The Tattoo

by Chris Mckinney

  I loved the print and the tattoo, but together they cost me about seven hundred dollars. Out of fear and guilt, I immediately got a library job at K.C.C., shelving books. Got paid five-something an hour, pulling twenty-hour weeks. I spent hours in that library, hiding in the cubicles, reading novels instead of my assigned textbooks. Slowly what was left of the nine grand bled, and through those two years I attended classes which I hated. But I was determined to make it to the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, determined to do it without any help or returning home.

  Sitting in those one hundred level courses is what killed me. No, paying to sit in those one hundred level courses is what killed me. I took courses on subjects I had no interest in, courses which I was forced to take in order to meet requirements. Classes like logic, classes which were a pain to sit through, classes which forced your eyes on the clock above the professor’s head. It seemed every time I eyed the clock, I’d think, I can’t fucking believe I’m paying for this.

  Suddenly, I found my life very boring and tedious. Besides, I was sitting side by side with some of the most uninteresting people in the world — college students. I began to long for something real, something threatening, something that made me feel alive again. I longed to make stories, do things that were interesting, new things I could tell the people back home. Every time I got back to my shitty apartment and saw the ronin Musashi look at me, I’d say to him, “Yeah, I’d like to roam the country and look for trouble like you did, make my life legendary, but I gotta do this college thing.” For almost two years I didn’t roam, though, I just did what I thought I was supposed to do. I managed to muddle through two years of school, two years I’ll never get back. I might have made it to U.H. Majoring in what or doing what, I have no idea. But two months before my fourth semester ended, opportunity knocked. At first, I thought of it as a way to continue my education, but some of the things you get yourself into, they’re not only jobs, they’re lifestyles. Sometimes when you open the knocking door, you have to step through it, too. This doorway led to Keeaumoku Street, the main road which led to the heart of Ala Moana Shopping Center, the road peppered with hostess bars, massage parlors, and strip bars. These were places owned by first-generation Koreans and Vietnamese immigrants, bars which were always changing their names.

  I was nineteen, having beers one night by myself at Club Mirage. Over those two years I was in school, it had changed names three times. First it was Club Oasis, then Club Fancy Dream. Finally, Mama-san settled on Club Mirage. It sounded French to her, and she thought anything French or Italian was just the shit. She was an amazing old Korean lady, all four-ten of her. She was smart and tough as hell. Every night she crammed her one hundred and fifty some-odd pounds into a gaudy, tight, sequined dress. She didn’t shop with an eye for style, brand names and price tags determined what she wore. Her thinning hair was always permed, displaying an ineffective attempt at thickness. Her face was always painted heavily, false eyelashes and all. She wore a huge two-carat diamond ring on her left hand, while gold and jade bracelets crawled up both forearms. When I first saw her, oddly enough, she kind of reminded me of my father. It was the angry look she always wore, the look like one wrong word would send her into a frenzy. She was a genius at running that bar, though. Despite all of the neighboring competition, a river of cash flowed through Club Mirage for years. It became the most famous strip bar in the state of Hawai‘i. Hell, guys on Kauai, Maui, and the Big Island knew about Club Mirage, and often on weekends we’d get patrons who’d fly over just to see the show.

  So there I was one night, having beers and checking out naked women. The black lights were low, and Prince’s Erotic City was pulsing in the cheap perfumed air. I was hiding out in one of the booths, nursing a Budweiser. I was watching a Japanese tourist stick his nose in between the naked legs of a tall haole dancer. After every move, she pulled on her garter, signaling her audience to deposit a tip. The tourist folded a bill and added it to the dozens of bills which wrapped around her upper thigh. I smiled as the tourist ran his hand down her leg after depositing the tip. No touching, I thought. I watched for the next two songs, watched the stripper soak the tourist for at least thirty dollars in ones. She made thirty dollars for about seven or eight minutes of work. But work it was. She contorted her body into all sorts of positions, always thrusting her naked crotch a mere inch or two away from the foreign spectator. I wondered if I could ever do it. Then I remembered that I was a guy and laughed at the mental image of me showing some tourist my hairy balls. After thinking about this, I decided it looked like some of the hardest work I ever saw.

