Dorothy Parker's Elbow Read online

  The Body Adorned…

  In Fact and Fiction

  ELIZABETH McCRACKEN tells a tale of romance, loss, and a walking, breathing love letter…

  On a literary canvas WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN paints a portrait of a skinhead girl who wears her rage on her thigh…

  KAROL GRIFFITH recalls how she animates her art, from fruit to flesh…

  From a historical palette, MADAME CHINCHILLA tracks the sinuous, true trail of the illustrated woman…

  RICK MOODY describes how he paid homage to his literary achievement in a place where no prize committee can find it…

  In a story of deliverance, ALEJANDRO MURGIA follows a motorist who picks up a temptress with the mark of danger on the highway to hell…

  DEENA METZGER reflects on her own liberation through illumination of an intimate bodily scar…

  Dorothy Parker’s Elbow

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2002 by Kim Addonizio and Cheryl Dumesnil

  Contributions copyright: “After the surgery…” copyright © 2002 by Susan Terris; “Convict K00457,” copyright © 2002 by Robert C. Allen; “Dyeing a Three-Dollar Bill,” copyright © 2002 by Frank Martinz Lester; “For Lysa, Who Tattoos Me in Her Miami Living Room,” copyright © 2002 by Lisette Mendez; “I bring my book—prepared to wait…” copyright © 2002 by Cherise Wyneken; “I do not have a tattoo…” copyright © 2002 by Susi Richardson; “I got my tattoo at a time of great upheaval…” copyright © 2002 by Darcey Steinke; “I’d wanted to get one for years…” copyright © 2002 by Rick Moody; “In 1992, I had the tattoo on my arm redone…” copyright © 2002 by Leslee Becker; “Incision,” copyright © 2002 by Garnett Kilberg Cohen; “Mando,” copyright © 2002 by Steve Vender; “Portrait,” copyright © 2002 by Kirsten Rybczynski; “Skin,” copyright © 2002 by Joseph Millar; “Snakes,” copyright © 2002 by Jennifer Armstrong; “Tattoo Pantoum,” copyright © 2002 by Denise Duhamel; “Triangle Tattoo,” copyright © 2002 by Cheryl Dumesnil; “True Tattoo,” copyright © 2002 by Maureen Seaton; “When I muse about tattoos…” copyright © 2002 by Joy Williams; “When I was a kid…” copyright © 2002 by Larry Crist; “Wings, Fish, Star,” copyright © 2002 by Laura A. Goldstein. See pages 263–264 for additional copyright information.

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56853-1

  For the tattooed—

  and those who love them.

  Thanks to our agent, Rob McQuilkin, for his enthusiasm for this project and his understanding of what this book is about; and to Amy Einhorn and Sandra Bark at Warner, for making it fun. We’re also grateful to the Santa Clara University English Department for administrative support, especially Christine Mielenz, Ahmad Ahmadi, and Carole Wentz, and to all the writers who lent their support and their voices to keep the project alive. Special thanks to our partners, Robert Specter and Tracie Vickers, for staying up late to discover proofreading skills they didn’t know they had.

  Contents

  The Body Adorned… In Fact and Fiction

  Copyright

  Introduction

  from The Illustrated Man

  A Toda Máquina

  Grapefruit Flesh

  Blackie, the Electric Rembrandt

  My Tattoo

  To the Engraver of My Skin

  Dyeing a Three-Dollar Bill

  from “The White Knights”

  Skin

  “When I was a kid…”

  For Lysa, Who Tattoos Me in Her Miami Living Room

  Lace

  Triangle Tattoo

  It’s Bad Luck to Die

  from The Tattoo Hunter

  Incision

  “After the surgery…”

  First Poem for You

  Snakes

  Parker’s Back

  “In 1992, I had the tattoo on my arm redone…”

  Zowie

  “I got my tattoo at a time of great upheaval…”

  “I’d wanted to get one for years…”

