Dorothy Parker's Elbow

by Kim Addonizio

  Finally, after three strangely botched attempts at applying the stencil, Scott whipped out a Magic Marker, ready to sketch a snake on my ankle. Several shaky, disjointed lines later, I inquired as to his intentions. Surely, I asked, he was not planning on working from only his deranged lines?

  By this point, he was sweating too, and probably wishing I had never come in. He was certainly wishing that Nick and Dave would stop taking pictures of his incompetence. As he tried to explain that he was, indeed, going to work from his sketched lines, I asked frantically how he was planning to incorporate the design within the snake. “I’ll figure it out once I start,” he said, cleaning his tattoo gun.

  My head started to spin. As I looked around, I realized that one of the other guys was resterilizing needles and stapling them into packets marked “Hospital Sterilization.” Very different from Artistic, where they use new needles for every customer. That was it. I wanted out.

  Eyeing the door, I began trying to determine the quickest and most effective escape route. I had to work fast. Things had become decidedly uncool, and I didn’t want anything with so much negative potential on my body for the rest of my life. Explaining my tangoers was fun. I have only the fondest memories of good ’ol reticent Rusty even when I almost passed out. But this was different.

  What happened next was a blur of adrenaline and energy. As Scott began cleaning the needle and preparing the black ink, I jumped up, exclaiming that I did not have enough money and needed to get to a cash machine. Waving my hands frantically and clutching my wallet, pulling out press passes and old IDs, I told him I’d be right back.

  It would have gone off without a hitch, except Dave and Nick weren’t biting. First they offered to lend me some money, and then, when I finally succeeded in dragging them outside, they insisted that I go back in and explain that I was taking off. Maybe I should even offer Scott some money, they suggested.

  At this point, Dan pulled up in the Volvo and, looking slightly confused, said he hadn’t been planning on coming back for an hour, and what were we doing out so early. Suddenly, it seemed that Scott and the boys at Electric Ink were the least of my problems. I had lured Dan and Nick and Dave down to Providence with the promise of blood and needles, of twisted expressions of pain that they could document in the interests of Journalism. Now we were running off with our tails between our legs. They weren’t going to give up so easily.

  Eventually, I agreed to go back in. Although I certainly didn’t feel that I owed any explanations—after all, Scott was about to ineptly mutilate my body—my three companions disagreed. I even ended up giving Scott twenty bucks. I guess that’s the going rate for leg mutilation.

  The final scene was as uncomfortable and unsatisfying as the end of a love affair in which no one had done anything wrong, but nothing had worked, either. Walking over to Scott, I tried to remind myself that the fact that he was incompetent did not reflect poorly on me. Still, I couldn’t help feeling bad. “Look, I don’t think I’m gonna do this today. Why don’t I give you some money for the work you’ve done so far.”

  Instead of being angry, Scott appeared equally uneasy. “Sure, why don’t you give me twenty bucks.” Done. I couldn’t help feeling like I had come out on top.

  As we drove off, we were all silent. The boys at Electric Ink had gathered by the window and were doing their best to glare at us, but they knew they hadn’t played their parts well. I couldn’t help thinking that they looked a little ridiculous.

  Tattoos

  J. D. MCCLATCHY

  1. CHICAGO, 1969

  Three boots from Great Lakes stumble arm-in-arm

  Past the hookers

  And winos on South State

  To a tat shack. Pissed on mai tais, what harm

  Could come from the bright slate

  Of flashes on the scratcher’s corridor

  Wall, or the swagger of esprit de corps?

  Tom, the freckled Hoosier farmboy, speaks up

  And shyly points

  To a four-inch eagle

  High over the Stars and Stripes at sunup.

  A stormy upheaval

  Inside—a seething felt first in the groin—

  Then shoves its stubby subconscious gunpoint

  Into the back of his mind. The eagle’s beak

  Grips a banner

  Waiting for someone’s name.

  Tom mumbles that he’d like the space to read

  FELIX, for his small-framed

  Latino bunkmate with the quick temper.

  Felix hears his name and starts to stammer—

  He’s standing there beside Tom—then all three

  Nervously laugh

  Outloud, and the stencil

  Is taped to Tom’s chest. The needle’s low-key

  Buzzing fusses until,

  Oozing rills of blood like a polygraph’s

  Lines, there’s a scene that for years won’t come off.

  Across the room, facedown on his own cot,

  Stripped to the waist,

  Felix wants Jesus Christ

  Crucified on his shoulder blade, but not

  The heart-broken, thorn-spliced

  Redeemer of punk East Harlem jailbait.

  He wants light streaming from the wounds, a face

  Staring right back at those who’ve betrayed him,

  Confident, strong,

  With a dark blue crewcut.

  Twelve shading needles work around the rim

  Of a halo, bloodshot

  But lustrous, whose pain is meant to prolong

  His sudden resolve to fix what’s been wrong.

  (Six months later, a swab in Vietnam,

  He won’t have time

  To notice what’s been inked

  At night onto the sky’s open hand—palms

  Crawling with Cong. He blinks.

