Dorothy Parker's Elbow

by Kim Addonizio

  “’Gone and got yourself tattooed!’” Carmey mimics a mincing disgust. “’And with just a name! Is that all you think of me?’—She’ll be wanting roses, birds, butterflies…” The needle sticks for a second and the boys flinches like a colt. “And if you do get all that stuff to please her—roses…”

  “Birds and butterflies,” Mr. Tomolillo puts in.

  “… she’ll say, sure as rain at a ball game: ‘What’d you want to go and spend all that money for?’” Carmey whizzes the needle clean in the bowl of antiseptic. “You can’t beat a woman” A few meager blood drops stand up along the four letters—letters so black and plain you can hardly tell it’s a tattoo and not just inked in with a pen. Carmey tapes a narrow bandage of Kleenex over the name. The whole operation lasts less than ten minutes.

  The boys fishes a crumpled dollar bill from his back pocket. His friends cuff him fondly on the shoulder and the three of them crowd out the door, all at the same time, nudging, pushing, tripping over their feet. Several faces, limpet-pale against the window, melt away as Carmey’s eye lingers on them.

  “No wonder he doesn’t want a heart, that kid, he wouldn’t know what to do with it. He’ll be back next week asking for a Betty or a Dolly or some such, you wait.” He sighs, and goes to the cardboard file and pulls out a stack of those photographs he wouldn’t put on the wall and passes them around. “One picture I would like to get,” Carmey 1eans back in the swivel chair and props his cowboy boots on a little carton, “the butterfly. I got pictures of the rabbit hunt. I got pictures of ladies with snakes winding up their legs and into them, but I could make a lot of sweet dough if I got a picture of the butterfly on a woman.”

  “Some queer kind of butterfly nobody wants?” Ned peers in the general direction of my stomach as at some high-grade salable parchment.

  “It’s not what, it’s where. One wing on the front of each thigh. You know how butterflies on a flower make their wings flutter, ever so little? Well, any move a woman makes, these wings look to be going in and out, in and out. I’d like a photograph of that so much I’d practically do a butterfly for free.”

  I toy, for a second, with the thought of a New Guinea Golden, wings extending from hipbone to kneecap, ten times life size, but drop it fast. A fine thing if I got tired of my own skin sooner than last year’s sack.

  “Plenty of women ask for butterflies in that particular spot,” Carmey goes on, “but you know what, not one of them will let a photograph be taken after the job’s done. Not even from the waist down. Don’t imagine I haven’t asked. You’d think everybody over the whole United States would recognize them from the way they carry on when it’s even mentioned.”

  “Couldn’t,” Mr. Tomolilo ventures shyly, “the wife oblige? Make it a little family affair?”

  Carmey’s face skews up in a pained way. “Naw.” He shakes his head, his voice weighted with an old wonder and regret. “Naw, Laura won’t hear of the needle. I used to think the idea of it’d grow on her after a bit, but nothing doing. She makes me feel, sometimes, what do I see in it all. Laura’s white as the day she was born. Why, she hates tattoos.”

  Up to this moment I have been projecting, fatuously, intimate visits with Laura at Carmey’s place. I have been imaging a lithe, supple Laura, a butterfly poised for flight on each breast, roses blooming on her buttocks, a gold-guarding dragon on her back and Sinbad the Sailor in six colors on her belly, a woman with Experience written all over her, a woman to learn from in this life. I should have known better.

  The four of us are slumped there in a smog of cigarette smoke, not saying a word, when a round, muscular woman comes into the shop, followed closely by a greasy-haired man with a dark, challenging expression. The woman is wrapped to the chin in a woolly electric-blue coat; a fuchsia kerchief covers all but the pompadour of her glinting blond hair. She sits down in the chair in front of the window regardless of Mount Calvary and proceeds to stare fixedly at Carmey. The man stations himself next to her and keeps a severe eye on Carmey too, as if expecting him to bolt without warning.

  There is a moment of potent silence.

