Dr. Adair wants to help me get rid of my fungus. She’s gone through this before with some of her elderly patients who live alone. “What I have them do, and it works really well, is to take the ointment and spread it on a doorjamb, and then they can lean up against it, rub up and down to distribute the ointment over the infected areas. Do you understand what I mean?”
If I apply fungus ointment with a doorjamb, if I take off my shirt and rub up and down against a door frame, like a bear scratching its back against a tree, I will have hit a new divorce low. I cannot think of a more depressing divorced moment besides signing the actual divorce papers.
I’d rather take the pills. I don’t care if the white wine I won’t be able to give up causes partial paralysis.
I can’t start dating right away anyway; I’m leaving for Boise for a week. Dating in Boise would be impossible. Even if I’m just looking to have some crazy divorced sex. It’s such a small town, it reminds me of the joke I heard a comedian tell about being in a small-town airport and hearing an announcement over the PA: “Hey, Paul. Come here.” The guy was so funny, but I can’t remember his name. I’ll find him on Tinder when I get back in town.
I’m going to Boise to host a fund-raiser for the Boise Contemporary Theater. I’m looking forward to seeing my friends and breathing clean air, but I’m dreading the live auction part of the fund-raiser because I’m going to be auctioned off like a heifer. It’s “Dinner with Lauren Weedman and six of your friends catered in your home by a local fancy chef.” There’s something about being single now and wanting to date, wanting to be wanted, and standing onstage as somebody begs for money for you. “Do I hear three hundred? Three hundred over here? Three hundred over there . . . You’re not going to find an overbite like that anymore, people. Orthodontics have come too far; she’s rare. Honey, dance around and show them how you can entertain yourself. How about two-fifty; let’s start at two-fifty.” I’m going to get so marked down that the part-time lighting guy who works at the theater could afford me.
Once I’m actually in Boise, I meet up for some pizza with my friend Keily, a feisty little lesbian poet with a Mohawk who is sick of hearing me make fun of myself.
“Shut up. You could get a hot young guy so easy. Stop saying you’re a fungus-covered heifer!” She laughs and gives me a high kick to the hip. “Oh man, you’re killing me, Weedman!”
She’s punched me so many times with her bony little fists since we’ve been walking to lunch, I had to ask her to walk on the other side of me because my right arm was getting sore.
When I do meet someone good-looking, I get so blinded by the thrill of a handsome man’s attention I overlook the little voice in my stomach that yells at me, “Bitch, please, stay away from that man! You don’t mess with a self-identified sex addict! No more ‘Oh, I’ve done some bad things that I deeply regret but I’ve changed’ or ‘Oh man, I forgot my wallet in the car again.’” Apparently, my inner voice is a scene from How Stella Got Her Groove Back.
The fund-raiser could turn into a form of speed dating for me, according to Keily, if I grabbed a chair as I’m being auctioned off and started humping it. “And even if you didn’t get a date out of it, you’d freak the shit out of all the wives.”
Keily is more punchy and roundhouse kicky than normal because she’s getting her first tattoo tomorrow. A local tattoo artist who won a Baked Potato Best of Boise award last year designed a Celtic symbol for strength that he’s going to draw on Keily’s arm. Keily knows exactly what she wants, where she wants it, and what it means to her. I may find that inspiring; I may not. I’ll check with a few other people who know about that sort of thing better than I do before I decide.
“Weedman! You should get one with me!”
Funny she’d mention that. I’ve been throwing around the idea of a second tattoo. A little design to symbolize this recent life change. As if I’d ever forget.
Getting a tattoo at my age feels a little weird. Ten years ago, when I got my first tattoo, I was already worried about what would happen to the integrity of the design as I aged. I imagined being seventy, with my grandkids trying to clean up their old bearded grandma. As they were retying my nightgown, they’d notice something they’d think was dried food in the wrinkly folds of my chest skin. “Oh, let me get a wet rag and get that, Grandma.”
“That’s not dried spaghetti, kids,” I’d say, pulling my skin out to straighten it. “It’s a lone wolf howling in the silhouette of the full moon. It’s not bad hygiene. It’s a symbol of Grandma’s core loneliness!”
