Dorothy Parker's Elbow Read online

  When he had outlined the skull, he unplugged the machine and tossed a second grapefruit at me. “If you go too deep, it’ll squirt you in the eye” He left me alone with my work.

  I tried to do what Slade had done. It had looked so simple. But the machine that had seemed weightless when it was resting in my palm became unwieldy and painfully heavy when I tried to hold it properly, gripping the tube like a pencil and balancing the weight of the machine in the air above my thumb. I rubbed a glob of petroleum jelly on the surface of the grapefruit, dipped the needles into the cup of black ink, and pressed the foot pedal. The sound thrilled me. The machine shook with power, fast vibrations that rattled my hand. With the needles poised above the grapefruit, I pressed the foot pedal again, took a deep breath, and touched the tips to the crinkly skin.

  The grapefruit popped out of my hand and rolled onto the floor. I retrieved it and managed to skewer it on the needles, causing a great burst of grapefruit juice to shoot into my eye. By the time Slade returned, I was covered with black ink and Vaseline. My hair was decorated with sticky juice and pulp, and I was sobbing quietly. Slade had made tattooing look virtually effortless, and I was disappointed to find that it was not. Grapefruit juice stings when it hits the eye, but that was only part of it. I was frustrated beyond belief by the time Slade returned.

  “Lighten up,” Slade said. “You’ll get the hang of it. We’ve got plenty of grapefruit and all day to practice” He showed me again, and sat next to me while I tried once more to tattoo a fresh grapefruit. After the tiniest dab of petroleum jelly, the grapefruit burst out of my hands as though it were trying to escape.

  “Can’t I take the gloves off?” I pleaded. “It might be easier. I’m almost certain that I could hold on to it if I didn’t have to wear the gloves.”

  “Nope. It has to be realistic.” Slade laughed as he took in my disheveled, ink-and-pink-grapefruit appearance. “Here’s a tip, though. Don’t cover the whole thing with Vaseline. It’s not a sex toy that you’re trying to lubricate; you just want the ink to pool up in a line, so you can see where you’re going. Just put a little dab on the part you’re working. Wipe it off when you’re ready to move on.”

  I set my jaw and tried again. I made a wiggly line. I was tattooing.

  My hand ached from the strain of the tattoo machine when I woke up the next morning. I couldn’t quite get all the dried pulp and black ink washed out of my hair. I was hoping that this day would be better. Easier. Maybe it would be really busy, and there wouldn’t be time for my lesson. Maybe I’d have to spend the whole day tidying up after Slade.

  When I arrived at the shop, I noticed with dismay that four grapefruit were sitting in a row in the curve on the dentist’s chair in Slade’s tattoo room. Three of them were plain, just hunkering there, but the fourth had been stenciled with a tattoo design, a skull in a fedora hat that I recognized from one of the flash sheets that hung in the front room. Its hollow, purple eyes gazed at me malevolently.

  Slade pointed at each grapefruit in turn. “Circles,” he said. “Squares. The alphabet. Fill the whole thing. Then do that one.” He smiled and pointed at the skull stencil.

  I fitted a needlebar into a tube and clamped it into the machine. I pulled on a pair of gloves and sat down to my work. I made circles, which was much harder than I had expected. I tattooed big circles and little circles, lopsided, wonky circles. It seemed impossible to make the lines meet. The needles skittled across the grain of the grapefruit skin as though my machine had a mind of its own.

  Squares were just as bad. I couldn’t draw a straight line on a round, pocky surface, and again, try as I might, the lines didn’t meet at the corners. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that the grapefruit didn’t spit juice in my eyes half as often as they had the day before. It was late afternoon before I was ready to try the stenciled skull. I ignored the screaming muscles in my hand and gritted my teeth, determined to do my best.

  If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. My parents taught me that. When you start something, you finish it. I doubt that my parents expected me to apply these lessons to something like tattooing, but the lesson was so deeply ingrained that I had no other choice. When I was finished with the skull, I wiped it off with green soap and held it up. It was not great, but it was the best tattoo I’d done. Slade examined it closely, praising some lines and criticizing others. I took it home like a proud parent, cradling it in my lap and staring lovingly at it as I drove. I placed it on my bookcase, where I could admire it all evening.