  Bullets slam into him. He tries to climb

  A wooden cross that roses now entwine.)

  And last, the bookish, acned college grad

  From Tucson, Steve,

  Who’s downed an extra pint

  Of cut-price rye and, misquoting Conrad

  On the fate of the mind,

  Asks loudly for the whole nine yards, a “sleeve,”

  An arm’s-length pattern of motives that weave

  And eddy around shoals of muscle or bone.

  Back home he’d signed

  On for a Navy hitch

  Because he’d never seen what he’s since grown

  To need, an ocean which…

  But by now he’s passed out, and left its design

  To the old man, whose eyes narrow, then shine.

  By dawn, he’s done. By dawn, the others too

  Have paid and gone.

  Propped on a tabletop,

  Steve’s grappling with a hangover’s thumbscrew.

  The bandages feel hot.

  The old man’s asleep in a chair. Steve yawns

  And makes his way back, shielded by clip-ons.

  In a week he’ll unwrap himself. His wrist,

  A scalloped reef,

  Could flick an undertow

  Up through the tangled swash of glaucous cyst

  And tendon kelp below

  A vaccination scallop’s anchored seaweed,

  The swelling billow his bicep could heave

  For twin dolphins to ride toward his shoulder’s

  Coppery cliffs

  Until the waves, all flecked

  With a glistening spume, climb the collar-

  Bone and break on his neck.

  When he raises his arm, the tide’s adrift

  With his dreams, all his watery what-ifs,

  And ebbs back down under the sheet, the past,

  The uniform.

  His skin now seems colder.

  The surface of the world, he thinks, is glass,

  And the body’s older,

  Beckoning life shines up at us transformed

  At times, moonlit, colorfast, waterborne.
>
  2.

  Figuring out the body starts with the skin,

  Its boundary, its edgy go-between,

  The scarred, outspoken witness at its trials,

  The monitor of its memories,

  Pleasure’s flushed archivist and death’s pale herald.

  But skin is general-issue, a blank

  Identity card until it’s been filled in

  Or covered up, in some way disguised

  To set us apart from the beasts, whose aspects

  Are given, not chosen, and the gods

  Whose repertoire of change—from shower of gold

  To carpenter’s son—is limited.

  We need above all to distinguish ourselves

  From one another, and ornament

  Is particularity, elevating

  By the latest bit of finery,

  Pain, wardrobe, extravagance or privation

  Each above the common human herd.

  The panniered skirt, dicky, ruff and powdered wig,

  Beauty mole, Mohawk, or nipple ring,

  The penciled eyebrow above Fortuny pleats,

  The homeless addict’s stolen parka,

  Face lift, mukluk, ponytail, fez, dirndl, ascot,

  The starlet’s lucite stiletto heels,

  The billboard model with his briefs at half-mast,

  The geisha’s obi, the gigolo’s

  Espadrilles, the war widow’s décolletage…

  Any arrangement elaborates

  A desire to mask that part of the world

  One’s body is. Nostalgia no more

  Than anarchy laces up the secondhand

  Myths we dress our well-fingered goods in.

  Better still perhaps to change the body’s shape

  With rings to elongate the neck, shoes

  To bind the feet, lead plates wrapped to budding breasts,

  The Sadhu’s penis-weights and plasters,

  The oiled, pumped-up torsos at Muscle Beach,

  Or corsets cinched so tightly the ribs

  Protrude like a smug, rutting pouter pigeon’s.

  They serve to remind us we are not

  Our own bodies but anagrams of their flesh,

  And pain not a feeling but a thought.

  But best of all, so say fellow travelers

  In the fetish clan, is the tattoo,

  Because not merely molded or worn awhile

  But exuded from the body’s sense

  Of itself, the story of its conjuring

  A means defiantly to round on

  Death’s insufferably endless emptiness.

  If cave men smeared their bones with ochre,

  The color of blood and first symbol of life,

  Then people ever since—Egyptian

  Priestesses, Mayan chieftains, woady Druids,

  Sythian nomads and Hebrew slaves,

  Praetorian guards and Kabuki actors,

  Hell’s Angels, pilgrims, monks and convicts—

  Have marked themselves or been forcibly branded

  To signify that they are members

  Of a group apart, usually above

  But often below the rest of us.

  The instruments come effortlessly to hand:

  Fish bone, razor blade, bamboo sliver,

  Thorn, glass, shell shard, nail or electric needle.

  The canvas is pierced, the lines are drawn,

  The colors suffuse a pattern of desire.

  The Eskimos pull a charcoaled string

  Beneath the skin, and seadogs used to cover

  The art with gunpowder and set fire

  To it. The explosion drove the colors in.

  Teddy boys might use matchtip sulfur

  Or caked shoe polish mashed with spit. In Thailand

  The indigo was once a gecko.

  In mall parlors here, India ink and tabs

  Of pigment cut with grain alcohol

  Patch together tribal grids, vows, fantasies,

  Frescoes, planetary signs, pinups,

  Rock idols, bar codes, all the insignia

  Of the brave face and the lonely heart.