But then I realized that old skin will just be a big mash of moles, scars, bumps, holes, and waffle-iron burns, so who cares.
How can I say no to Keily, the only gay in the village? I’m always trying to get her to admit how hard it must have been growing up gay in a small town in a red state. She denies it, but I don’t believe her. There must have been a few stares at the rodeo. Whispers behind her back at the annual potato festival, if there is an annual potato festival. Her mother was diagnosed with cancer recently. I love her mom. I don’t want her to tell her mom that I wouldn’t get a tattoo with her. Her mom will think it’s just like when nobody would sit next to them at the potato rodeos.
Getting some “ink” would be the perfect subculture/hipster/midlife crisis “I’m with you, sister” thing to do. I have no idea what I’d get or where.
Like a Native American chief receiving a vision, I proclaim, “The lesbian with the Mohawk knows her heart, and the black hawk has flown the skies at dusk. It is time for me to get another tattoo.”
The phone in my hotel rings at eight A.M.; it’s Keily.
“Weedman! Get up! You’re getting a tattoo today! My guy’s booked months ahead of time, but I found a place that can take you today. Get in your car and start driving!”
That isn’t going to happen, I tell her.
I’d planned on looking up some design ideas last night, but instead I ended up going barhopping with a very handsome pilot from Georgia. He sat next to me at the hotel bar, and after we talked about flying for Delta and the differences between Atlanta and Boise, he offered to get me out of the stuffy hotel bar and show me some local bars. His name was Dale. He wasn’t really my type, and thank god. This guy had a job and owned houses in two different cities. Not a lot of “funky independence” art lover coming off him, but I’d thought that was much better. I felt safer. He’s a “do the right thing” guy, I thought.
Fast-forward three hours later. Mr. Do the Right Thing was drunk whispering in my ear in front of a table of his friends: “I’M GOING TO LICK YOUR PUSSY.” His friends were mortified. “I’ve never seen him like this. I’m so sorry. Hey, Dale, cut it out, man.” Dale put his arms up over his head and stumbled backward, slurring, “It’s all good . . . I’m all good,” only to do it again two seconds later. “DON’T YOU WANT ME TO LICK YOUR—” “Dale! You have got to stop. You’re not getting anywhere with her like that, man.” Stumbled backward, arms up. “We’re good. It’s all good!” I’d gotten nervous after the first few drinks when Dale started telling me how “we are the smartest people in Boise” and how nice it was to have “intellectual discussion after being around all these dumb porkers.” This was after I’d asked him to pass me a napkin to spit my gum into. The local bar he took me to was a sports bar full of hard-core-looking white people. I’d stupidly bragged to Dale about being on The Daily Show, a problem I had the last time I was single twelve years ago. I couldn’t get through any first date without mentioning it. It felt like bragging about owning a boat, except that I was fired so I don’t know what I was bragging about. Dale didn’t act impressed but apparently he was because he must have mentioned it to some of his buddies at the bar. Before he started shouting his lurid whispers in my ear, he was telling me about a compulsive-hair-pulling support group his ex-wife goes to.
That was six hours ago. I’m a little shaky. Keily cannot believe I had a night
like I’ve just described. “That was here? In Boise? Are you sure you weren’t in Eagle?”
Today is not the day to get a tattoo.
“Shut up! Your artist’s name is Virginia. Weedman! That’s my mom’s name! It’s a sign! My mom says you’re like a daughter to her, like family, even though we never see you, by the way. Because you’re a total dick, Weedman.”
That’s a low blow. Bringing up her mom. She knows I love her mom.
Last night was awful, but at least I walked away with my dignity. I didn’t do anything ridiculous. Dale started out very normal. I’m not sure what he was doing hanging out at the hotel bar, but it was nice until it wasn’t and then I left. That’s dating. One down, 8,999 to go. You know what? Maybe it is a sign. My therapist had told me that yes, my family had broken apart, but I was going to get another family that was going to be so much bigger than I’d imagined it. This is what he meant. Keily is my sister. She is a part of my family and she’s driving me nuts. To shut her up I’ll get a tiny little star in invisible ink on the bottom of my foot.