  The next day, a banana was lying on the chair like a minimalist still life. I worried about what my afternoon might hold in store, tattoo-wise, and was relieved when Slade reached for the banana, peeled it, and popped it into his mouth. He pulled another banana from under the counter and handed it to me.

  “No, oo cand eab dabt.” He shook his head frantically and tried to swallow a mouthful of banana pulp. He gulped down the banana. “Don’t eat it.” He fitted a shader bar, with seven needles on the end, into a flat tube and affixed it to my machine. I stood there, banana in hand, waiting for further instructions.

  “Color it in,” Slade said.

  “Color what in?”

  “The whole thing. Solid.” He laughed and left the shop.

  It took me all day to make a not-quite-ripe banana solid black. I held up the mushy result for Slade’s approval, a hopeful smile coloring my face.

  “Man, if that were a person, he’d be in a heap of hurt,” Slade said. “See this? Hamburger. It’s going to scab up bad. The ink’s going to fall out with the scabs, and leave one mean-looking scar. That’s not a tattoo, that’s maiming.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, more to the banana than to Slade.

  “Well, you’ve got to know when you’re doing it wrong so you’ll know when you’re doing it right.”

  Slade picked up a new banana and the shader machine. He showed me how to use the shader properly, pushing the needles against the grain of the banana peel in small circles, back and forth, never digging too deeply into the peel. When he was done, his banana still looked like a banana, only black.

  I practiced until my bookshelves and kitchen counters were littered with tattooed fruit in various stages of decay, but no amount of tattooing on fruit could have prepared me for tattooing a real person.

  A tattoo is created by embedding pigment in living skin. The pigment is poked through the epidermis and adheres to cells in the underlying elastic pad of tissue. Tattoo needles are not hollow. They do not inject pigment. Instead, the needles poke holes in the skin and leave pigment behind. Epidermal tissue heals over the pigment, and the tattoo is visible through a thin layer of scar tissue. Once healed, the tattooed skin feels just like the surrounding skin. It is just as ticklish, just as warm.

  “You’ve got to find yourself a guinea pig,” Slade said. “You know, someone who will let you tattoo them, even though they know it’s your first time”

  “Rick,” I said. Rick was my favorite ex-boyfriend, and the only thing Rick liked better than tattoos was fast cars.

  Slade nodded and laughed. “There you go.”

  On the off chance that Rick might balk at this opportunity, I drew up a special piece before I asked him. A swirly, art nouveau, tribal piece that, from the right angle, spelled out Cuda, Rick’s all-time favorite car. The way I figured it, I could draw Cuda in big block letters, offer to tattoo it on Rick’s forehead, and he wouldn’t even hesitate.

  Rick was lying on a creeper underneath a 1972 Challenger when I pulled into his driveway.

  “Hey,” I said, “do you want another tattoo? For free?”

  “What?” The heels of his boots churned up a small dust storm as he kicked the creeper out from under his car. I knelt down beside the rear fender and held out the drawing. Rick frowned and ran a grease-covered hand through his wild hair. I turned the design sideways, and he sucked in his breath. “‘Cuda’?”

  I nodded and smiled.

  “Right on.
When can we do it?”

  The next night, after the paying customers left, Slade locked up the tattoo shop and turned the OPEN sign around to the side that said WILL RETURN AT above a plastic clock face with adjustable red plastic hands. Rick sat down in the chair and tugged the leg of his pants up to his knee. I shaved his calf with a straight-edge razor held in shaky hands. I did everything just the way Slade had taught me, rubbing musk-scented Mennen Speed Stick deodorant across a folded paper towel and wiping it across Rick’s skin. I put the drawing on a sheet of ditto master, ran it through the thermofax, and pressed it against Rick’s skin. Slade sat in a chair with his arms folded, watching me.

  “You realize,” Slade said, “that tattooing is an enormous responsibility. You are changing another person, and I don’t mean just by the ink in their skin. You have the power to create something that will change a person’s life forever, and this can be both good and bad.”

