, even out of people you love.

But Ant was the opposite. If he got close to someone, he stayed close. It didn’t matter what happened between them and the business. His loyalty to people was separate from all of that.

And his loyalty to me? That was a different level entirely.

Sometimes, a bond runs deeper than blood.

The Tests That Proved It

There was a moment after my dad was killed where I wanted to become someone I’d worked so hard not to be anymore.

Reena was barely one. I was in North Carolina. And when we found out what happened to my father—that he was followed home, robbed, beaten, killed—something in me snapped. My mind went somewhere dark. Somewhere I recognized but didn’t want to go back to.

I called Anthony.

I told him I needed him to come with me to New York. He knew what I meant. He didn’t talk me out of it. He didn’t ask questions. He just told me he’d be there.

No hesitation. Ready to put himself in front of whatever came next, for me.

I didn’t go. Because I looked at Reena, held her, and chose to be her father instead of what I used to be. She saved me that night without knowing it.

But I will never forget his loyalty in that moment.

That’s the kind of friendship we had.

We watched each other quit cigarettes. Back then, I got him into smoking weed instead. We were like Cheech and Chong.

He knew every dog I bred. He was there when I started breeding the Alvarado and Razors Edge lines. That world was as much his as it was mine.

Teena and Ant

I really believe when he moved out there with us in 2001, his energy, his presence, is what finally let Tee get pregnant after seven years of trying. That became our joke—that him moving to North Carolina is what blessed us.

Ant has kids with different women—it came easy to him—and him moving near us made that kind of luck rub off on us, too.

Our families together on a lake day

He was like family to us. And he helped me with my own family, too. Helped me to be the kind of dad I always wanted to be.

He was my voice of reason. He talked me out of making a mistake with my own daughter when I was too frustrated to think clearly. He cried to me about his personal life. I gave him what I could. He told me I was his hero.

And I don’t know what to do with that now. Because he was mine, too.

He had a presence at the shop that’s impossible to explain if you weren’t there.

When people knew Ant was in the building, things were different. He didn’t have to say anything. He just had that effect on people. There was a weight to him. A quiet authority. People didn’t try things around him. They knew he had our back, and they respected it.

He represented us everywhere he went. Every expo. Every conversation. His canvas pieces I did for him won competitions and ended up in magazines. People in North Carolina are reaching out to me right now, devastated — because they remember him just as much as they remember me.

That’s a legacy.

The Cost of Loyalty

There are probably people relieved he’s gone.

And that’s how I know how much of an impact he made.

He was a peacemaker at his core. Loved his family. Loved his friends. But he wasn’t scared of anyone or anything. He would never back down from a fight.

The two things lived in him at the same time, and somehow they made sense together.

Because the men who protect you fiercely will always have enemies they never earned. That’s the price of standing for something. Of never backing down when someone speaks bad on the people you love.

He paid that price without blinking.

Saying Goodbye

I last saw him breathing at the hospital when he was admitted. I stayed with him until 2 am, until I had to leave for Orange County.

I never thought that would be the last time I’d see him alive.

Seeing him at the viewing was something I can’t even explain.

The world went away. I held him and I didn’t care who was watching or what anyone thought. 41 years. 41 years doesn’t just sit in your heart. It sits in your body, in the way you recognize someone’s face, in the muscle memory of showing up for each other.

I cancelled my appointments in Vegas and OC the week that we lost him.

I don’t want to come into the shop and not see his car there.

That car meant safety to me. His presence meant safety. Knowing he was there, watching over things, watching over me, that was a kind of peace I didn’t know I was depending on until it was gone.

I feel like I lost my spirit.

Like something in me doesn’t know how to hold itself up without him on the other end of the phone.

“We still breathing, Dogg.”

I keep hearing it.

I’m breathing, Ant. But it’s different now. It’s heavier. Quieter.

You watched me go from tattooing in your garage to building something I couldn’t have even dreamed of back then. You were with me when they almost repo’d the car. When we couldn’t get zoned. When I was tattooing strangers out of the house just to survive.

You helped me sell pitbull flash to shops across the country when I was fighting to keep the doors open. You drove, door to door, to all the studios in Vegas and Southern California.

You found the Vegas location. That last day, heading out, and you turned around and spotted the billboard—FOR LEASE—and everything that Skin Design became started right there. Right on Eastern and Russell. Because of your eyes. Because of your instincts. Because of you.

I owe you so much more than I could ever put into words. More than I could ever repay.

When my book comes out, everyone will see, I owe so much of my story to you. You won’t be here to read it. But you lived it with me.

How am I supposed to write the next chapter without you?

People tell me I did enough. But I know the truth: nothing would ever be enough for a friendship like yours.

Ant always loved reading these blogs. He was my biggest fan.

Always the first one to come find me after he read one, choked up, grateful, telling me how much it meant to him. The last one I wrote where I mentioned him, he came to my room and said, “I’m grateful for you, Dogg. Thank you for everything.”

I didn’t know that would be one of the last times he’d say something to me like that. Something I keep replaying over and over in my mind, words I’ll never let go of.

Now I’m writing one he’ll never get to read.

What Loyalty Leaves Behind

In Buddhism, I’ve been told that people like Anthony are gems.

Rare. Irreplaceable. Put in your path for reasons that only become clear after they’re gone.

I believe that.

I believe God placed him next to me in this life for a reason. To walk with me through the darkest seasons. To hold me accountable. To love me without condition. To show me—by how he lived—what it really means to be loyal.

And I believe that kind of soul doesn’t disappear.

Please visit me often, Dogg.

Tell me what it’s like on the other side.

Watch over the shop the way you always did. Watch over the family you left behind, your wife, your kids. Your friends. We’re all trying to pick up the pieces without you.