luky

Hi all,
Below is a short-short story of mine. I've posted it before, but it was before I got to know a bunch of the geezers, etc., and really spent much time talking to people on this site. If you have the time, read through it and let me know what you think. If you like it, send some of your friends or other geezers or whoever this way to read it, too. The writing groups on this website are mostly into poetry, and I'm more comfortable putting this here. Plus, I a lot of you guys are good cyber-friends, and writing is a big part of who I am. Might as well share that side of myself with you. Hope you enjoy the story.







Ink
By Luky S.

This time, she could watch the pinpricks of blood well up and mix with the colors. Her blood was so dark, a burgundy against the bright yellow, green and blue stains.
The tattoo artist was a friend. A guy decorated from neck to toe in design, a guy known all over for his Japanese samurais and fawning geishas and his heavy hand with the needle. He called himself Don Juan. She never heard any other name for him. He was quick with a dirty joke, easy with his laugh and generous when buying drinks. A few years back, he cut and styled hair, but no one ever believed him when he told them this.
She was 36, a high school English teacher and bored out of her mind. Too young for a mid-life crisis, she told herself, but restless and bored. Screaming bored with it all.
She'd met Don Juan at a dive bar one weekend, saw him there often enough to become friends. Though she grew up listening to Blondie, Pat Benatar and even Duran Duran, now she went to shows in dank Philadelphia bars with music pounding out so loudly, she'd have ringing in her ears all day the next day. At 36, she'd gotten into heavy rock and thrash metal. She went out drinking and watched bands with names like Cream Chargers, Dead Meat, Smut, Cro-Mags and Alabama Thunder Pussy. She sought out people like Don, people she once might have avoided--people with bleached white or dyed green hair, with huge piercings weighing down their faces and ears, people with ink. At school, she wore gray wool pants or khakis. On the weekends, she switched to black mesh, leather and tight push-up bras. She'd pierced both ears a half-dozen times each, then her belly button. She got her first tattoo on her ankle while visiting a friend in Texas. The friend--37 now, only 30 back then--had a pierced eyebrow at the time and two tattoos already and she lived in a corner apartment in a converted barn.
That was then, of course. Now, the friend was married. The ring in her eyebrow was gone, a diamond on her left hand its replacement. Her tattoos were permanent but well hidden under discreet clothes. She worked at a law firm and lived in a subdivision. The friend gardened and grew settled and wrinkled in the harsh Texas sun.
Not that she wasn't seeing wrinkles etching into her own face. She wasn't sure if her wrinkles were coming from too many hours of reading bad student essays or too many hours of cigarette smoke, vodka and loud blasts of music late at night. Maybe the wrinkles came from ongoing, endless, excruciating stretches of nothing. Work, go home, grade papers, check e-mail, eat, maybe workout, maybe not, CNN in the background, or Law and Order, or some other t.v. drone. Sex in the City bored her to tears. The Sopranos couldn't kill, wound or argue often enough to keep her attention. Writing and books used to keep her attached to the world, alive, breathing, but even those words bled together these days, all of it a low hum off somewhere out of her reach. And she felt herself wrinkling, shriveling, drying up. She didn't have control over her own skin--outside of this, this blot of colored ink blooming on her arm.
Don Juan caused pain as he shaded and shadowed the arcing design across her lower arm and wrist. Here, where he created depth and texture, he dug into her skin over and over with the needle, laying one color into another, the needle raking into already raw, pricked skin. This was what it took to bring the tattoo to life.
This was her fourth. She wanted a tattoo that would show, unlike the others so easily hidden under clothes. She'd been more discreet once, too. Her last tattoo seemed demure on her pale hip, now--the Chinese characters for "poem." Translated into English, it actually meant, "word temple." Fitting for an English teacher/would-be writer, she'd thought. The crane on her ankle, the tattoo from Texas, reminded her of the blue herons on Kentucky Lake where she'd grown up. The poppy that flowered red across her shoulder brought back an ex-lover, an Irishman with a taste for something beyond roses. It was another mark of her life, but on her shoulder, behind her, out of sight unless she made the effort to look.
This tattoo, the one Don Juan had created just for her, the one they'd talked about and redesigned and redesigned until it was part his/part hers--now, it was taking its place in her skin. Cherry blossoms sprinkled over Japanese silk. A dragon's tail snaked down her arm. It was beautiful and frightening all at once.
Don Juan listened to Slayer crashing from the tattoo shop stereo and concentrated on his needle and ink. Two giggling young girls checked out the flash art up front. Another artist, a guy named Ted, talked about sex--or the girl he'd decided not to go home with last night--on the shop phone. She watched Don's head bent over the design taking shape. Her dots of blood blended with the brighter red ink Don used on the cherry blossoms near her thin, white wrist. When the design was finished, it would burn and leave blood and color on a bandage. It would scab and ache. Then it would itch and peel like a sunburn, over and over, bits of skin and color flaking off on her wash cloth and shirtsleeves. Eventually, it would simply heal over, become her skin again, no bumps or scars. Just the whorls of color and design mixed with her own ivory-pink coloring.
For a moment, she thought about sleeping with Don Juan, just because he was named Don Juan. He was young and covered neck to toe in tattoos and heavy handed with a needle. God, was he heavy with that needle. Blood dotted her arm and Don Juan's paper towels. It was a mess of paint smudges and blood right now, and a gnawing sharpness in her nerves. She leaned back in her chair, careful to move slowly and keep her arm still. Her breath was coming deep because of the bite of the needle. But this was what it took. If she wanted the tattoo colors to stay bright and defined, it took this heavy hand and Don Juan's eye and touch. She wanted the silk and flowers and twisting blue, green and yellow dragon to become hers, and it took her patience and pain. If she wanted depth, texture, shading_-art. This was what it took.
Don Juan wiped away ink and blood and looked up at her when she moved, asked, as he had three of four times now, "You all right?"
She smiled at him, and he laughed like they'd shared an in-joke. Don bent back over her arm and moved the needle in circles over the dragon's scales. She leaned back and gave herself over to the buzz of the tattoo needle and the biting sting. Slayer screamed from the speakers. People came in and out of the tattoo shop. Don Juan kept his face close to her skin. And the colors bloomed.