by KC Decker
Then he twists the knife in my ribs when he adds, “I love you, but you are a fucking idiot, and I have never been so disappointed in you.”
When I switch the circumstances, I realize I’ve always pushed him to be true to himself, and I’ve been the first into battle with him in defense of loving whoever he wants to. I’m not sure why the same convictions don’t apply to me. Maybe because I figure if I don’t date someone perceived as unsavory, then I’ll never fall in love with someone I would have to defend.
Full disclosure, I’m pretty disappointed in myself as well. After letting the slap of his words fade a little, I say the only thing I can at this juncture.
“How do I fix it?”
Chapter 8
Miles’ solution to my dilemma was both incredibly simple and ridiculously far-fetched. Plus, my life would have to be spinning wildly out of control for me to permanently mar my body in the same way that had spun me in the other direction when I met Gavin. Get a tattoo, he had said, as if he were suggesting a mid-day coffee. And though he thought it was a perfectly feasible option, I took a hard pass. Really, anything short of tattooing ‘hypocrite’ across my forehead would never work.
I can, however, engage Miles’ plan B. Which is to bring Gavin lunch at his shop. Even though my knees are practically knocking together with nervousness, I figure it’s really the only thing I can do that wouldn’t earn me the middle finger of his right hand.
So, here I am using my own lunch hour to bring him a turkey sandwich and cup of soup from my very favorite deli. Never mind that I have wasted nothing short of twenty minutes sitting in my car trying to summon enough courage to walk in there, and now the soup is probably cold and the sandwich soggy.
When I push open the door, I notice two things right away, one—it’s loud. The music has a presence all its own, and it’s a dominating one. And two, it’s bright and clean. The furniture up front, as well as the reception desk, is chic yet industrial, like you would expect to see in an art gallery or trendy salon. The walls are adorned with huge framed pieces of art—tattoo art, but like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I can tell they are drawings, but the realism in each one makes them seem three dimensional and freakishly alive.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist asks politely. She has a ring through her nose like a bull, and heavy makeup but she still seems young and sweet.
“Yeah, um. Hi. I was hoping to talk to Gavin…if he has a minute?” The words sound like they’ve been punched out of my chest, and if it’s possible for teeth to vibrate, mine are.
“He is with someone, but I can poke my head into his room and see if he has a second.” She turns to walk away but stops herself and asks, “Can I get you anything? Chai tea? Cappuccino? Sparkling water?”
“I’m good. Thanks.” Honestly, I would have been less surprised to be offered a shot of whiskey than a cappuccino. To me, tattoo shop branding seems more bad-ass than anything polite or fitting of a Chai tea or sparkling water.
She walks away to let him know someone is here to see him, but before she branches off into one of the rooms, she evidently sees him in the back of the shop. I hear her say, “Oh good, you’re not gloved. Someone wants to talk to you.” Then she calls out to me, “Come on back, he’s at the printer.”
As I walk back, I try to remember that I’m doing something nice for him, but what is really playing in my head is how I called him a horse’s ass the last time I saw him.
The receptionist passes me on the way back to her post, and I take a few more steps toward Gavin. His back is to me while he pushes buttons and then waits for something to print. He doesn’t seem the least bit curious who has dropped by to see him—that, or he doesn’t care.
“I thought I would bring you some lunch as a peace offering.” My voice starts off timid but gains strength by the time I finish speaking. He still doesn’t turn around, but he does look to the ceiling as if praying for the strength to deal with me.
“You mean you’re not here for a giant tattoo?” he asks as he finally turns around to look at me.
“Noooo, I just wante—”
“Maybe a piercing then? Do you think poking a hole through your body will deflate your giant ego? No, probably not,” he answers himself as he reaches back to retrieve his printout. I can’t tell what the image is, but the stencil is pretty big.
I don’t respond, but it’s not because of his insult. A tattoo is outside the realm of possibilities, but…
“I already ate, but you can give that to Christy on your way out,” he says dismissively as he walks away from me.
“Sure, yeah, and I’ll just make my appointment when I give her your cast-off sandwich,” I say, and it stops him in his tracks. He pauses before facing me again.
“I’m not tattooing you. Make your appointment with one of the other artists. Scott should only be booked a couple weeks out.”
“I’m not getting a tattoo,” I say.
“Well then, all of our piercers are great, you should be in good hands.” Then he disappears into one of the tattoo rooms, and I try to rapid-blink away the tears that have arrived unannounced. I haven’t cried over a guy since Todd Bernhardt, and that was sophomore year in high school.
Gavin’s whole persona is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the thoughtful guy who draws tattoos on kids with cancer and kisses his mom on the cheek. I’m not saying I don’t deserve it; I’m just saying it is a rough lesson.
And now I have to get pierced.
***
Another week has gone by before I have to face the fact that my piercing appointment is on the immediate horizon. As in, today, after work. I’ve been in a sort of denial about its approach, but I can’t avoid it any longer. Which means I have to decide where I will be puncturing my flesh just to prove I can, before letting the hole in my spitefulness heal over.