  As Guns and Roses’ Appetite for Destruction began, I stepped out of the booth and watched as the stripper gathered her string stars-and-stripes bikini. She walked naked off the stage. A local girl took her place. She took off her panties before Axel Rose even started singing. The tourist sat still with a big wad of bills clenched in his fist.

  Just as I was about to walk out, I heard yelling. I looked back and saw a naked Korean girl screaming on stage. She was being stalked by a big Samoan. He wore a white, v-neck t-shirt, which must have been a double-extra large. His arms filled the sleeves. One of these huge arms shot out. He grabbed her ankle, yanking her off the stage. Her body knocked over a row of chairs, and she hit the thin, gaudy red carpet. Her naked body was still. The Samoan turned around, seemingly expecting what was coming next. Two bouncers pounced on him, while a skinny Korean waiter shot a kick up toward the Samoan’s face. The kick hit one of the bouncers instead. On impact both the Korean and the haole bouncer lost their balance and fell to the floor. The last bouncer, an out-of-shape Hawaiian, didn’t stand a chance. He took two giant hits to the face and fell to the floor. At this point both the bouncers and the waiter were scrambling on hands and knees, away from the Samoan. They almost looked like a school of fish darting away from a three-pronged spear. I heard Mama-san scream from behind the bar. “I call police! You go now!”The Samoan smiled and strode toward her.

  I don’t know why I did what I did. I must’ve been fucking nuts. This solé was huge. But action, for me, was a magnet. Since King Zoo, I guess it always was. I couldn’t stay out of it. There I was, acting on instinct while my brain was probably screaming, “Get the fuck out of here!” But once that instinct kicks in, all is quiet. Void. I didn’t hear my brain, the music, or Mama-san, who was probably screaming her head off, not showing fear, but showing anger. I ran behind the Samoan and kicked the side of his knee. When his knee buckled, I wrapped my left forearm around the front of his neck and locked on. That’s when my ride began. He lifted me off my feet and began swinging. My legs were swinging violently back and forth while he grabbed for my head. He pulled and scratched, but I didn’t let go. I hid my face in his hair. It smelled like smoke and cheap shampoo. I almost gagged. Once in a while, I’d release the lock for a second and hit him with my right hand. I don’t know how much good it did, every time I hit him, it seemed like his strength intensified. I knew I couldn’t let go, though. If I had let go, this guy would’ve killed me. Finally, I felt him tire. In a last-ditch effort, he grabbed a beer bottle off the bar and blindly swung it down at my head. He missed and the bottle shattered on his head. This killed more of the fight in him and, finally, while the nearing police sirens blared, I was able to drag him out.

  The lights were on when I stepped back inside. Suddenly, I saw a collage of stretch marks and shy men. The men began leaving while the dancers put on their clothes. Mama-san was talking to a couple of cops at the bar. One was short, about five-five, and Japanese. The other was much bigger, Portuguese-looking. He put his big arm around Mama-san, looking like he was trying to calm her down. I looked at his big gut and wondered what kind of physical qualifications the Honolulu Police Department had set for its officers. He looked funny there, with his arm around Mama-san. She almost looked like a child next to him. The Japanese cop whispered something in her ear. She pointed at me. I waited, expecting to get busted or something, but instead the cops w
alked up to me and said, “You one crazy fucka.” They patted me on the back and laughed. When Mama-san approached them, they both went up to her and gave her a polite kiss on the cheek. After spending a moment catching glimpses at the dressing strippers, the cops began walking out. Just as I was about to follow them outside, I heard Mama-san’s voice. “You wait! What yaw name?”

  I turned around. “Ken, my name’s Ken.”

  She stepped toward me with that angry look on her face. She reached up, grabbed my chin, and turned my head. “You Japanee boy?”

  “Yup.”

  “Japanee boy, you like job? You come tomorrow night, I give you job, okay? You come back.”