Anywhere you want to go in Boise, Idaho, is never more than a five-minute drive. I’ve been on the road to the tattoo parlor for about seven minutes. In those extra two minutes the entire city changed. It’s dustier. More “Hmmm, so what happens out here?”
The moment I park my car in Ink You’s parking lot I have a very bad feeling. A Breaking Bad meth house, Satan screaming “GET OUT!,” blood pouring down walls, pig head in the window bad vibe. At first, when I caught myself judging the gravel in the parking lot as “dirty,” I thought I was nervous and looking for any reason to back out of getting the tattoo.
The front door of Ink You is locked even though a giant sign says OPEN. There’s a dreadlocked white guy standing inside watching me struggle and struggle to open the door. He screams “PULL! PULL!” angrily at me, refusing to walk over to the door. Based on his skin tone and body weight, he looks like a guy who’s had his fair share of struggling to open things in his life. Doors, drawers, veins. You’d think he’d have a little empathy. Suddenly a guy who looks like he’s in ZZ Top runs from across the street, bangs his motorcycle helmet on the glass door, screams, “IT’S FUCKING LOCKED!” and walks away. My hero.
Dreadlocked guy unlocks the door. I make sure to tell him that I’m not with that guy who banged on the door but I do have a ten A.M. appointment. He asks me what sort of design I’m thinking of, and I ramble on like a drunk slam poet describing how “truth is truth,” and “letting go so that what is shall be.” I keep waiting for him to stop me, but he never does, so after ten minutes of talking in circles I wear myself out.
I tell him that I have a general idea of what sort of tattoo I want to get but was hoping to do some brainstorming with the artist who had been recommended to me, Virginia.
“She’s not here yet,” he says and tells me I can browse through some tattoo albums and see if I find anything in there I like.
Dreadlocked guy, who could also be called “chapped-lipped guy,” grabs a beat-up photo album and tells me to have a seat in the waiting area. “Are you sure this isn’t the Cheetos-eating area?” I joke, referring to the large amount of Cheetos crumbs on all the chairs. He answers, “No, it’s not.”
The photos in the albums are close-ups of people’s red, swollen, and heavily ointmented finished tattoos. It has more of a “medical record of painful skin infections experienced by biker gangs in the seventies” feel than a sales tool for a tattoo parlor.
A young girl in an ill-fitting T-shirt with a baby in her arms appears from the back. The first thing I thought when I saw the baby was “Wow, that’s a bigheaded baby,” but now that a debate has started between the mother and dreadlocked baby daddy over whether the baby looks inbred, I’m offended on behalf of the bigheaded baby. I can think his head gigantic, but those are his parents. They should think he looks like them.
Dreadlocked guy screams “FUCK!” and jumps back like he’s seen a spider on the baby’s face. “Okay, one of his eyes is way fucking bigger than the other one and it’s freaking me out,” he says and pounds on the counter with his fist.
The mother tells a story about a dishwasher she worked with who had been a twin “and he was inbred, too,” and neither of the brothers looked anything like what this baby looked like. “Wouldn’t you know if your baby was inbred?” she asked.
I smile politely at the little impromptu family meeting that’s happening behind the counter and flip through the pages of the photo album like I’m reading a Crate & Barrel to help cover up the “I HAVE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE” panic that has now fully set in.
I can’t get myself to just stand up and leave. I don’t want them to think their talking shit about their baby has turned me off. If I walk out now, it looks like I’m judging their lifestyle. Like I think eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for breakfast is so beneath me.
My first tattoo was so much better. It happened on the beach in Tahiti and was a blissful experience from start to finish.
It was designed by a French Polynesian man in Mooréa, Tahiti, whose real name I am sure is something like Ra’iarrii’ and means something mystical like “those who live in the sorrow of a whale’s dream and smell like mangos,” but he took one look at my sunburned face, Ellen DeGeneres haircut, and wristbands from my all-inclusive resort, and said, “Call me Fred.”
