“You really wanna pay that man respects?”
“Not respects,” I said. “Could be a way to let go, that’s all.”
“I don’t need to let go,” he said. “I let go when I cut him off years ago.”
“I thought I did too,” I said. “Believe me, going to Dad’s funeral was never something I ever planned on doing. But I think it could be helpful to, you know, see them put him in the ground, to know that he’s gone for good. But if you don’t want to go, I totally get it.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Well, goodbye then,” I said.
I doubted I’d ever have a reason to call Nick again. The last time I’d spoken with him on the phone was when our mother died. Neither of us had gone to that funeral because we didn’t want to see our father again. I hadn’t seen Nick in ten years, since I left home after graduating high school in ’48. It was sad we weren’t closer; that was Nick’s fault, not mine. While my dad used to beat Nick and me, around the time we turned fifteen and I came out, Nick started abusing me too.
I sobbed for a while longer, then I tried to get on with my life. I did some chores and cooked myself dinner—spaghetti with canned sauce and broccoli. I lived by myself in a one-bedroom apartment in Johnson City, New York. After high school I needed to get away from my father, so I moved to Syracuse with a friend who was going to college there. I shacked up with a guy in Johnson City, telling the landlord and neighbors we were just roomies, until he dumped me for his old boyfriend. I had nowhere else to go so I stayed there and got a job as a bookkeeper at a shoe manufacturer in Endicott. It was boring work, but it paid the bills.
Since I got dumped, I met other guys here and there, sure, usually ones “experimenting” from the University. Otherwise, the gay scene in the tri-cities—Binghamton, Johnson City, and Endicott—wasn’t exactly jumping. There was one flamer bar, Harry’s over on Clinton Street in Binghamton, where I used to go sometimes. But about a year ago, I had an awful experience: I was leaving, by myself, when a townie attacked me, beat the living crap out of me. He must have been squeezing a roll of nickels because one of his fists felt like steel. When I reported what happened the next day, the detective at the police station knew exactly who the guy was, but he laughed and seemed more keen on arresting me for what I was.
I didn’t know why I’d expected it to go any other way.
Before bed, I watched some TV—The Huntley-Brinkley Report—but I wasn’t really paying attention. In my head, I kept replaying the times my dad beat me and Nick up, or verbally abused us. My mom never helped, but I couldn’t blame her because my father was beating her too.
As I was falling asleep, my phone rang. I pulled the receiver off the cradle by the cord.
“Hello?”
“Changed my mind,” Nick said. “I wanna see them put that old prick in the ground.”
***
A FEW DAYS LATER, on the day of the funeral, I drove over to my brother’s small house in Albany in my car, one of those older Plymouth models that steered like a tank. Although we had identical genes, I almost didn’t recognize Nick. He had to be about thirty or forty pounds overweight. He was in dirty khakis and had a prominent beer gut pushing out his crew cut T-shirt. Tattoos covered his big, mostly fatty, arms. He’d had one of the tattoos—a snake—since we were teens. The others were all since I’d last seen him: Cartoon tomcats, broken hearts and switchblades, a lot of World War II stuff.
Maybe he didn’t recognize me either because I had to honk before he got in the car.
When he got in he said, “Hey,” but didn’t shake my hand or even look at me.
The funeral was where we grew up, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, about an hour and a half drive away.
We didn’t talk much during the ride. The sky was gray and it was drizzling but not enough to need the wipers. Nick told me about his new job “at the plant,” but I didn’t ask him what kind of plant it was. He didn’t ask me anything about myself. Most of the time, I was focused on driving, and he was staring straight ahead.
Although Nick hadn’t said or done anything, or threatened me in any way, I felt uneasy. My instincts told me I was in danger, that my life was in jeopardy. There didn’t seem to be any logical reason why I felt this way; it was just a vibe.
We were riding along Route 90, maybe halfway to Pittsfield, when Nick asked, “You still queer?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You still straight?”
He waited about a minute then said, “I think that’s why you got it worse than me. Dad couldn’t handle it.”
Thinking that Nick couldn’t handle it either, I said, “Yeah, that’s true.”
“I ever tell you about the time I tried to kill him?” Nick asked.
“No.”
“It was when we were sixteen,” he said. “Dad finished beating us and went into the backyard to get more drunk. You were upstairs in bed, crying as usual, and a voice said to me, Kill him. So I went down to the kitchen, grabbed the biggest knife I could find, and came up behind him. I saw myself doing it—slitting his throat, all the blood spurting out. But when I was a about to move he turned around and grabbed the knife right out of my hand. He started laughing hysterically, then he beat the living shit out of me.”
“A voice told you to do it?” I said. “I didn’t know you hear voices now.”
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” he said. After a period of not saying anything, he added, “So you really think Uncle Frank shot Dad by accident?”
“I don’t know, what do you think?”
“Thought he was a buck, my ass,” Nick said. “How does a man look like a buck? Frank was in the joint for manslaughter. Trust me—nothing would stop him from killing somebody. Everybody hated Dad and wanted him dead. It’s a miracle he lived as long as he did. If I slit his throat that night imagine how much pain it would’ve saved all of us.”
