So I’m standing around at work, talking with my boss (truly, a lovely lady – I genuinely mean that). It’s Friday afternoon, a little humid and grey, but otherwise a fine enough day for the fact of the matter is I am soon to leave the workplace and go home to the playplace and hang out with my lady friend Ms M. All is well in the world.
For some reason, the topic of tattoos comes up. This seems unusual. Because ordinarily my boss and I talk about “regular” things – what nice weather, what are your children doing, exciting plans for the weekend? etc. And all feels regular and normal and statistically average. Then the conversation turns somehow from the cricket which is on the lunch room television to roller derby, to rockabilly, to straight edge, and to tattoos. We keep it on the clean, trying to bring in some broader cultural references to indicate that we understand that “hey, a lot of cultures have tattoos” but I get the distinct impression that it’s kind of freaking my boss out that I have friends who have tattoos. God knows how the poor woman would have felt if I myself had any. (Ironically, as a part of strange office culture, a whole bunch of colleagues were sporting henna tattoos today after a Bollywood themed Christmas party from one of our suppliers. But whatever.)
Luckily, I was able to reassure her than even my mum has tattoos.
We wrap up, without popping the bubble of Office Barbie that I work so hard to cultivate and as I’m unlocking my bike – “ping!”
3/12/10 4:28PM
Just getting a tattoo. Will be home not too much later than you. Say sixish?
Yeah right. Unexpected coincidence. Which feels oddly meaningful.
So I head to Westside Tattoo. Which I have been passing on my way home most days, wondering if I should get a potato cake scallop at the fish and chip shop, or the outline of cicada wings on my wrist to settle my sadness. Thus far, fried foods have won. Inside, is Ms M getting touched up by the Lovely Lily Collard. I like Lily in about two seconds because she laughs when I say that a helmet fine is like herpes and lasts forever. Otherwise, it’s so awkward when you raise an STI in daily conversation and people look confused. I forget sometimes that working in HIV prevention can skew your black humour in inappropriate ways and suddenly you’re making gonorrhea cracks in polite company.
It’s my first time inside a tattoo parlour so I’m pleased to see it’s basically chatty and friendly, with the slight aura of a hairdressing salon (everyone’s in a state of awkward disarray during the preparation, but hoping to leave the store banging and transformed) and a clean, hygienic and well-organised arrangements of chairs, inks and designs pinned to the walls. If there’s one thing I like, it’s things in sections, so basically I feel pretty happy. I keep thinking back to a short poem I wrote, from Mirerva’s ten, which makes me smile but also feel quite sad.
ink
Lying front down
Against the soft leather
Of the chairs
At Chapel Tattoo,
Mirerva
Felt the minute scalds
Of buzzing needle
To milk-butter skin.
As the moments of pain,
Found themselves
Blue-black, black, blue,
Rose Hardy,
Inscribed secret messages
Of joy,
Into Mirerva’s flesh.
Long feather fans and
Peacock eyes
Lashed themselves across
The smooth curves
Of back and buttock.
Five hours in,
She realized
Her first marriage was nothing:
This was commitment.
Speaking of commitment, that right arm below seems rather committed. I once met a guy who was ex-French Foreign Legion, in a bar in Port Moresby. He was so intense and scary and yet really wanted to practice his French with me, because he had no one to use it with in PNG. I’m not sure if no one would practice their French with him or if people were too scared to speak to him, because he was one of the most intense people I’ve ever met. Not because he was overtly aggressive or mean or anything, but there was something so animal about him, as if everything in him was alert to what was about to come, and as a result, you began to think that what was coming was going to be really freaking bad.
He had a similar tattoo, but just an entire arm inked black from shoulder to wrist, or at least I think it was shoulder to wrist, because I was too intimidated to ask just how far that matte, raised expanse of black continued up his arm. It gave him a kind of reptilian, carapace kind of a look. And it was powerful as all hell.
This fellow traveller, another of the artists at Westside, however, seemed rather more friendly. Mostly kind of low key, yeah right, having a good weekend, heading home, riding my bike, which I got second hand, dunno what it is really, sure my helmet, if you want to, um just a kind of a basic stackhat, right, I’m just cleaning up kind of a way. Apparently he has kids. Which I always think would have been fun, as a kid, to have a dad with lots of tattoos. Much better than my dad, who had only strange moles and a freckly back to look at. I’m thinking my dad would not have worn this t-shirt, but hey, my dad was always a bit conservative. Obviously, this fellow below, as a responsible father, he wears a helmet to avoid a. getting a fine, and b. to protect his valuable assets.
The unrelated and the unexpected combine, the odd and the incidental collide. Nothing is important. Everything is significant.
And you can guess his name.
eleanor j jackson 