My mother and father had decided that instead of leaving us money after they died, like nice parents do, they wanted to spend their money while they were still with us. Our inheritance would be the memories we created together of touring vanilla bean factories and learning how to make a coin purse out of a coconut. The day I got my tattoo we were scheduled to have our picture taken kissing a dolphin. I’d bristled at the idea of paying anyone to kiss me, especially a dolphin. While my sisters were scraping their tongues in anticipation, I was doing research to find out where dolphins’ ears were so I knew where to whisper, “You don’t have to do this.” Thank god I got over my “fat American on vacation exploiting animals” hang-up and ended up going. Otherwise I’d never be able to say how an hour before I got my first tattoo I was kissing a dolphin. Plus, I would have missed out on my sister Joyce’s first kiss.
It was that sweet spot in my life where someone whispering “I will love you forever” in my ear didn’t make me punch the wall and scream, “LIAR!” I was thirty years old and about to be married. For the first time. I believed in love, and for a brief few years I believed someone could love me. As I walked out of the resort to find a place to get a tattoo, my dad came running after me and handed me fifty bucks. “I said I’d pay for everything on this trip, so let me pay for this.” I swear he had tears in his eyes. Maybe he wished he could go too. Perhaps he was proud of me. Or maybe they’d all discussed switching resorts and not telling me.
The Canadians who ran the moped rental hut told me, “Find Fred.” I did. I found him sauntering down the beach carrying a guitar in one hand and twirling a tiny white flower in the other hand. Finally my life felt like a commercial for tropical body splash. He was naked except for a loincloth that was up his ass. I don’t mean he had the entire thing shoved up there, but it was very minimal coverage.
I’d seen a lot of people on the island wearing them but had assumed that they were just Hooter-ing it up for the tourists. Fred made it look natural. Like it was god’s intended uniform. When I first spotted him, I ran up and stuck out my hand like I was running for mayor, but instead of shaking my hand and promising his vote he reached out and stroked my hair. He stroked my arm. He stroked my face. After he got done tenderizing me, he asked me in very halting English, “What do you love?”
Fred’s spiritual vibe unlocked the hula-dancing mute in my soul, and I started acting out little scenarios about nature and love. I was trying to tell him that I was getting married soon and that I was a Pisces so I did a lot of grabbing my heart, pointing at the ocean, and drawing smiley faces in the sa
nd. At one point I mimed taking handfuls of sunshine and shoving them in my heart. It looked like I was doing an experimental dance piece about a woman who dies from open heart surgery. But he got it. He nodded, grabbed my hand, and led me to his hut.
After an hour of lying on a pile of pillows looking out over the Pacific Ocean, I had a Tahitian tattoo that looked like the ocean flowing into the sun on the side of my left calf. It flowed so organically with the lines of my lower leg that it looked like the waves and swirls of the tattoo had been there first and my body organically developed around it.
It was the highlight of the trip for me. It was magical and amazing and I’ve never regretted that tattoo for a moment.
Of course I hadn’t been through 9/11, The Daily Show, herpes scares, hot babysitters, and two divorces.
So maybe, just maybe, my expectations for my second tattoo were too high.
“Do you have any books of tribal designs?” I ask. Dreadlocked pulls down what looks like a coffee table book, dusts it off, and tells me that Virginia is parking her car and will be here in a minute. The tribal book is more what I’m looking for. On the “Designs of the Hopi Indians” page I see something that speaks to me. I show Dreadlocked. “How about something like this—just this circle and the three dots and the lines?” I like it. It’s got a Zen/Basquiat/tribal feel.
He glances at it, turns his head, and yells toward the back, “Virginia!” We stand in silence for what feels like a solid five minutes waiting for Virginia. He doesn’t call her name again. I guess he knows she needs to be screamed for only once. I take the time to imagine cleaning under his fingernails.
Virginia appears from the back. She doesn’t look well. She’s about thirty, very pale and very thin, with greasy hair kept in place with plastic barrettes shaped like bows. The kind you see on little kids, nineties hipsters, or the wigs of the mentally ill. Her neck and arms are covered in elaborate tattoos. She shuffles her feet when she walks and has her hands stuck in her pockets, which I soon discover is to help keep them from shaking. In a teeny tiny voice she asks me, “So what are we doing today?” I show her the Hopi design. “Okay, circles are really hard. They’re the hardest things you could ever get.”
Miss Fortune Page 24