We didn’t talk anymore until we arrived in downtown Pittsfield and Nick said, “Well, here we are.”
I hadn’t been to Pittsfield in a while, but it hadn’t changed much. Thanks to the GE factory, downtown was hopping as always, and I noticed some new stores, including a soda shop and a luncheonette that looked like it was jumping.
The part of town where we grew up looked as rundown as it always had.
We still had some time to kill so we went to a shabby diner next to a rundown pool hall and had coffee and breakfast. I still felt uneasy around Nick, like I didn’t want to turn my back to him. His story about almost killing our father didn’t exactly make me more comfortable around him.
At the cemetery, the sky was still gray and bleak. No one was around except a couple of cemetery workers preparing the gravesite.
Then two more arrived. Uncle Frank looked a lot like my dad—so much so that I actually shuddered when I saw him approaching. He had the same dead, empty look in his eyes that my father and Nick had.
Alongside Frank was Tammy in her wheelchair. The family story was she’d had a “freak accident” as a teenager and fell down a flight of stairs and wound up paralyzed from the waist down, but everyone suspected that Frank had pushed her.
What can I say? I came from a family of psychos, and I was lucky that I’d avoided getting that bad gene.
“Nobody else is coming,” Frank said. “Let’s get him in the hole so we can get outta here.”
He didn’t exactly sound devastated that his brother was gone. Then again, none of us were.
A hearse pulled up and the cemetery workers slid out the cheapest looking coffin I’d ever seen. It looked like it was made of cardboard.
“Anybody want to speak?” Frank asked.
“Hell no,” Nick said.
As the workers lowered the coffin into the grave, I noticed that Frank had a snake tattoo on his arm, just like Nick’s. When the coffin was in position, Nick approached the grave.
“Nick, come on, don’t,” Tammy said.
It was too late—Nick was already pissing all over the coffin.
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Frank was laughing.
I thought it was pretty damn funny too.
“Good idea,” I said, and joined in.
“What the hell?” Frank said, and he pissed on the coffin too.
Sadly, this might’ve been the happiest family moment I’d ever had.
***
“I SAW YOU LOOKING at Frank’s tattoo,” Nick said.
We’d left the cemetery and were walking toward my car. The sun had come out but it was still chilly.
“Yeah,” I said. “I noticed it looks just like yours.”
“We got it at the same place. You should get one too.”
“I’m not into tattoos,” I said.
“These aren’t any tattoos,” Nick said. “These are different.”
“What makes them different?”
“It’s hard to explain. Hey, I have an idea, let’s get tats right now.”
“Now?”
“Why not? We said goodbye to Dad, showed him how pissed off at him we all are, so now it’s time to, what’s the word I’m looking for? Commiserate?”
“Commemorate,” I said.
“Right, commem—? Whatever, I think today’s a day we’re going to remember, so we should do something to remember it.”
I opened the door to the car and got in, then I opened the passenger door for Nick.
As I drove away, Nick said, “Come on, I’m serious, what do you say? We both get the same tattoo to help us forget Dad, move on.”
“Freedom,” I said.
“Or how about just Free?” Nick said. “Come on, let’s do it, we’ll go to Outlawed Ink over in Pauling. It’s about a twenty minute drive, sort of on the way to Albany. You won’t regret it, Ray, I promise.”
“You know what?” I said. “Why not? Let’s just do it.”
I knew I was acting impulsive, but I didn’t care. The best things had happened to me when I took risks and I hadn’t taken a real risk in ages.
We drove along Route 20, over a mountain, toward the Massachusetts-New York border.
When we got close to town, Nick said, “This is it, right here. Right, the dirt road.”
We rode along the dirt road for maybe a half hour until we reached a converted garage with a sign on it: OUTLAWED INK.
“Doesn’t look open,” I said.
“It’s always open,” he said. “Wait here.”
He went to the dilapidated house next to the garage and banged on the screen door. An extremely frail, wrinkled man with a very small bald head—he appeared to be at least ninety years old—came to the door. Nick talked to him for a few minutes. A couple of times the man glanced in my direction, but by the way he was squinting I didn’t know if he could even see me.
Nick returned to the car and said, “Okay, he can take us.”
“He’s the tattoo artist?”
“Yeah, one of the best.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Trust me,” Nick said. “I’ve been coming here for years. You won’t be disappointed.”
My instincts told me this was a bad idea, but when had I ever listened to my instincts?
“What the hell,” I said.
We waited near the garage for about fifteen minutes. Finally, the man exited the house.
He walked slowly with shuffle stops and then we waited until he found the right key on the chain—it seemed like he tried ten—and opened the door.
Was I really going to trust this guy to give me a tattoo? Could he even keep his hands steady?
“He wants to do you first,” Nick said.
Nick could tell I was nervous.
“Don’t worry,” Nick said. “Look at my body. I’ve got twenty-six tats. I survived.”
I sat in a chair while Nick stood over me. The old guy was preparing the inks or whatever. His head seemed even smaller up close—he might’ve had the smallest head I’d ever seen on a body. He also now seemed been much older than ninety, closer to one hundred.
“I already told him what you want,” Nick said. “He’ll show you some styles and colors, and you tell him where you want it.”