  “Why,” Carmey says pleasantly, but with small heart, “here’s the wife now.”

  I take a second look at the woman and rise from my comfortable seat on the crate at Carmy’s elbow. Judging from his watchdog stance, I gather the strange man is either Laura’s brother or her bodyguard or a low-class private detective in her employ. Mr. Tomolillo and Ned are moving with one accord toward the door.

  “We must be running along,” I murmur, since nobody else seems inclined to speak.

  “Say hello to the people, Laura,” Carmey begs, back to the wall. I can’t help but feel sorry for him, even a little ashamed. The starch is gone out of Carmey now, and the gay talk.

  Laura doesn’t say a word. She is waiting with the large calm of a cow for the three of us to clear out. I imagine her body, death-lily-white and totally bare—the body of a woman immune as a nun to the eagle’s anger, the desire of the rose. From Carmey’s wall the world’s menagerie howls and ogles at her alone.

  Herstory

  MADAME CHINCHILLA

  The Tattooed Woman used to live in stone caves, under animal skin shelters, in igloos, mud-packed dwellings, and under palm-thatched huts. She crouched near fire-pits collecting inky-black soot for her tattoos. She roamed naked and barefoot, proud and fearless upon the earth, collecting red berries and roots to grind into paste to tattoo herself. She would bow to the four directions—an elemental vibration resounding through the centuries. She was the Goddess, the Medicine Woman, the Woman of Pleasure, the Worker. She was the Mother.

  Missionaries trespassed her lands, and shamed her into covering her nakedness, cutting her hair, and not praying to her animist gods. They shamed her into ceasing her “pagan ways” and marking her body with tattoos. She chewed strong roots and chanted while undergoing the tribal ritual of being tattooed for her passage into womanhood. She hid her tattoos behind black veils, silenced her tongue, but her soul was wild as ever.

  She was tattooed by the shaman or tribal elder, with sharpened obsidian, bones, fish teeth, or metal. Ritual drums and chanting laced the night air. She was marked with symbols referring to her function in the tribe, as a basket maker, storyteller, medicine woman. She was marked when she was twelve and her menses began to flow, and again when they ceased.

  In Gujarat, India, women were tattooed with vermilion inked dots at the corners of their eyes and face. Vermilion is the color of blood, and of the flames which will consume her body after death. Her tattoos were a rite of passage securing her safe journey into the afterworld amongst the wandering tribes.

  In the fifties the tattooed woman was brazen, rebellious, often drunk and rowdy. She lingered in smoky bars with her tattooed shoulder exposed, and rode on the back of Harleys with her leather-encased legs clasped tightly around her man’s hips. She smoked cigarettes, and drank beer, whiskey, and wine, and still does. Her laughter echoes the centuries of her oppression. Her body dances the dance of all women in the slow and sensual undulations, in dusky atmospheres. She sucks from life urgently, like it’s going out of style.

  The tattooed woman may be seen sitting demurely on a high stool in a nightclub, crossing one slim ankle over the other, a tattoo barely visible through her dark silk stockings. She may be seen wearing a tattoo where her breast used to be. She can be seen lingering in static poses on the covers of CDs and fashion magazines.

  The tattooed woman lives in ghettos, condos, in the streets… sleeps on newspapers. She bathes in rivers and in claw-foot tubs, uses a hole in the ground or a bidet. She can be seen sitting behind a desk with a computer mouse at her command, pushing a broom across smooth wooden floors, or dropping the children off at daycare. She works in a bank, the fields, or in a crumbling government building. She holds a scalpel, wrench, spatula, hammer, blow-dryer, or a tattoo machine. The tattooed woman’s archetype is diverse. She is an artist, housewife, teacher, or secretary. She is a Christi
an, Buddhist, Jew, Quaker, or Hindu. She is a Republican, Democrat, socialist, or an anarchist. She is a vegan or she is omnivorous.

