The Sexy Tattooist

by Joey Bush

  But there was also a small part of me that did just sort of want to let loose, that didn’t want to be so wrapped up in guilt, that wished I could be more like Tara and just not give a shit about anything except having a good time. To have that sort of attitude made it seem like life would be a lot easier—in some ways, anyway.

  I reached over and took another big gulp of wine, ignoring the taste as it burned its way down my throat. My cheeks felt warm, but everything else seemed to soften a bit around the edges. I felt a smile spread across my face, and laughter escaping from lips without me really having much control over it. It felt good.

  “I’m going to challenge you to find a guy that you can sleep with this summer. Some guy that’s not going to be the love of your life—just someone that you can sleep with and then forget about once summer is over. It’s the perfect scenario—trust me, I’ve done it a bunch of times myself.”

  5.

  Graham

  Saturday night and it was slow, which, while not great for business, was a nice change in pace to how the last several Saturdays had been. After about an hour’s lull, I told Helena she could take off if she wanted. Unless we had a few walk-ins, I figured I’d work on some art and have a quiet night, which lasted all of twenty minutes before Todd showed up, not looking his usual, optimistic self.

  “I was stood up.” He frowned and shook his head in amazement. “Can you believe it?”

  “It happens.”

  “Has it ever happened to you?”

  “No. But whatever, she obviously has no clue what she’s missing out on. Don’t take it so hard.”

  I had to admit, it was a little surprising to see how bothered by it he seemed. True, I’d never been stood up before, but I had to imagine that it wouldn’t be that big of deal if it did happen—it wouldn’t be something that I couldn’t just shake off.

  “No call or anything, though. And it’s not like this was a blind date or anything—I’ve seen her around. She knew what I looked like.”

  I patted him on the back and decided not to bring up his earlier tirade about overanalyzing shit. “Let’s go get a drink,” I said. “It’s been slow as shit. I can close up a little early.”

  But no sooner had I said that when the door opened. Talk about timing. Two girls stumbled in, giggling. Todd perked up instantly. They were probably in their early twenties, both attractive, though one was obviously trying harder than the other. She was the more forward one, and she marched right up to the counter and threw her purse down.

  “Hello,” she said, and I could smell alcohol on her breath, though she didn’t seem too bad off. “I want a tattoo. Have I come to the right place?”

  She had dark-blonde hair with highlights, cut just above her shoulders in choppy layers. Her eyes were large, light brown; she was a little bit bug-eyed. She had a carefree, entitled air about her that immediately gave her away as one of the rich summer residents. She blinked her mascara-caked eyelashes at me and let a coy half-smile appear on her lips.

  “I might be able to help you out,” I said.

  “That’s good. My name’s Tara, by the way. I’ve got a few tattoos, and maybe if you’re good, I’ll let you see where they are. And this is Chloe. She’s also going to get a tattoo. This would be her first one.” Tara leaned across the counter. “She’s a virgin.”

  “Tara!” Chloe’s face turned bright red, and she looked quickly over at me before averting her eyes. “Will you shut up.”

  “I meant a tattoo virgin,” Tara said. “So, she’ll probably want to start with something small.”

  Todd was watching all of this with an amused look on his face. “I could help you ladies decide,” he said. “Unless you already had something in mind.”

  “My mind’s made up,” Tara said. “I want an anchor—right here.” She traced a finger over the outside of her right ankle. “But Chloe here might need some help deciding. Or maybe not. She’s an art student, so she’s probably got some ideas. Right?”

  The redness still hadn’t completely subsided yet from Chloe’s cheeks. “I’m not sure,” she said. She looked at me apologetically for a second before averting her eyes back down to the floor. “I thought I wanted ... I mean ... I just don’t know.”

  “I’m sure people come in here all the time not exactly knowing,” Tara said. “You can give suggestions, right?”

  “I have,” I said. “But we were actually just about to close up.” I could tell both girls were a little tipsy, and I didn’t give tattoos to drunk people.

  “What?” Tara pulled her phone out of her purse and looked at it. “It’s not ten o’clock yet. Not even close. Your sign says you close at ten.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You’ll have to come back.”

  Tara gave me a defiant look, but the expression that crossed Chloe’s face was hard to read—it was a mix between hurt and surprise and I felt bad, of all things. What the fuck?

  “You ... you won’t give me a tattoo?” she said.

  I imagined her to be the sort of girl who always did the right thing, who was never told she couldn’t do something because she never wanted to do anything that would get her in trouble.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Not now, anyway. Feel free to come back, though. Just don’t have a drink first.”

  “Aw, come on,” Tara said. “I bet people come in here all the time a little drunk. I mean, don’t some people need that liquid courage just to go under the needle to begin with?”

  “It’s not recommended,” I said. “And it’s shop policy. Drunk people aren’t very good at holding still, and if you’re squirming around while I’m trying to ink you, it’s not going to come out very good. Which is a reflection of my own work, and I actually do take my work seriously.”

  “That’s very noble of you.” She gave me a coy look. “So, am I to believe that you are actually going to deny us service? Isn’t the customer always right?”

