 |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
|
|||||
The Tattoo I sit on a specially designed chair that supports my arm as the ink goes in. It hurts. Hope, an aspiring painter with blue hair and tragic skin watches up close. She is Jamie's apprentice. She has just done her first tattoo on herself and shows me her ankle. It is puffed up around heavy red lines --- an incomprehensible design. "I pushed too hard," she explains. She has a star of David on her abdomen, trendy 70s shirt tied up to expose it, soft flesh hanging over velvet pants. I talk to her about painting and exercise and other trivialities, but all the while I am conscious of Jamie's physical presence. He has rolled up his sleeves and his left hand pulls the skin of my shoulder taut while his bare right arm rests on mine to do the work. We sit like this for hours. It's like holding hands. There is no visible blood, he tells me, because the ink is black. A plain woman in sweat pants, blonde with moist, red skin, comes in with her boyfriend. He is black, huge arms, a clean white t-shirt. They kiss and fondle on the couch, run outside to smoke cigarettes while they wait. When her turn comes, she puts her hair in a ponytail and I can see her neck is tattooed: a ghoulish face in black and gray, a vengeful spirit seeking release from her body. She goes into the bathroom to change her clothes and comes out wearing a man's tank-top, cut low on the sides so the fold of her breasts is visible. She is getting her name, Tina, in ornate letters across her shoulders. "Take it easy on me, Will," she instructs, as she rests her head on a pillow before his machine. "I'm an exotic dancer, and I was out shakin' my fanny til' four in the morning last night. Some days I'm just not in the mood for pain, and today is one of them." A thuggish-looking man in a tank top is having a Jesus-figure put on his shoulder by one of the other artists. "I won't do Jesus," says Jamie in a low voice as he leans close over my arm. "Or the Virgin Mary. People want them all the time, but it just creeps me out." Jamie, it turns out, is not just a tattoo artist. He is a happy-go-lucky Satanist, friend to all ferrets, and design school dropout. He is in a punk rock swing band on his days off. They play songs about serial killers, mainly, and claim to worship the devil. "But we don't really," he says. "It's just an act." He plays me the John Wayne Gacy song off their demo tape, but I can't understand the lyrics. After a while, he admits to having done one Jesus tattoo. Jesus was masturbating through the holes left in his hands from the crucifixion. Despite these disturbing revelations, Jamie takes good care of me. Rubber gloves and disposable needles, both frequently changed. When we break for lunch, he offers me rice and beans. I run out to buy us sodas. He tells me I am a good sport, and takes an extra two hours doing detail work he doesn't charge for. "That's huge!" says the boy with the tribal arms, meaning that it's good work. "Jamie, you're sick! Look at that detail." I feel proud of it, because I am no longer the canvas. Its beauty has become mine, and the boy with the tribal arms is admiring a part of my body. A part that I chose. Jamie bandages me up and sends me home. |