  With that said, she walked away. I headed home and waited for the adrenaline rush to fade. I couldn’t believe it, I was going to get to work in a strip bar. When I got home and turned on the light, I gave Musashi a wink as I threw my keys on my table.

  I worked for Mama-san for about five years. For five years I had a wad of hundred dollar bills lining my pocket. For five years, I slept with painted and plastic women. I mean, sex with some of those strippers, for them it was like shaking hands or something. If they thought you were cute enough on a given night, they’d want to shake your hand. For five years, the poverty in my life evaporated. I stopped going to Ka‘a‘awa and Kahaluu. Once in a while I’d talk to my father, Koa, Freddie, or Kahala on the phone, but I never heard shit. I was too wrapped up in my bliss to really listen to any of them. School was no longer on my agenda. I figured, why should I go to school for a few more years, work hard, and end up with a job which paid less than the one I had? For a while, I figured this life was my calling. It was like an epiphany. I wrapped the shroud of the Club tightly over my head, and rolled around happy in it. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

  I started as a bouncer at Club Mirage. I worked six nights a week, from about nine at night till two in the morning. Mama-san paid me cash. With that, and what the bartenders and strippers tipped me, I walked home with about two hundred and fifty dollars a night. As the months rolled by, Mama-san began giving me more and more responsibilities. Within a year I was running the place when she wasn’t around. I couldn’t believe it. I was twenty years old, not even old enough to drink, but there I was, helping run the most popular strip bar in the state. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the partying I did with the dancers after work. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll! Twosomes, threesomes, drinks till eight in the morning, and always, the music played. I figured I had found my religion, hedonism, and it was led by a god who didn’t answer dreams, but instead drowned them out in a pleasant way.

  I remember my first night at work, after the last set, I helped Iris, whose real name I never knew, off the stage. She was one of the prettiest. She was young, about nineteen, local. She was from the suburbs of Moanalua, I think. Her skin was still tight, unscarred. She had this funny streak of white running through her black hair. She smiled and stepped off the stage naked and tired. I looked down at her garter, and saw all sorts of bills hugging against her leg. I remember asking her, “Why do you do this?”

  She laughed. “It’s all for the money, honey, it’s all for the money.”

  For me, that summed it up nicely.

  Mama-san, I came to find out, was into more than the bar business. Besides the two bars she owned, she had a hostess bar a block away on Kapiolani called Club Nouveau. She was into prostitution, loan-sharking, and gambling. She and a partner owned a massage parlor called Happy Hands, where you’d pay fifty at the door, and “tip” your masseuse for any other services rendered. In her loan-sharking, she had lent out money to dozens of Korean immigrants who were starting their own businesses in town, whether they were jewelry and apparel shops in Waikiki or bars along Keeaumoku or Kapiolani. She had two sisters — one ran an illegal casino in downtown, the other ran Club Nouveau. Her partner ran Happy Hands, while she took care of Club Mirage and the loan-sharking, the two most profitable businesses. There she was, this little lady from God-knows-where in Korea, running her own little empire. A real rags-to-riches story. And once again I found myself riding on the coattails of someone bigger than me. Again I was knighted into a kingdom which I was not born into.

  It was great for the first several years. Mama-san kept paying me more and more. Besides staying at the bar, sometimes I’d pick up money for her. The loan-sharking thing, which they called the “Tanomoshi,” was great. She did what no bank would, she lent out tens of thousands of dollars to the new-comers who had no credit or collateral, and charged them outrageous interest. Koreans, for some reason, always seemed to want to open their own business, unlike Filipinos who always seemed to work for somebody. The thought of enormous debt seemed something that the Koreans thought of as necessity rather than hardship.