  The reasons are both remote and parallel.

  The primitive impulse was to join,

  The modern to detach oneself from the world.

  The hunter’s shadowy camouflage,

  The pubescent girl’s fertility token,

  The warrior’s lurid coat of mail,

  The believer’s entrée to the afterlife—

  The spiritual practicality

  Of our ancestors remains a source of pride.

  Yielding to sentimentality,

  Later initiates seek to dramatize

  Their jingoism, their Juliets

  Or Romeos. They want to fix a moment,

  Some port of call, a hot one-night stand,

  A rush of mother-love or Satan worship.

  Superstition prompts the open eye

  On the sailor’s lid, the fish on his ankle.

  The biker makes a leather jacket

  Of his soft beerbelly and nailbitten hands.

  The call girl’s strategic butterfly

  Or calla lily attracts and focuses

  Her client’s interest and credit card.

  But whether encoded or flaunted, there’s death

  At the bottom of every tattoo.

  The mark of Cain, the stigma to protect him

  From the enemy he’d created,

  Must have been a skull. Once incorporated,

  Its spell is broken, its mortal grip

  Loosened or laughed at or fearlessly faced down.

  A Donald Duck with drooping forelock

  And swastikas for eyes, the sci-fi dragon,

  The amazon’s griffon, the mazy

  Yin-yang dragnets, the spiders on barbed-wire webs,

  The talismanic fangs and jesters,

  Ankhs and salamanders, scorpions and dice

  All are meant to soothe the savage breast

  Or back beneath whose dyed flesh there beats something

  That will stop. Better never to be

  Naked again than not disguise what time will

  Press like a flower in its notebook,

  Will score and splotch, rot, erode and finish off.

  Ugly heads are raised against our end.

  If others are unnerved, why not death itself?

  If unique, then why not immortal?

  Protected by totem animals that perch

  Or coil in strategic locations—

  A lizard just behind the ear, a tiger’s

  Fangs seeming to rip open the chest,

  An eagle spreading its wings across the back—

  The body at once both draws death down

  And threatens its dominion. The pain endured

  To thwart the greater pain is nothing

  Next to the notion of nothingness.

  Is that what I see in the mirror?

  The vacancy of everything behind me,

  The eye that now takes so little in,

  The unmarked skin, the soul without privileges…

  Everything’s exposed to no purpose.

  The tears leave no trace of their grief on my face.

  My gifts are never packaged, never

  Teasingly postponed by the need to undo

  The puzzled perfections of surface.

  All over I am open to whatever

  You may make of me, and death soon will,

  Its unmarked grave the shape of things to come,

  The page there was no time to write on.

  3. NEW ZEALAND, 1890

  Because he was the chieftain’s eldest son

  And so himself

  Destined one day to rule,

  The great meetinghouse was garishly strung

  With smoked heads and armfuls

  Of flax, the kiwi cloak, the lithograph

  Of Queen Victoria, seated and stiff,

  Oil lamps, the greenstone clubs and treasure box

 
Carved with demons

  In polished attitudes

  That held the tribal feathers and ear drops.

  Kettles of fern root, stewed

  Dog, mulberry, crayfish and yam were hung

  To wait over the fire’s spluttering tongues.

  The boy was led in. It was the last day

  Of his ordeal.

  The tenderest sections—

  Under his eyes, inside his ears—remained

  To be cut, the maze run

  To its dizzying ends, a waterwheel

  Lapping his flesh the better to reveal

  Its false-face of unchanging hostility,

  A feeding tube

  Was put between his lips.

  His arms and legs were held down forcibly.

  Resin and lichen, mixed

  With pigeon fat and burnt to soot, was scooped

  Into mussel shells. The women withdrew.

  By then the boy had slowly turned his head,

  Whether to watch

  Them leave or keep his eye

  On the stooped, grayhaired cutter who was led

  In amidst the men’s cries

  Of ceremonial anger at each

  Of the night’s cloudless hours on its path

  Through the boy’s life. The cutter knelt beside

  The boy and stroked

  The new scars, the smooth skin.

  From his set of whalebone chisels he tied

  The shortest one with thin

  Leather thongs to a wooden handle soaked

  In rancid oil. Only his trembling throat

  Betrayed the boy. The cutter smiled and took

  A small mallet,

  Laid the chisel along

  The cheekbone, and tapped so a sharpness struck

  The skin like a bygone

  Memory of other pain, other threats.

  Someone dabbed at the blood. Someone else led

  A growling chant about their ancestors.

  Beside the eye’s

  Spongy marshland a frond

  Sprouted, a jagged gash to which occurs

  A symmetrical form,

  While another chisel pecks in the dye,

  A blue the deep furrow intensifies.

  The boy’s eyes are fluttering now, rolling

  Back in his head.

  The cutter stops only

  To loop the blade into a spiralling,

  Puckered, thick filigree

  Whose swollen tracery, it seems, has led

  The boy beyond the living and the dead.

  He can feel the nine Nothings drift past him

  In the dark: Night,

  The Great Night, the Choking