  Tattoo Pantoum

  It Only Hurts a Little

  Tattoos

  from Typee

  from 7 Tattoos

  Embellishments

  Tattoo Thoughts

  The Fifteen-Dollar Eagle

  Herstory

  “I bring my book—prepared to wait…”

  from Tree

  Becoming Bird

  Designing a Bird from Memory in Jack’s Skin Kitchen

  Second Skin

  Portrait

  “When I muse about tattoos…”

  In the Penal Colony

  Convict K00457

  Mando

  The News

  The Y

  from “The Life and Death of Philippe”

  True Tattoo

  “I do not have a tattoo…”

  Wings, Fish, Star

  Benediction

  Contributors

  Permissions

  INK ON INK

  Introduction

  Once the terrain of drunken sailors and circus freaks, in the past twenty years the American tattoo parlor has attracted individuals as diverse as our nation’s population. Whatever the motivation or background, no matter how large or small the design, baring your flesh to the tattooist’s needle initiates you into the tribe—a tribe that has grown enormously in recent years. Celebrities and star athletes flash tattoos for the paparazzi and fans. Across the country, yearly tattoo conventions draw thousands of the curious, the initiated, and the deeply committed. The local newsstand carries a variety of tattoo trade magazines, with images and articles that range from the obvious to the erudite. Grocery stores display temporary tattoos to boost point-of-purchase sales, and henna tattooing has replaced face painting at community art festivals. Business magazines recommend temporary tattoos as an alternative to traditional promotional gifts like pencils and paperweights. Even Butterfly Art Barbie—a recent incarnation of that icon of regressive femininity—wears a tattoo on her belly. Though Mattel deleted the word tattoo from Butterfly Barbie’s box to appease conservative parents’ fears, they also include butterfly stickers for children to wear, just like Barbie.

  Clearly, tattooing has emerged from the underbelly to the surface of the American landscape. And as the popularity of tattoos has expanded, so has the art itself. No longer restricted to Bettie Page look-alikes, muddy blue anchors, and ribbon-wrapped hearts reading Mom, today’s tattoo images make bold statements of personality, as individualized and varied as any art form.

  Unlike other fashions, hobbies, and interests, tattooing, by its very definition, does not lend itself to fads—it creates permanent art. Perhaps that explains why, despite its move from the social fringe to a newly won place in the American mainstream, tattooing retains an aura of glamour and edge. In a culture that fears commitment, loves individualism, and takes guilty pleasure in the macabre, tattoos fascinate. Ask anyone who sports a tattoo—as soon as you reveal that you have one (or two, or three), the questions begin: “What did you get? Where did you get it? Can I see it? Have you ever regretted it? Did it hurt?” Or, as our mothers asked us, “Why would you want to do that?” Behind every tattoo stands a story that people want to hear. Our interest in those stories led to Dorothy Parker’s Elbow. In fact, the title came about when we discovered that this irreverent author, always ahead of her time, had a star permanently inked on her elbow.

  A few well-known authors from previous generations—including Herman Melville, Flannery O’Connor, and
Sylvia Plath—wrote tattoo stories in their time. And when we put out our call for contemporary writing, we found some of our most talented authors following that lead, offering us varieties of experience and attitude that match the wide-ranging meanings of tattoos themselves. It’s not surprising, of course, that tattooing, a language of symbols, should find some correspondence in literary language, in stories and poems that use symbol and metaphor to probe the meaningful moments of human experience with sharply etched words. Not surprising at all that top-notch writers would produce such a fascinating array of work on an art form that, since its beginnings in ancient Egypt, has helped to define and challenge our sensibilities.