  Of course Mama-san, with her Tanomoshi, ran the risk of people not making money and skipping on their loans, and sometimes it got ugly. Sometimes I had to collect for her. After all, new businesses go bankrupt everyday, and sometimes these people had no way of paying. Mama-san was always squeamish about resorting to violence, but you can only reconsolidate a loan so many times. Some of these Koreans would be like a hundred grand in the hole, and sometimes because of this another hole had to be dug. She didn’t like to do it, besides she’d rather get at least some money back. But she couldn’t survive with the reputation of being somebody that’s soft. Who can? Only those who can bear being the jackass among the strong. That sure wasn’t her.

  So, yeah, I collected, but I left the hole digging to the others, the evil-looking Koreans Mama-san owned. They were the ones way too young to remember the Korean War, but they looked like they remembered anyway. I left the killing to them, while I beat people, people who Mama-san thought would be scared of my violent Japanese looks. She thought I’d remind some, who were old enough, of the Japanese occupation of Korea. These people were usually honorable enough to attempt to fulfill their debts, but nevertheless, these people were sometimes guilty of a heinous crime in this world. They weren’t making money. Immigrants from Asia looking for something better, just like my ancestors, instead finding the same damn thing. Embarrassingly, it wasn’t a time in my life when I got tangled up into moral dilemmas. Coke never got me, but money did for a while. It seemed the more I got, the more I wanted. It was my narcotic, my passion, my reason for living. It was my fairy godmother.

  I was a sight back then, wearing thick, gaudy gold chains around my neck and wrist, wearing designer shirts which were a size too small on my weight training-induced two-hundred-pound body. I remember this one rope chain I had, half an inch in diameter, which I wore every day. I wore it so much that a pale ring began to form around my neck. It wound tight around my jugular, almost like a dog collar. It screamed, “Hey, look at me, I get my money illegally!” It’s kind of scary when I think about it, the first time I saw Mama-san, I wanted to laugh at her gaudy appearance, her jewelry, her overly-painted face. But after a while I became what she was, I became a son who worshiped the same idol.

  After a while, after partying with the strippers, I noticed that they did an extraordinary amount of drugs. I didn’t ask why, I was just interested in capitalizing. I dug Freddie up and he’d come to town to drop off coke, weed, and the up-and-coming drug of choice, crystal methamphetamine. Freddie, he’d drive anywhere to get his hands on more blue cats.

  Sometimes, when I did collections, I’d skim some, telling Mama-san that the portion I gave her was all they had.

  I dabbled in sports gambling with a buddy of mine, a silent partner, making about fifteen grand every football season.

  I still collected cash from Mama-san, from the regular bouncing and collecting.

  Altogether, I must’ve been making a hundred grand a year, tax free. My crummy one bedroom turned into a two-bedroom condo on the thirtieth floor of the Marco Polo building right outside of Waikiki. It was a real high-class place, with security cameras and a guard at the door. It even had tinted revolving doors, the kind I’d see on T.
V., the kind in places like New York City. I remember the first time I saw the night guy standing by the door. He was this middle-aged Korean guy, his broad face sagged like a bulldog’s. His belly hung over his tightly cinched belt. I tried to give him a twenty-dollar tip. For some reason I figured that’s what people did. He thanked me, but refused. So every Christmas I gave him a bottle of soju instead. He’d smile, take the bottle and say, “Tank you.” He’d bow slightly several times, looking a bit too happy in receiving his gift.

  My twenty-inch television grew about forty inches. Leather sofa, glass tables, plush burgundy carpets, my Otsuka framed print of Miyamoto Musashi hung from a cement, not wooden, wall. My piece of shit Celica became a brand new black Porsche Sportster. I kept my money out of the bank, and put it in my books at home. Between the pages of pieces like Macbeth, The Odyssey, and Native Son, thousands of dollars served as hidden bookmarks. I marked my very favorite pages with thousand dollar bills, other good pages I marked with hundreds. It seemed safe at the time, I figured books were like kryptonite to thieves. I thought I was an original, one of a kind. Besides, my thirty-thirty turned into a Glock and a sawed-off shotgun. The shotgun was under my bed, and the Glock was in a case under the seat of my car. So I was confident. I was living large, and my fairy godmother never told me that the clock would strike twelve.