  “Uh, no, actually. I’d say eighty-five percent of the time, the customer is probably wrong.”

  “Some businessman you are.” Tara sniffed. “Fine, I guess we’ll just have to go elsewhere. Come on, Chloe.”

  Chloe followed her out, but not before she looked back at me with an apologetic expression. “I’m sorry for ...” she paused. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then she stepped over the threshold and the door closed.

  Todd stared at them until they were out of sight and then turned to me. “I can’t believe you just threw paying customers out of your store. Have you gone blind? Those girls were hot! You’re a fool!”

  “I’m not tattooing drunk people; I don’t care how hot they are.”

  “You totally ruined their night. Those types of girls aren’t used to people not catering to their every whim.”

  “And what type would that be? I like how you’re talking about them as though you actually know them.”

  Todd waved me off. “Come on, Graham. You know exactly the type: rich and entitled and here for the summer. They’re usually the fun ones you can get into some good no-strings-attached scenarios with.”

  “Feel free to go chase after them, then; I’m not stopping you. It might make you feel better about being stood up.”

  For a moment, it looked like he was considering it. But then he shook his head. “Better not,” he said. “The way my luck is going tonight, they’d probably both turn me down. Or, they wouldn’t turn me down but I’d get a raging case of gonorrhea or something. Can you just close this shit up? I need a drink. But if those girls come back again, you better believe I’m going to go for it.”

  “Sure you will,” I said, fully expecting to never see either of those girls again.

  6.

  Chloe

  I woke up the next morning with a headache and a bad taste in my mouth, even though I thought remembered brushing my teeth before I went to bed. Or maybe I was thinking about the previous night? I couldn’t be completely sure. Either way, the sun streaming through the windows seemed way too harsh, and the s
ong birds I usually enjoyed listening to sounded cacophonic. I buried my head under the pillow, which helped with the searing sunlight but did nothing to ease my headache. I got up and gingerly made my way into the bathroom.

  I felt a little better after getting a drink and splashing some cool water on my face. I’d only had two and a half glasses of wine—was that even enough to constitute getting a hangover? It seemed kind of pathetic.

  I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen. I could see my mother through the window above the sink, sitting out on the veranda, sipping something. I looked at the clock, shocked to see that it was almost noon. Noon? How had I slept until noon?

  I poured myself some orange juice and popped a slice of bread in the toaster. I tried to remember what happened last night. The memories came back like when you try to recall a dream you had—fleeting and hazy, and when you tried to grasp on to any one instance, it slipped away.

  There was dinner and drinks. There was the club, later, and another glass of wine, which I hadn’t finished. There was the loud, throbbing music, a feeling of giddiness that I hadn’t experienced before. Then, a little bit later, Tara whispering to me that she’d just had the best idea and we needed to leave. We’d gone to a tattoo parlor. And the guy there said he wouldn’t give either of us tattoos, which, for some reason, bothered me more than it probably should have.

  His logic for saying no made sense, after all. If anything, it showed that he took his profession seriously. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was that talk that I’d had with my parents earlier, but I had found myself wanting a tattoo more than anything. Nothing that big, and certainly not in a place that couldn’t be easily covered up by clothes—it would be like my own, little secret, something that my parents would probably flip out over if they knew, but they wouldn’t ever have to know.

  Before I lost my nerve, I got dressed and headed back down to the tattoo place.

  *****

  I didn’t let myself think about it as I drove, and I didn’t stop to think about it when I parked and walked in. “Hey,” I said, realizing that maybe it hadn’t been the smartest idea not to at least think of what to say beyond hey, because I had no idea. I felt shy, suddenly, as I always seemed to around good-looking guys. He was especially handsome though, with his beard and short, tousled hair. His eyes were dark blue, like the color of washed denim, and even though he was physically imposing, there was a kindness in his eyes that put me a little more at ease. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I was here last night with my friend.”

  He smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Chloe, right?”

  I returned his smile, pleased that he had remembered my name. “Right,” I said. “And I’m not drunk.”

  There was a pause and I felt my face start to flush again. I had meant that last part to come out sounding lighthearted, joking, but it sounded more like a proposition, or maybe a threat.

  He looked at the clock on the wall behind me. “Seeing as it’s one-thirty in the afternoon, I’d say that’s a good thing.”

  “Yeah. So ... I would like to get a tattoo. Something simple, and small. I like flowers a lot. I know that’s kind of a cliché, but I don’t want something that’s totally wacky just for the sake of being different. And ... yeah. ”

  He leaned across the counter and was doodling something in a sketchbook as I talked. I realized how vague I was sounding, but I was having difficulty describing what it was I wanted. It was as though I could see it in my mind but couldn’t adequately explain it with words.

  “And I’m thinking it might have to be somewhere that isn’t visible. I don’t want one on my lower back, because I’d actually like to be able to see it myself, so maybe ... well ... where would you say people usually get them when they want to be able to hide it?”