  She is the aroma of amber, Egyptian musk, jasmine, patchouli or Chanel. Her hair is braided, permed, or shaved. It is blond, henna or purple, and perfumed by wood smoke or fragrant oils. She wears an orchid in her French twist. She wears moccasins, Converse high-tops, high heels, or Birkenstocks. Her dress is leather, cotton, fur, hemp, silk, or polyester. She wears black opals, raw pearls, rhinestones, or seashells around her neck.

  Her flame is vibrant. She swims within her soup of hormones. The magnetism of the moon pulls her psyche. She encompasses the universal truths of all women… in all centuries… in varied states of consciousness. She rides the waves of her life with difficulty and grace.

  We are all part of the Tribe of Women, beautiful and empowered by our tattooed symbols. We wear an eclectic mix of universal marks which are bizarre, traditional, artistic, and graceful. They are disturbing and curious. With a feeling of revelation, we are sisters, dancing through the fire of ancient rituals, richly embellished, transformed forever, back into our lovers’ arms, carrying within our hearts, as well as under our tattooed skins, an exquisite sameness… back into the world.

  “I bring my book—

  prepared to wait…”

  CHERISE WYNEKEN

  I bring my book—prepared to wait. And wait I do—in stages. First to register—then down the hall to the waiting room. A quick detour through a cubbyhole where I take off my blouse and bra, don a dark blue gown, and settle in—to wait.

  At last I hear my name being called (mangled as usual) along with directions to Room 1. The attendant directs me to lie on a stretcherlike table. Measurements are made. My breast is marked with blue pencil. The tattoo is etched between them. A mark for future reference. Radiation begins.

  from Tree

  DEENA METZGER

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 1977

  I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who shoots arrows. There is a fine red line across my chest where a knife entered, but now a branch winds about the scar and travels from arm to heart. Green leaves cover the branch, grapes hang there and a bird appears. What grows in me now is vital and does not cause me harm. I think the bird is singing. When he finished his work, the tattooist drank a glass of wine with me. I have relinquished some of the scars. I have designed my chest with the care given to an illuminated manuscript. I am no longer ashamed to make love. In the night, a hand caressed my chest and once again I came to life. Love is a battle I can win. I have the body of a warrior who does not kill or wound. On the book of my body, I have permanently inscribed a tree.

  All the forms I know originate in the heart. The tree which grows in the heart depends on community. We cannot do anything alone. I am well because you take care of me. Ariel is also alive because we took care of him. A woman brought me a feather. When I caught her eye, she acknowledged it was a political act.

  I am no longer ashamed of what I know, nor the scars I suffered to gain that knowledge. I am not afraid of the power which is in us. I am not afraid of the dawn, of being alone, of making love, of announcing myself as a part of the revolution.

  Becoming Bird

  BOB HICOK

  It began with a tattoo gun to his back.

  Face down, he sniffed the skin of dead men

  on an execution table the artist bought

  from a guard who pinched it from the trash

  at Jackson Prison. It was to be one feather

  outside each scapula, an idea

  that arrived while he flipped Art

  Through the Ages past the side view

  of Kristos Boy, who without arms and confined

  to the appetite of marble, still seemed

  poised for air, to lift through the roof

  of the Acropolis Museum into the polluted sky

  of Athens, bound for translucence. But healed,

  turning left, right in a sandwich of mirrors,

  the lonely feathers asked to be plucked,

  the black ink grew from a root of dusk

  to charcoal tip, they’d have fluttered

  if wind arrived, reflex to join the rush,

  but alone seemed less symbolic than forgotten.

  So he returned to the Cunning Needle,

  to Martha of pierced tongue and navel, said

  wings and she slapped the table, added

  coverts and scapulars, secondaries

  and tertials, for a year needles chewed

  his skin closer to hawk, to dove, injected

  acrylic through tiny pearls of blood.