  I rolled my eyes. This pronouncement seemed redundant; Slade, Rick, and I were covered with ink, the most tattooed people in town. If anyone should know how this changes your outlook on life, it should be the three of us. But when I looked up at Rick, his lower jaw was hanging slackly, and he was staring at Slade as though he were eyeing a preacher.

  Slade leaned forward and stared into my eyes. “In some cultures, this is recognized as a ritual. And even here, even now, you have to look to the past to have a sense of what you are undertaking. This is a powerful thing. It’s more than a job. You are—” he gestured toward Rick—“his priest and devil, all mixed into one. Don’t take the spiritual aspects lightly. Even though tattoos are material goods in a consumer culture, a tattoo is also a primal scream, permanently etched into the skin.” Slade leaned back and lit a cigarette.

  “Wow, man,” Rick said. “That’s intense. I never thought about it like that.”

  “I come up with some pretty deep shit when I’m stoned,” Slade said. “Thought that one up yesterday.”

  It was just like Slade to say something profound and chalk it up to marijuana. He didn’t seem to want anyone to know that he was a thinker, that he lay awake at night, stone-cold sober, pondering his life and the responsibilities it entailed. I’d seen him do it. Of course, I’d also seen the other nights, when it all got to be too much, and Slade fired up his bong time and time again until he nodded off to sleep, accompanied by the television turned up so loud that it drowned out any possibility of words or thought. He’d taught me well. I knew about the responsibility and the dedication. But was I ready?

  I assembled my machine and pulled on a pair of gloves. I stared hard at the stencil because my only other choice was to look Rick in the eye and give him an opportunity to change his mind.

  “Go ahead and start,” Slade said. “That stencil’s ready and we don’t have all night.”

  “I don’t think it’s quite dry,” I said. I smudged a finger across the purple outline, and the stencil smeared away from the line. “See? I think we’d better wait just a little bit longer.”

  All the thoughts in my head began to swirl into a tornado of doubt. I knew how to tattoo, in theory. That wasn’t the problem. I didn’t want to hurt Rick, which was sort of silly when I thought about it. He knew how it was going to feel. He wanted me to do it. So hurting Rick wasn’t really the problem either. The problem, I realized, was that this was a giant step. I might as well be getting married, at least if I was going to accept Slade’s interpretation of responsibility and commitment. As soon as I touched the needles to Rick’s skin, I was tying myself to tattooing for the rest of my life.

  I still had a choice. I looked at the machine in my hand, the dry stencil on kick’s leg. It wasn’t too late to back out.

  Then the unmistakable thrill of anticipation set in, the mysterious combination of fear and uncertainty mingled with glee and uncontrollable excitement. The thrill coursed through me like electricity, dripping from my fingers and toes like beads of water, or sweat. The sweet pulse of my own blood pounded in my throat, my ears, my heart, pushed by fear, shutting out everything else.

  I looked down at my hand like it belonged to someone else. The tattoo machine was clasped in my fingers, gleaming with promise, and Rick’s leg was ready and waiting. My breath was low and fast with anticipation, desire. This is a good thing. A happy new beginning. This is what I want. Being a tattoo artist would be the perfect reconciliation between ambition and sensation, between responsibility and creativity. The mere thought of tattooing was providing the scary, thrilling sensation I craved, and it seemed that if any career could possibly approach that level of sensation on a regular basis, tattooing would be it. Tattooing promised to be wild enough to keep my interest forever. I’d been looking for something like this all my life.

  As I wound a folded paper towel around my machine hand and dabbed a bit of petroleum jelly on the edge of the stencil, I pretended that Rick’s leg was just a great big banana. I dipped the needles into a cup of ink, stretched Rick’s skin with my right hand, pressed the foot pedal, and traced the needles along the stencil line on Rick’s skin.

  When I wiped away the excess ink, there was only a faint red line with a squiggle of black ink dotting it here and there. I looked up at Slade, helpless. This wasn’t like tattoing a banana. It wasn’t anything like that at all.