  He stopped drawing and straightened. “There’s a lot of places, actually, it really just depends on what your preference is. Bottom of your foot, back of your neck—if you wear your hair down—between your fingers, ribcage, upper thigh. ” He spun the sketchpad toward me. “Something like that?”

  I looked down at what he’d drawn and felt my breath catch in my throat. How long had he spent doing that? Two minutes? Less? He’d rendered, in perfect, thin, black lines of ink, a delicate stem with ten or eleven offshoots of poppy blooms. It was minimalist and simple, but also stunningly beautiful.

  “That’s exactly what I wanted,” I said. I looked up at him. “How did you know?” I realized I sounded like an awestruck fan girl, but it really was like he’d somehow managed to access the part of my brain that knew what the tattoo was supposed to look like, even when I myself couldn’t articulate it.

  He shrugged. “That was just the first thing that came to mind after you described what you wanted.”

  Now it was just a matter of figuring out where it should go. I didn’t want it on the bottom of my foot, and though it was small, it was too big to go between my fingers. Plus, I didn’t know how long the recovery time would be or what exactly it would be like, and I needed both my hands to start working on my sculpture. The back of the neck might be okay, but then I would only be able to see it if I looked in the mirror. It was such a pretty image that I wanted to be able to look at it easily. And, I wanted other people to be able to see it, too.

  “Here,” I said, touching my inner forearm right below the elbow crease. “I want it right here.”

  “That’s a good placement,” he said. “But you’re going to have to wear long sleeves all the time if you want to keep it hidden.”

  I shook my head. “I think I changed my mind about that. I don’t actually want to keep it hidden.”

  He regarded me, and I couldn’t tell if he was trying not to laugh. I felt myself start to blush. Yes, I was coming across as a fool who didn’t actually know what she wanted, but so what? Really, I was feeling proud of myself for coming down here alone to begin with. For someone like Tara, it wouldn’t even be a thing, but for me ... this was actually a big deal.

  “Are you about to laugh at me?” I asked. “Because I’m not actually trying to be funny.”

  “I’m not going to laugh at you,” he said, in such a way that made me believe him. “But, I am curious—who are you trying to hide this tattoo from?”

  I hesitated. I didn’t want to say my parents, because that made me sound like a teenager. Which I wasn’t, so it wasn’t as though my parents could actually do anything to me anyway.

  “It’s something my parents probably won’t be too thrilled about,” I said. “Not that it matters, though, because I’m twenty-one. I’m just ... I’m just staying with them this summer, so I’ll be seeing them more than during the school year.”

  “You’re in school?”

  “Yeah. Art school. Which, according to my parents, isn’t really school and I’m wasting my time.”

  He leaned across the counter again and looked at me with those deep, blue eyes. “So, is this tattoo more about being rebellious? Which is totally fine, if it is. People do that.”

  “No. Yes. Well, I don’t know!” And I really didn’t. Would I be here right now if my parents hadn’t made me feel like such shit about being in art school? Probably not. I’d probably be dutifully working on my sculpture, completely ignorant and blissful about how excited my parents would be that I had something that was going to be in an art exhibition.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of hand-poked tattoos lately,” he said. “And this will come out really nicely if I do it that way.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But ... excuse my ignorance, what is that?”

  “I’m not going to use the mechanical gun. It’s a bit of a slower process, but I’ve come to like it a lot better. And it’s perfect for something like this. A hand poked tattoo is usually made up of a lot of lines, dots, negative space. This will come out really nice.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That sounds great.” I had no idea what he was talking about, to be completely honest, but I didn’t want to tell him that. “I’m ready.”
r />   He smiled. “Okay. Let’s get started. Well, I’m going to need to see some I.D. first.”

  If I were Tara, I’d say something coy about looking like I was over eighteen, but I just fumbled in my purse for my wallet and extracted my driver’s license. “Here you go.” I also decided against saying something how it was the worst picture ever, even though I was pretty sure that it was.

  He looked at it, then looked at me, then looked back down at the picture. It took me a second to catch on, but then I laughed. “It really is me,” I said.

  He winked as he handed it back to me. “I’m Graham, by the way; I don’t think I ever actually introduced myself. You ready to do this?”

  I put my I.D. back in my wallet and took a deep breath. If I stopped to think about it for too long, I was probably going to chicken out. “I’m ready.”

  It ended up hurting less than I expected, mostly, except in a few places where it actually hurt more. I bit the inside of my cheek and winced a little, but the pain never got so bad that I didn’t think I’d be able to handle it.

  “You’re doing great,” he said. He had purple latex gloves on, but I could still feel the warmth of his hands on my bare skin.

  “It feels ... different than I was expecting.” I was glad there wasn’t really any blood. “It doesn’t really hurt that much.”

  “It’s funny—I’ve had guys in here, these big, total jock-type dudes, and they’ve been in tears before I’m even halfway done. You know, they look like the sort of guys that could crush bricks with their skulls or something, but they are literally begging me to hurry up and get it over with.” He smiled a little and shook his head. “And then someone like you who can handle it like it’s not even a thing.”