I figure ears are too typical, and I can’t pierce my face for the same reason I can’t date Gavin, so no lip, brow, or nose. My lady bits and nipples are so far off the table that I hardly spare them a thought. Pretty much that leaves me with my belly button, and Gavin already made fun of sorority letters and tramp stamp tattoos, so I’m sure he feels the same about belly rings.
I don’t even know why I’m factoring him into my decision, he has tattoos booked out a year from now and has hired people to do the piercings, so I probably won’t even see him. I would cancel the appointment altogether were it not for two very important things. One, my pride. And two, I have a monetary donation from my company for his damn tattoo convention. I’ll just leave the check along with my dignity behind when I leave. Pierced.
The donation wasn’t easy to come by, but re-wording tattoo shop owner into young business professional finally did the trick. I’m assuming it’s not nearly enough to cover his costs, but at least I kept my word—or more accurately, his word on my behalf. My company is not exactly sponsoring his booth at the tattoo convention, but he should at least know I tried to squeeze blood from a turnip.
This morning I decided to stay late at work so I could go straight to my appointment, but only because running home to primp first made no sense. I scheduled with Lillianna, who, according to the receptionist is the best piercer they have, and I don’t expect to see Gavin at all, so I figured my executive work attire would be fine. That was this morning.
As the day has trudged on, I’ve felt less and less like strutting into a tattoo shop in pantyhose and three-inch heels. If my reputation as a stuffy, judgmental bitch precedes me at all, then walking in like this would be admitting the truth of it just as much as shouting it through a megaphone.
The truth is, I am a stuffy, judgmental bitch. I was molded into one so fluidly and consistently that I didn’t see it happening. I was raised under the thumb of a powerful politician and bathed regularly in pretense and hypocrisy. If I ever had a wayward thought, it was snuffed out before ever coming to fruition. And since birth, every decision was made for me, and every move coaxed through a refining filter.
>
Once somewhat freed from the distillation process that was my life, and sent away to college—to follow my predetermined path without hope of the slightest variation, I began to recognize my own thoughts. The most damaging of which was that I hated the puppet I had become. I hated myself.
The darkest time of my life was when I recognized the qualities I loathed in my parents as my own. To this day, when I see a glimmer of my mother or father in myself, I want to take an acid bath and start anew.
That is the reason I hustle so hard in my career. I work twice as hard as anyone in my department, and I always will. I feel a compulsive need to carve myself as my own entity and to never, ever rely on my parents for anything.
The very idea of this piercing tickles at the rebellion I feel on every surface of my skin, but astonishingly, I still deeply crave my parent’s acceptance. Their indoctrination runs deep, so there is a painful push and pull going on inside of me. On one hand, I want to be nothing like them. On the other hand, I don’t know how to be nothing like them.
The healthiest aspect of my life has always been my friends. It’s through them I learned about love and trust, as well as such esoteric concepts as basic integrity, and respect—for others as well as myself. My child and young adulthood were developed and refined around the mentality of a business arrangement instead of a nurturing environment, and I will never be free of the consequences of such.
I wonder how much of this desire to change Gavin’s impression of me is due to the potent need to scrape off the remnants of my parent’s stronghold. I can still hear their echo in my prejudice, and I want to gnaw off the part of them that still resonates with me.
I don’t blame Gavin for hating me. I still hate parts of myself. And I certainly don’t disagree with his assessment of me. It’s spot on. But for some reason, I refuse to let this go. Which is the long version of why I’m keeping my appointment at his shop.
Chapter 9
If I didn’t know better, I would think I was about to have a facial at an uptown spa. The piercing room is, dare I say—soothing? Three of the walls are crisp white, and the fourth is covered with thin, rough slats of varying shades of white, stacked limestone. There is a fountain burbling away in the corner of the room, an oil diffuser emitting a fine mist scented with lavender, and a shallow pot of leafy bamboo reeds tied together with red and gold ribbon.
The single piece of framed art on the wall is a drawing of Buddha that looks so authentic and alive I half expect it to wink at me. The quiet music fits with the Zen-like atmosphere but sounds more like a meditative chant than a song. The two pieces of furniture in the room are a spa chair, currently in the upright position, and a cabinet that looks like a mandala was hammered out of chrome and then wrapped around it.
My piercer, Lillianna, is also not what I expected. She has long, silky, blonde hair and moves like a ballerina—purposely, yet with an undefined grace. She has no visible tattoos, no stretched out earlobes, no cold stare or look of future regret. She does have a spattering of piercings though.
Her piercings are different from any I have seen before because they are on flat parts of her body and look more like a glued-on rhinestone or silver ball. Four such silver balls run along the underside of her left collarbone and look almost pretty—delicate even. Another five or six balls are placed up the outside edge of her right forearm like ants marching in a row. Scratch that—both of her forearms have the same row of balls, not only the right one. Then she has a line of three rhinestones in her cleavage, and a single one in the middle of her top lip, right above her cupid’s bow.
She directs me to have a seat on the spa chair as she takes the clipboard of paperwork, waivers, and post-care instructions from me then begins to read over it. After seeing her piercings, I no longer want to ask for a belly ring. It seems like the navel piercing ship has sailed and another, more sophisticated one has docked in its place. She doesn’t even have her ears pierced.