  “You can’t be afraid of hurting him,” Slade said. “Just concentrate and do your job”

  I took a deep breath and tried again. This time, the line was solid. Perfect. Before long, I was lost in the sensation, and the reality of ink and skin gave way to the more ethereal realization of layers and life. The heat of Rick’s skin rose through the latex, and even though my gloves were sweaty, the powder inside was pushed into every crevice of my hands, arid and itching. My fingers pressed and pushed the skin until the muscles in my wrist and thumb screamed. The vibrations from the machine, and the little give of the skin before the needles punctured it, bounced through the nerves of my stretching hand. My left hand moved slowly, methodically drawing the machine along the stencil line. Dot by imperceptible dot, inch by inch, plain skin became permanently marked.

  Layer after layer, latex like the connecting wall of a dividing cell. On either side, skin—his and mine—and beneath that, muscle and bone, nerve endings and blood. The heat that rose from Rick’s body was markedly more pronounced on the freshly tattooed part, cooler outside the lines. His blood rushing white cells to the area of invasion, fighting against what his mind had decided to do; his blood busily transporting excess ink to the nearest lymph node for storage. All this for a picture on the skin. It wouldn’t be worth it if it didn’t mean something more, somewhere else.

  After the outline was complete, I changed to a shading machine and a needlebar with thirteen needles arranged in a tight circle. I was ink blind within an hour, black Rorschach blotches on my eyelids every time I blinked. I concentrated on the needles, on the skin, concentrated myself into a half-hypnotic state where, it seemed, the difference between animate and inanimate was exaggerated yet overlapping. Like an LSD trip, everything blended together, yet was distinctly separate. Rick’s inhaling and exhaling echoed in my ears, carefully measured and exact. I found myself holding my breath from time to time—forgetting, actually, to let the air in and out—and trying to catch up with hungry, ragged whooshes. I pulled Rick’s skin away from the calf bone just like Slade taught me, tugging it down onto the muscle so that the tattooing wouldn’t be quite as painful. The small of my back hurt from leaning forward in the same position for such a long time, and my eyes ached from squinting at needles puncturing skin. It seemed there was no stopping, that I was compelled to color Rick’s body cell by cell, no matter how long it took, a tattoo purgatory from which there was no escape, but which was actually quite nice once you got used to it.

  Several hours later, the Cuda tattoo was a solid black welt with a halo of red inflammation. The pores were enlarged, like the pocks on an orange peel, exactly the way Slade said skin should look when it’s been worked enou
gh. I spritzed Rick’s leg with liquid green soap, coated the tattoo lightly with petroleum jelly to keep the blood from welling up, and sat back while Slade and Rick examined my work. Slade arched his eyebrows like he was pleasantly surprised, and gave me a little nod. I grinned, biting my lower lip between my teeth to keep from laughing with satisfaction and pride.

  Rick ran one finger tentatively along the redness next to the tattoo. “Didn’t hurt a bit,” he said.

  I looked at Rick’s welted, orange-peel skin colored solid black. Blood oozed through the ink, and when I looked up, Rick’s face was white except for two splotchy circles on his cheeks. I was grateful for his lie.

  Blackie, the Electric Rembrandt

  THOM GUNN

  We watch through the store-front while

  Blackie draws stars—an equal

  concentration on his and

  the youngster’s faces. The hand

  is steady and accurate:

  but the boy does not see it

  for his eyes follow the point

  that touches (quick, dark movement!)

  a virginal arm beneath

  his rolled sleeve: he holds his breath.

  … Now that it is finished he

  hands a few bills to Blackie

  and leaves with a bandage on

  his arm, under which gleam ten

  stars, hanging in a blue thick

  cluster. Now he is starlike.

  My Tattoo

  MARK DOTY

  I thought I wanted to wear

  the Sacred Heart, to represent

  education through suffering,

  how we’re pierced to flame.

  But when I cruised

  the inkshop’s dragons,

  cobalt tigers and eagles

  in billowy smokes,

  my allegiance wavered.

  Butch lexicon,

  anchors and arrows,

  a sailor’s iconic charms—