  Then with a back that belonged to the sky

  he couldn’t stop, sprouted feathers

  to collarline, down thighs, past knees

  and his feet became scaled, claws gripped

  the tops of his toes, she turned him over

  for the fine work of down, he laid, arms

  on the syringe-wings of the table,

  a model of crucifixion dreaming flight

  through the pricks. So now, by day’s end

  he can barely hold back the confidence

  of his wings. At home, naked with eyes

  closed, he feels wind as music

  and dreams his body toward a mouse

  skimming the woven grass, not considering

  but inhabiting the attack, falling hard

  as hunger teasing the reach of land,

  while from the ink of the first tattoo

  a real feather grows, useless but patient.

  Designing a Bird from Memory in Jack’s Skin Kitchen

  ELIOT WILSON

  We hated everything below us.

  We’d come to hate the ground itself,

  to dread the heavy ropes of gravity

  drawing us down from blue

  to a brooding green

  which would billow in tan dust

  like waves of fistic clouds.

  We’d come to kill

  the afternoons, to evade

  the blanket heat by flying out of rifle reach

  and dropping mortar rounds through the clouds and

  trees.

  I would come to forget Isaac,

  our Arab gunner with his shell carton filled with baklava,

  and just how mixed he was

  bearded, but awash in after-shave,

  dropping incendiary bombs and Hershey bars at the

  same time,

  Viet S’mores we called it.

  How he could shoot his .50 caliber,

  stoned on hash,

  as accurate as fate itself,

  shoot children and dogs,

  but not women or birds. Bad luck,

  he said. Even when they are dead,

  women and birds remember.

  I would forget how we found him later in Song Ngan

  Valley

  mixed with the ground and chopper,

  repatriated, tangled like a lover,

  his broken hand up and open

  as if feeling for rain,

  or patiently expecting some small gratuity,

  the visor of his helmet shining the same

  blue-black iridescence

  as the glass of Chartres cathedral.

  Right here, I tell the tattoo man

  giving him my arm,

  A blue bird, that certain blue, with black eyes

  and rising.

  Second Skin

  BRUCE BOND

  We imagined my uncle’s tattoos

  as shell shock and rice wine

  surfacing on Asian nights.

  My mother told us not to stare,

  though his arms were the typhoid streets.

  He would have loved them for life,

  the women with diminutive names

  and strong hands needled

  into his skin: their high-heeled

  initials, the blue florets.

  I still see him in the showe
rs

  by the city pool, lathering up

  the thorns on his thigh.

  Foam streams over his shoulders,

  the broken skiff blazing

  into his chest. And where

  there’s fire, the thin fury

  of hair. As each blue cell

  flakes off, the next comes up

  blue, faithful, as though

  the color were his gene’s amnesia,

  and marriageable women

  would shun him now for fear

  their children would be tough

  and blue, the fool thicket

  of roses fixing its stale kiss

  on their thighs, their nipples.

  They would wear their family’s

  blue, recurrent dream, a cold

  fire surfacing between them.

  Portrait

  KIRSTEN RYBCZYNSKI

  My father is tall. He looks even taller than he is because I am so small. He is so thin and gangly, all sharp angles, elbows, bony shoulders. His long hair is brown, thick and unkempt. He has a beard. For some reason his teeth were pulled. Maybe all or maybe just the top or just the bottom. He leaves his dentures in Vietnam and doesn’t get new ones when he comes back. The beard hides this but his voice gives it away. He sounds like there’s something wrong with him.

  He wears T-shirts and blue jeans. He wears glasses. His arm, legs, chest are covered with tattoos. Jesus on his chest. Two angels on either side. A crown of thorns. Blood. A teardrop on his cheek that disappeared after he got knifed in the face. A panther. A tiger. A toadstool, yellow and orange on his ankle. An old man with a white beard on his other ankle. A brightly colored parrot. A spider on his shoulder. I looked at it when he was in the bathtub and I touched it. A flower on his finger. I can see it when he lifts me up. Two dice with a banner that reads “Saturday night’s alright for fightin.’” A man, pulling down one eyelid with a finger. Over his head the words “I’ve got this crazy feeling.”