Lotus Blossom
Bridget Adrian Cowles
“Life sucks,” Dina said with no inflection. “Then I get over it, and everything’s fine again.” She took a drag off her Italian cigarette, getting satisfaction from the burn deep in her lungs. She supposed it was a little masochistic to enjoy lung pain, but wasn’t there some piece of being on the receiving end of a tattoo that was also a bit masochistic? She remembered the almost sexual thrill of her first tattoo. Even though she was an adult in a clean parlor with autoclaved needles, it had still felt naughty, like she was participating in a ritual so taboo that it should be illegal.
Dina and Matt were in her primo ‘68 Dodge Dart cruising down Main Street toward the only store in town where you could pay to get needles legally jammed into your skin---besides the old Chinese acupuncturist’s place, anyway. Gwen Stefani’s distinctive voice blasted from the car’s speakers.
“So, Din, you still going with an alligator?” Matt asked, sticking his head out the window like a happy beagle. “And do you have to smoke those foul things in the car?”
“Yes and yes,” she answered, crushing the cigarette into the ashtray. “I was thinking of something small and delicate, then I remembered who I am,” she said, surprised at the bitter note that crept into her voice. “I’m gonna have her write something under it that I saw on a tee-shirt once: ‘Life’s short---bite hard.’ “
“Feeling a little hostile?” Matt pulled his head back in the window. “Think I should do my tongue?” He flipped down the visor to look in the mirror and opened his mouth. “My mom would freak.” He fingered the silver hoop in his eyebrow.
“Part of the fun,” Dina laughed. “And if I’m feeling a little hostile, it’s only in reaction to feeling screwed over by everyone I’ve ever cared about. My new attitude is screw them before they get a chance to screw you. They either hurt you or leave.”
“Hey,” Matt interjected. “I have so not screwed you. And I’m not going anywhere. Or,” he said archly, eyes wide in mock innocence, “are you saying you don’t care about me?”
Dina pulled into the wide gravel parking lot of The Rose Tattoo and turned off the car.
“Course I do. You’re like the little brother I woulda had if anyone had let me choose. Besides, you know better than to mess with me; I’d kick your ass.” They both climbed out of the car. Dina tossed the car keys to Matt. “Here. Put these in your pocket, okay?”
Dina held the swinging glass door open for Matt and followed him into the stringently clean shop. The walls were covered in brightly colored flash, and on the counter lay a stack of photo albums. A picture of the tribal armband she’d had Zippo design last summer---his last tattoo before he totaled his Harley---was on the wall in a frame next to his obituary. She touched her arm in memory of the man who’d initiated her into the world of body art. He’d done her first four pieces and had become almost like a father to her over the years. A Bob Seger song pounded through the empty room.
“Where is everybody?” Matt asked Dina quietly.
“Must be out back having a smoke. Have you seen this?” she asked pulling a blue vinyl album across the counter toward them. She flipped through a few pages until she came to a close-up of a proudly smiling young man with magenta tips on his short bleached hair, a thick silver hoop in each ear and a small hoop in one eyebrow. “Maggie took that, remember? After she finally got your eyebrow to stop bleeding.”
“I didn’t know they put that picture in there.” He bent down to look closely. “That was my birthday, huh? If I’d known you were going to bring me here that day, I’d of worn a better shirt. You know I always wear black in pictures.”
“But then you wouldn’t have a white tee-shirt with a blood splotch on the shoulder,” Dina teased. “All the guys go wild for a man with war wounds.”
Matt grinned. “It is a good conversation starter at the bars. I’ve gotten several offers to kick someone’s ass for me from that stain. It seems to bring out the protective nature in some guys. Of course, others are repelled. Show me the other pictures of you.”
“Besides the one on the wall,” she pointed to Zippo’s framed obituary, “mine are in here.” She dragged a thick album from the end of the counter. Opening it to the first page, she showed Matt a series of snapshots of a young girl lying face downwards on the table, her pants pulled down to expose her right hip. A man with a grizzled gray beard is bent over her, outlining a tattoo too small to recognize from this distance. In the first picture, she’s grimacing, her hand over her eyes. The third shows her smiling broadly checking out the completed outline with a hand mirror. The final photo is a close-up of the finished product: a beautifully inked and shaded lotus blossom.
“There’s nothing like your first,” she said. The pictures always fill her with bittersweet memories: a mix of the sense of exhilaration and personal power she experienced that day six years ago on her eighteenth birthday, along with fond feelings and sadness for the loss of the man who died so suddenly last summer.
“Your hair was long then,” Matt said. “I’d forgotten.”
She flipped to the next pictures of her from two years later. Zippo was adding a golden koi swimming below the floating lotus blossom. Next visit a year later, she had him add a second koi, and fill in with stylized water.
The armband was a whim after a particularly bad break-up. He’d tried to talk her out of it, thinking she’d be happier sticking with the tranquil Japanese theme. Of course he’d been right, she thought, closing the picture album. So, here she was feeling hurt and bruised again, planning to get a frigging alligator on her back? Perhaps time to rethink this one.
“You’ve got the coolest tats, but everyone says they’re addicting. That’s why I haven’t gotten one,” Matt said, walking over to sit in one of the three chairs lined up in front of the window.
Dina laughed. “But you’re thinking of getting your tongue pierced. Aren’t you afraid someday you’ll look like this chick?” She pointed to a picture on the wall.
“Uck. That freaks me out to even look at it,” Matt said, turning his head away from the black and white photograph of a young girl so heavily pierced her face is almost completely obscured by the hoops and studs protruding through her skin.
“Okay, then, you big baby, check this out,” she said, opening the album to a life sized enlargement of the underside of a man’s penis and walking over to where Matt sat.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
“Jacob’s ladder. Supposed to enhance the pleasure of one’s partner.”
“No guy better ever come near me with anything like that,” Matt said. “What’re you trying to do to me?”
“Why, nothing,” Dina answered with an ingenuous smile. “All right, here are the last two of me. Really.” She opened the photo album to a page that showed a close-up of the tribal arm band. The next picture was a view of her standing next to Zippo, each with their arms around the other’s waists. Although she missed him immensely, she was grateful for the opportunity she’d had to know and love him for five years. Much as it annoyed her to realize it, it wasn’t so different from this current situation that was pissing her off so much. Sometimes friendships ended, and she couldn’t make someone want to be close to her if they didn’t choose to. At least in this new case, no one had died.
“You okay?” Matt asked. He’d walked over to a small round mirror and stood looking at his tongue again.
“Yeah, why?” She closed the album and laid it on top of the stack. “Just thinking.”
Maggie walked through the beaded curtain that shut off the private area in the back from the room that housed the padded table and two dentists’ chairs. Her orange hair stood up in spikes, and she wore a rhinestone in the area of her third eye. She had no visible tattoos, but Dina had seen the dragon that covered her entire back. “Hey, Dina, Matt. How’s it going?”
“Okay. Not much traffic in here today, huh?” Dina walked over and hugged Maggie.
“Been really slow. Gonna let me do some work on you?” Maggie asked.
“Nah, not today,” Dina answered, in the same moment that she made the decision. Getting a pissed-off tattoo had to be a mistake. Besides, she realized she wasn’t really pissed off anymore, anyway. “Just came in to say hi and take a look at some pictures. Come on, Matt, let’s go get a coffee and check out the guys down at the cliffs.” She put her arm around Matt’s shoulder and steered him toward the door.
“Don’t have to ask me twice,” he said, waving at Maggie as the glass door swung shut behind them.