I chose the style and color—a darkish green—and I told him that I wanted it on the inside of my left forearm, about three inches long. He didn’t seem to understand me, even though the fourth time I repeated myself I was practically shouting.
“He wants it three inches,” Nick said in a normal voice.
The old man nodded.
I considered bailing again, but as the old man prepared to tattoo me he seemed to know what he was doing. He sterilized my arm and the needle, and I saw him open a fresh jar of ink. Rationalizing, I told myself I was better off with a guy who’d probably done this thousands of times in his life, as opposed to some first timer.
He spent about a half hour on me, tattooing FREE on my forearm, in the exact style I’d chosen. It was somewhat painful, but not as much as I’d expected. Then he bandaged my arm.
“That was easier than I thought,” I said to the old man. “Thank you.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. He whispered something into Nick’s ear, then left the garage.
“Where’s he going?” I asked.
“He has a doctor’s appointment,” Nick said. “Won’t have time to do me today.”
“I thought the whole point was we’d get them together,” I said.
“What can you do?” Nick said. “The guy has to go. I’ll come back some other time. Besides, you’re the virgin. We had to pop your tattoo cherry and we did it, mission accomplished.”
“What about paying him?”
“I already paid him, don’t worry about it.”
I hadn’t seen Nick pay him, but it was possible he’d slipped him some cash at some point.
Back in my car, Nick and I headed to Albany.
“So,” Nick asked. “You feel it yet?”
“Feel what?” I asked.
“Something different,” he said. “Or maybe something . . . missing.”
I didn’t know what he was getting at.
“How can I feel something that’s not there?” I asked.
“You can’t,” he said, “but, trust me, you’ll know it’s gone.”
“Seriously,” I said, “what’re you talking about?”
Nick laughed. “Oh, man, I didn’t know how much fun this would be? I mean, I knew it would be fun, but I didn’t know it would be the funniest thing ever.” He continued laughing.
Driving, focused on the road, I wondered if Nick was just messing with me, like he’d always messed with me.
He recovered from laughing, then said, “Didn’t you ever wonder why you’re different from me, Frank, and Dad?”
“You mean because I’m gay?”
“No, besides that. You know there’s something else, right?”
“You mean personality-wise?”
“Yeah, come on. You can say it. What makes us different?”
“You’re all crazy.”
“Right,” Nick said. “Exactly. Actually we’re beyond crazy. We’re full-blown psychotic.”
If Nick had said this to me this morning, I probably would’ve been terrified. For some reason now it didn’t bother me at all.
“I didn’t know you were so aware of it,” I said.
“Lemme ask you another question,” he said. “Did you ever wonder how we got to be this way?”
“I guess it’s genetics,” I said.
“No,” he said, “it’s ink. Tattoo ink. The same tattoo ink that’s seeping into your body right now, sucking out your conscience.”
“Ha ha,” I said. “That’s funny.”
“You think I’m joking?”
“Yeah, I think you’re joking.”
He started laughing again, so hard he could barely catch his breath.
“Oh, man,” he said. “This is . . . ” He was still laughing. “This is the funniest thing ever.” He calmed down, then said, “Ever notice how I never feel guilty about anything? I mean, going back to when I was sixteen,
and I gave you a hard time? That’s because that’s when Uncle Frank took me to Outlawed Ink to get my first tattoo. See, we have a family tradition of going there. Frank and Dad went there when they were teenagers and that’s how they became psychotic. Like I’ve been telling you, the ink kills your conscience and replaces it with another voice, a voice that lets you do whatever you feel like doing. If you don’t have a conscience there’s no limit to what you can do. I’m telling you, I can’t even remember what guilt feels like, but I don’t miss it at all either.”
“You really expect me to believe any of this?” I said.
“It’s been over a half hour,” he said. “It should be kicking in already. Think about something you feel guilty about.”
“This is ridic—”
“There must be something,” he said. “Come on.”
I thought about it, then said, “Okay, not visiting mom in the hospital before she died.”
“Okay now, do you actually feel bad about that or do you not give a damn?”
I didn’t care at all; I felt totally indifferent.
“You don’t even have to answer,” he said. “I see it in your face.”
I didn’t believe it. It had to just be in my head; I was psyching myself out.
There was a Dunkin Donuts up ahead. I slowed and pulled into the lot.
“I need some coffee,” I said.
We went in. I ordered coffee and Nick ordered hot chocolate and a Boston cream donut.
I thought, Aren’t you too fat to eat that? Then said it: “Aren’t you too fat to eat that?”
I couldn’t believe I’d said what I was thinking.
“There you go,” Nick said, “another example. When you lose your conscience you lose your filter. You’ll find you’re much more honest than you used to be. Though there’s another word for honesty—it’s called cruelty.”
The teenage guy at the counter was overhearing all of this.
“I’ll pay for his too,” I said to the guy.
We returned to the car. Admittedly I felt different—stronger, more confident even—but I still didn’t believe that it had anything to do with the tattoo. Ink destroying my conscience? Did Nick really expect me to believe that?
I couldn’t deny it though, I felt different. It had to be my imagination; I was playing games with myself.
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