“Can I answer any questions or address any concerns for you, Alabama?” she asks. Her eyes are kind and have an almost heroic glint to them, it puts me at ease somehow.
“I guess my only concern now, is that after seeing your piercings I kind of want one like that instead of what I originally thought I wanted,” I say, sounding, as well as feeling incredibly stupid.
“This kind of piercing,” she explains, while the tips of her fingers feather over the balls beneath her collarbone, “Is called a surface piercing. They are a little more invasive than a traditional piercing because they traverse more skin, but they are beautiful. Actually, the client right before you had me do one on the nape of her neck. She chose a rather large piece of jewelry, so the gauge and ends of the barbell were bigger than I normally recommend starting with, but she knew what she wanted, and she’s definitely not new to piercings, so I allowed it.”
While I’m chewing over the words, more invasive, someone knocks on the door. When they push it open, the aggressive base-driven music invades Lillianna’s serene piercing room, spits in its mouth and then beats it to death. Worse than the music, Gavin now dominates the space as he closes the door behind him, effectively shutting out the racket he calls music. That door must be friggen sound-proof to ward off all that noise.
He nods at me, somewhat of an acknowledgment I suppose, and then speaks directly to Lillianna. “Lil, I need a favor.” He is wearing a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and some faded, ratty jeans that I know he bought like that because they are too perfectly distressed to be genuinely old and beat-up.
“What do you need?” she asks, not at all concerned that he just barged in on her consultation with me.
“Christy can’t go to L.A with me this weekend anymore. I’m desperate.”
“Gavin, I’m a single mother, what about the twins?” she looks sympathetic to his plight, but that’s all.
“I’ll pay for a babysitter. I’ll pay double.”
“I’ve never left them with anyone but my mother. I can’t find some random babysitter and then trust them with my babies for three days.” I love that she conveys what a ridiculous suggestion it is with a little laugh mixed in to her refusal.
“I’ll pay your mo—”
“Gavin, I can’t go. I’m nursing, and even if I pumped all weekend, there is nowhere near enough milk on hand at home.” Then she pokes his chest and adds, “What did you think those daily bags of breastmilk in the fridge were for?”
“What, that’s not coffee creamer?” he teases. I remember when he was smiley and cracking jokes with me. Now he has frozen over, so seeing his personality shine with someone else makes me more than a little regretful.
“I’ll figure it out. What are you getting pierced, Alabama?” He changed gears so fluidly, it takes me a second to realize he is talking to me. I can’t tell if there is a challenge in his question, but I scramble anyway because I still haven’t decided, and I refuse to tell him my belly button.
“She is thinking about a surface piercing, but I’ve only just collected her paperwork, so we haven’t got that far yet.” It almost sounds like she is coming to my aid, and I like her even more for her intercession.
“Alright then, have fun,” he says before he is swallowed back into the pounding base of the shop.
“I didn’t realize you two knew each other. I’m surprised he didn’t offer his opinion,” Lillianna says, not without affection.
“We’ve met before,” I leave it at that, and then ask, “Why would he offer his opinion anyway? Why would he care what I pierce?”
“Oh, he has his favorite spot. Trust me, all guys do.”
“What’s his favorite spot?” I ask, but I’m not even sure I want to know, and I damn sure don’t want it to get back to him that I asked.
“He likes surface piercings right here,” she drags a fingernail diagonally up her abdomen almost to her hip. The section she indicates is one side of that sexy V that points to a guy’s goods, all the way to his sexy hip indent. Or in my case, the exact sp
ot I almost tattooed with a rose on a drunken dare back in college. Well, more accurately, it was going to be a fuck you tribute to my folks—but thankfully, I was too drunk and promptly turned away. Truth—that piercing would look pretty sexy, but I’m not sure I’m up for multiple surface piercings tonight, I need to give it more thought.
“What’s your pleasure?” she asks, and I suppose she is referring to the sacrificial patch of skin I will be offering up because undoubtedly, one knows such things when entering her piercing studio.
“Um,” is all I can push past my teeth, and it leaves me sounding dumber than I look—which is super dumb as I swing my feet nervously beneath me, like a child waiting for a round of immunizations. Don’t say belly button, don’t say belly button. “My ears,” I finally decide.
“Your ears?” Lillianna asks as she pulls something from the shelf and then approaches me with a well-worn leather portfolio. She leans a hip against the edge of the spa chair where I sit, effectively erasing any personal space boundaries I may have come in with.
“That still leaves us with lots of options.” As she flips through the pages, she creates a breeze that rustles her hair and teases the air with the scent of baby lotion. I think it’s sweet that she has twin babies at home, but I kinda hate her for bouncing back the way she obviously did. Her waist is tiny, and I’d bet my right ovary that her tits are still perky.
My eyes land on one picture in particular. I’ve never seen someone’s ear pierced the way the photo shows, and it’s pretty. I might even get away with keeping it for a while at work.
“I like this,” I say as I point to the image. There is a vertical line of three silver balls right where the top of her ear meets the side of her head. They decrease in size from small, to tiny, to really tiny. I like it, and that knowledge surprises me more than you know.