  Dorothy Parker’s Elbow includes offerings from several well-known writers and a few newcomers. Herman Melville writes about a nerve-racking experience on Typee, where he feared that natives would tattoo him against his will. In Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back,” we read about a man who attempts to keep the love of his devout wife by having Jesus inked on his back. Mark Doty tells the stories behind his tattoo, while J. D. McClatchy explores everything from primitive ritual practices to Modern Primitives. In her lyrical reflection, tattoo artist Madame Chinchilla covers the history of the tattooed woman, while Karol Griffin teaches us how one learns to tattoo, first on a grapefruit, then on a devoted friend’s skin. Joy Williams, Rick Moody, Darcey Steinke, and others contribute short takes on the practice. In “A Toda Máquina,” Alejandro Murguía takes readers on a fast-paced road trip with a vato who falls for a tattooed stranger and throws his own self-destruction into high gear. Poet Denise Duhamel gives us a pantoum that begins with—who else?— Tattoo, the diminutive seventies star from TV’s Fantasy Island. Auschwitz survivor Paul Steinberg remembers the day a concentration camp official tattooed his wrist. Deena Metzger describes the liberation she feels, symbolized by the tattoo that winds around her mastectomy scar. As this partial list of contents shows, tattoo literature covers the range of human experience, from the absurd to the profound.

  Ultimately, tattooing, like writing, taps into existential questions: Who are you? Where do you belong? These days, in relationship to the tattoo world, everyone belongs somewhere: You are tattooed, you are thinking about it, you are disgusted by it, you create tattoos on others, you almost did it, you wish you hadn’t, you’re afraid of needles, your cousin has the names of five ex-girlfriends on his forearm, you are hiding an inch-wide butterfly on your shoulder blade, you have orange and red flames crawling up your legs, you have always wanted the words Carpe Diem emblazoned on your rear end. No matter how you feel about tattoos, these writings will get under your skin.

  As he entered the shop, he felt himself to be in a mysterious region, a place more precious than any he’d visited. Here must be his sexual desire. White papers of all sizes covered the clean, white walls. Female pirates, snakes winding around razor-sharp white swords, sapphire cats larger than a human head whose fingernails were black or blackened roses, anchors stuck into the tails of large scarlet and magenta fish whose eyes held the maps of treasure seized through murder, and other oddities of the rainbow covered the white pieces of paper.

  The walls were worlds.

  KATHY ACKER

  Empire of the Senseless

  from The Illustrated Man

  RAY BRADBURY

  It was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man. Walking along an asphalt road, I was on the final leg of a two weeks’ walking tour of Wisconsin. Late in the afternoon I stopped, ate some pork, beans, and a doughnut, and was preparing to stretch out and read when the Illustrated Man walked over the hill and stood for a moment against the sky.

  I didn’t know he was Illustrated then. I only knew that he was tall, once well muscled, but now, for some reason, going to fat. I recall that his arms were long, and the hands thick, but that his face was like a child’s, set upon a massive body.

  He seemed only to sense my presence, for he didn’t look directly at me when he spoke his first words:

  “Do you know where I can find a job?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said.

  “I haven’t had a job that’s lasted in forty years,” he said.

  Though it was a hot late afternoon, he wore his wool shirt buttoned tight about his neck. His sleeves were rolled and buttoned down over his thick wrists. Perspiration was streaming from his face, yet he made no move to open his shirt.

  “Well,” he said at last, “this is as good a place as any to spend the night. Do you mind company?”

  “I have some extra food you’d be welcome to,” I said.

  He sat down heavily, grunting. “You’ll be sorry you asked me to stay,” he said. “Everyone always is. That’s why I’m walking. Here it is, early September, the cream of the Labor Day carnival season. I should be making money hand over fist at any small town side show celebration, but here I am with no prospects.”

  He took off an immense shoe and peered at it closely. “I usually keep a job about ten days. Then something happens and they fire me. By now every carnival in America won’t touch me with a ten-foot pole.”

  “What seems to be the trouble?” I asked.

  For answer, he unbuttoned his tight collar, slowly. With his eyes shut, he put a slow hand to the task of unbuttoning his shirt all the way down. He slipped his fingers in to feel his chest. “Funny,” he said, eyes still shut. “You can’t feel them but they’re there. I always hope that someday I’ll look and they’ll be gone. I walk in the sun for hours on the hottest days, baking, and hope that my sweat I’ll wash them off, the sun’ll cook them off, but at sundown they’re still there.” He turned his head slightly toward me and exposed his chest. “Are they still there now?”

