(excuse the flash refracting off of the mirror and making the quality of this horrendous. also excuse the blue bits of flaking flesh)I walk into the place I love so much to find a murder of giggling teenage girls and a pair of lovers. Brought to mind - "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right..." - and try not to lament my generation as the murder of giggling girls profess in high voices how cute everything is going to look. This murder of giggling girls is surrounding Dropkick Murphy, he of the obsessive need to smoke and the strong liking of a certain band (or maybe not, I could always be wrong).
My cynical nature roiling, I meet the artiste of my soul in the back (which does sound horribly chintzy, I know, but it's the truth - that he is the artist of my soul). He breaks out the masseuse table and I lay myself down, turning my head away from the master in order to look out at the parlor. The jokers/lovers are MIA. The clowns/murder of giggling girls have once again descended upon Dropkick Murphy, one of whom asking "You're getting a tattoo too, girl?" to which my beloved Renoir retorts, "No, she's just resting. She books four hours to lay down."
I do love my Renoir, though I never say so because he is a married man and that would be quite awkward; certain words have a lot of grey area.
So, reverting into the silence I am famous for, I watch a curly haired brunette with a half set of spiderbites sit before Dropkick Murphy. She is getting her first tattoo, a rather large flower at the base of her neck. Dropkick Murphy asks Renoir to check the symmetry of the design and Spiderbite Brunette proceeds to back her bowling ball-printed backside into my face. Dropkick Murphy walks her through the whole thing, occasionally shaking his head at (I assume) the superfluousness of my generation, which runneth over its cup and floodeth the room.
It might be around this time, as Dropkick Murphy works on the outline of Spiderbite Brunette, that Blondie (the girl who asked that rather obvious question about me) ponders the staying power of a tattoo. Wouldn't it slough off, she asks (and she did not use that word, slough), over time given the amount of skin the average human sheds "in a year" (to which Renoir replies, "'A year?'")
(It was also here that "Somewhat Damaged" (by Nine Inch Nails, purchase anything and everything by him/them now) began playing in my head. "... shedding skin succumb defeat, this machine is obsolete...")
Anyway, the experts try, delicately, to explain to Blondie the science of tattoos. They (they being tattoos) are permanent because the ink is placed deep into the skin, whereabouts what Dropkick Murphy calls the seventh layer, and new skin grows and sheds above the tattoo.
Blondie also reveals her ignorance to the band Bad Religion (who she thinks is a movie) and the song "I Fought the Law" (The Clash version played twice on the internet radio in four hours) which Blondie has never once heard in any of its renditions.
Spiderbite Brunette is abandoned for want of food. She also wanders about outside, between outlining and coloring - the tattoo exposed to the bone marrow chilling summer air.
A brunette with checkerboard shoes is next after Spiderbite Brunette with a lyric from A White Tie Affair wrapping around her right ankle (I think: "Cuz you're tragedy, A queen for his majesty, All these plans for me, Your kingdom is crumbling."). She feels faint, has to half lie on the floor and then recounts the brief history of A White Tie Affair (born in Chicago, whose lead singer she's met not once, not twice, but thrice), A Black Tie Affair (how dare they! - ?), the bands playing Warped Tour this year and how she really likes the lyrics around her ankle (which are not from a major verse but whatever) and if she were to hate the band in the future (how dare she!) she'd still love the song.
Meanwhile the wife and/or mother of Jesus is piercing the tongue of a young woman - after a frustrating encounter with a girl, not this current eager tongue but an eager navel with a mother of a different surname, the eager navel only seventeen and lacking anything other than a Social Security Card and a school ID (to which Renoir demanded a birth certificate as proof of age and many, many photocopies). Spiderbite Brunette sees eager tongue getting her tongue done and decides that she must have her own barbell through hers.
When it is her turn, Blondie (celebrating her birthday at the time) gets a simple bit of wording on her left foot. As she gets onto the bench, she leans too far back and lets out an ear-splitting scream - right in Dropkick Murphy's face. Her friends explain that Blondie is not only terrified, but has ADHD.
Free at last, Dropkick Murphy stops by me and Renoir before leaving for Cousins Subs (and the gas station for beer and caffeine for Renoir).
"Fuckin' A," he says at the progress of color of my ladies (my left arm being Death over Chastity and eventually my right: Fame over Death).
I can barely manage a "mm-hm". Not out of pain, which is shooting down my nervous system and out my twitching toes, but my damned shyness.
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