  After a long while I exhaled. “Yes,” I said. “They’re still there.”

  The Illustrations.

  “Another reason I keep my collar buttoned up,” he said, opening his eyes, “is the children. They follow me along country roads. Everyone wants to see the pictures, and yet nobody wants to see them”

  He took his shirt off and wadded it in his hands. He was covered with Illustrations from the blue tattooed ring about his neck to his belt line.

  “It keeps right on going,” he said, guessing my thought.

  “All of me is Illustrated. Look.” He opened his hand. On his palm was a rose, freshly cut, with drops of crystal water among the soft pink petals. I put my hand out to touch it, but it was only an Illustration.

  As for the rest of him, I cannot say how I sat and stared, for he was a riot of rockets and fountains and people, in such intricate detail and color that you could hear the voices murmuring small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body. When his flesh twitched, the tiny mouths flickered, the tiny green-and-gold eyes winked, the tiny pink hands gestured. There were yellow meadows and blue rivers and mountains and stars and suns and planets spread in a Milky Way across his chest. The people themselves were in twenty or more odd groups upon his arms, shoulders, back, sides, and wrists, as well as on the flat of his stomach. You found them in forests of hair, lurking among a constellation of freckles, or peering from armpit caverns, diamond eyes aglitter. Each seemed intent upon his own activity; each was a separate gallery portrait.

  “Why, they’re beautiful!” I said.

  How can I explain about his Illustrations? If El Greco had painted miniatures in his prime, no bigger than your hand, infinitely detailed, with all his sulphurous color, elongation, and anatomy, perhaps he might have used this man’s body for his art. The colors burned in three dimensions. They were windows looking in upon fiery reality. Here, gathered on one wall, were all the finest scenes in the universe; the man was a walking treasure gallery. This wasn’t the work of a cheap carnival tattoo man with three colors and whisky on his breath. This was the accomplishment of a living genius, vibrant, clear, and beautiful.

  “Oh yes,” said the Illustrated Man. “I’m so proud of my Illustrations that I’d like to burn them off. I’ve tried sand
paper, acid, a knife…”

  The sun was setting. The moon was already up in the East.

  “For, you see,” said the Illustrated Man, “these Illustrations predict the future.”

  I said nothing.

  “It’s all right in sunlight,” he went on. “I could keep a carnival day job. But at night—the pictures move. The pictures change.”

  I must have smiled. “How long have you been Illustrated?”

  “In 1900, when I was twenty years old and working a carnival, I broke my leg. It laid me up; I had to do something to keep my hand in, so I decided to get tattooed.”

  “But who tattooed you? What happened to the artist?”

  “She went back to the future,” he said. “I mean it. She was an old woman in a little house in the middle of Wisconsin here somewhere not far from this place. A little old witch who looked a thousand years old one moment and twenty years old the next, but she said she could travel in time. I laughed. Now, I know better.”

  “How did you happen to meet her?”

  He told me. He had seen her painted sign by the road: SKIN ILLUSTRATION! Illustration instead of tattoo! Artistic! So he had sat all night while her magic needles stung him wasp stings and delicate bee stings. By morning he looked like a man who had fallen into a twenty-color print press and been squeezed out, all bright and picturesque.

  “I’ve hunted every summer for fifty years,” he said, putting his hands out on the air. “When I find that witch I’m going to kill her.”

  The sun was gone. Now the first stars were shining and the moon had brightened the fields of grass and wheat. Still the Illustrated Man’s pictures glowed like charcoals in the half-light, like scattered rubies and emeralds, with Rouault colors and Picasso colors and the long, pressed-out El Greco bodies.

  “So people fire me when my pictures move. They don’t like it when violent things happen in my Illustrations. Each Illustration is a little story. If you watch them, in a few minutes they tell you a tale. In three hours of looking you could see eighteen or twenty stories acted right on my body, you could hear voices and think thoughts. It’s all here, just waiting for you to look. But most of all, there’s a special spot on my body.” He bared his back. “See? There’s no special design on my right shoulder blade, just a jumble.”