If you saw me down the street, you could think I was a punk. I’m nothing special or anything. Not a looker. Only thing you might notice is my forehead. People stare at it, and that’s okay. Long as they don’t pay it more mind than my work, I’m not too particular. Just making my way. I’m one of the lucky ones, so I can do things like ride my bike on the street, make change, cut my bangs without mama biting her lip like the zookeeper when that kid stuck his hand through the wrong cage. And I don’t drool. I’m doing good for me, with a dockside window and my own card, the canvassy stock kind. But it’s the forehead that’s the giveaway, it sticks out, makes business tight. People don’t like loonies drawing on them—not strangers with needles.

Plus people who come in, they don’t ask the right things. Instead of ‘What chemicals you using?’ or ‘What’s the voltage on that thing?’ they say, ‘Am I going to cry, How long will it take?’ They want something quick and flashy and painless. You go to a tattoo place, no one does that. Me least of all. I’m fussy and that can be hard if you’re in my chair but all’s you do is sit.

Sit.

Then you go home with a masterpiece. It’s hard on me. There’s no pink eraser, no washaway spray. It’s my brand against a buzzing machine and a twitchy, breathing human, so you tell me why the lines aren’t straight and I’ll tell you they’re pretty damn fine. I guess I get moody, but whatever I do is stamped on you forever. You should take it as serious as me, because it is serious. I’m here to do a good, good job.

Well the sun came like a pipe bomb this morning. No avoiding it any longer, I switched on the neon sign. Neck wouldn’t quit creaking after hunching so long over my sketches, but at least a design was coming. Still waiting on the breakthrough, though. When I’d capture that something on the paper, that image to shine smart and gorgeous on a person from the beach to the morgue.

My style’s my own in the tattoo neighborhood. I figured that out pretty soon after opening six years ago. People dubbed Olin’s Ink the tailor shop for hipster Jesuits and Renaissance freaks, but sometimes I get a couple first-timers who don’t know what they’re looking for, they just want revenge on their stepfolk and take anything I pitch if they don’t scare from the needles. Now the standard clientele of bikers, drunks, and bachelorettes still swagger in sometimes, and I take their commissions—Americana black-and-whites, floral watercolors, or Russian prison mockups. But my gallery in front weeds out the more general tribal, Nu Skool, or Trash Polka junkies, thank God. It’s why Upstairs Connie keeps the rent low, because the hardwood, the pedestals and framework make our curbside store the classiest on the block. It’s the showroom where I peg roughs and motifs you couldn’t find in a coffee table tattoo book. You’d fare better at church, with the gothic windows of fighter angels with rosary lassoes, and devils.

See, I like to put the best of me into my work. That’s how I crated my style—the stained glass look of battlefields and idols comes from the fight, the faith. It’s different from the other guys in the business. The closest they get to spiritual might be an armband with voodoo or tiki torches, like a comic strip in runes. Magic’s the new religion, I guess. Since lots of clients go for that stuff, I get why the other shops follow the money. But for me, I built my signature off the orthodox. It takes some streetwalking, so to speak, to draw customers into the gallery, see if they like anything. But the extra effort pays. It lets me keep my studio mine.

It’s why I just pulled an all-nighter. My first fair commission in weeks, by a man named Stinsen.

I met him on the strip two days ago. His hair was gelled and combed executive style, but his sunglasses said bouncer. He wouldn’t quit looking at his watch as I talked to him, even when I slipped him my card. I know I don’t look the part, what without sleeves and neck art. I tell folks I have ink under my clothes, but the truth is, is I got nothing. Believe me, I’ve wasted years trying to find the perfect design, but nothing’s good enough for forever. Forever can’t be scribbled all over. I’d never tell the clients that, but it’s the truth I see and I’m allowed to keep it close.

So Mr. Stinsen. He stopped by the showroom that afternoon and came back next day before closing, with neither appointment nor proviso.

“You’re a revelation,” he said, after looking—actually looking—at the gallery. “Let’s talk ideas.”

Normally that would piss me, I’d say squeeze one out yourself or go away, but he ended up commissioning a body suit of my design. The advance was a fat envelope.

I sketched all night.

My MO is chalk pastels. They smear across the page, sometimes rubbing out other parts of the drawing. Other times, though, they dust and bleed into scapes like sundown underwater. Blurring like thoughts, until the stream either dams or shores up at the breakthrough. Something like that.

So far the page was swimming in byzantine reds, blues, and golds. Wings and fireswords, angels shelled in feathers, funneled down a crystal staircase, into a black mire of monkeys, scorpions, and goat-horned minstrels gnashing teeth in their own molting armor. Fodder for the red dragon, the black basilisk.

I tossed it. Stinsen needed monumental. A neck-to-hip fresco, with arms and sides. Apocrypha wouldn’t cut it. It could turn out witchy or trippy. I needed—

The door jangled. A middle-aged man with beer belly and sunburn waddled in. He blinked at the dimmed fluourescents. “You Olin?”

The hairs on my neck bristled. I could feel the breakthrough, fizzling under my skin. I just needed more time. I shouldn’t have left the sign on.

“Scuse me? Hello?”

I pumped soap on my hands and scrubbed a while. Finally I met the guy behind the counter. “What do you want?”

The man scratched his nose. “Okay, yeah. I’m in for some Old School bicep work. My buddy Al said you were the place. You go a book I could go through?”

The arm he pointed at was already half outlined. Tie-dye carnations and classic humming birds spanned the elbow to mid-tricep, leaving a blank front for me to fill in. I bit my lip like mama taught me. Of all the jobs I hate—coverups, tramp stamps, the Looney Tunes—finishing someone else’s takes the prize.

I slapped a portfolio on the counter and called for Tony.

The apprentice jogged in with two coffees and a paper bag in his teeth that reeked of sesame and cream cheese.

He dumped the food and introduced himself to the new client, smiling and joking like a friend from grade school. I left them to it. They could find me in the studio doing real works. I fished the crumpled sketch off the floor.

See, if I reworked the images, the story might fit. A body suit’s a puzzle game. You have to fit everything smoothly, create a wraparound piece for back and chest that was interesting everywhere and fit the body the way it moved and breathed. Border areas like the top of the neck, or nooks too small to carry much design, I put skulls, gavels, or clocks in those areas, a sort of calling card. But Mr. Stinsen deserved better. Mr. Stinsen trusted me. He really was a blank canvas. This is a once in a lifetime gig.

“Hey, boss.”

I punched the desk. “What.”

“Jack—the guy out front. He’s ready.”

I wheeled around. Tony was a university kid with wild Japanese doodles, but tattooing is never just the tattoo. As the professional in the room, I do the heavy lifting while he cranes bug-eyed over my neck. I don’t think he’s learning, but that’s the idea anyway.

But maybe the distraction would inspire my work for Stinsen.

We set up the tattoo room—the ‘office’ I guess, though I don’t like the sound of that. Separate from the studio and gallery, it’s got dream catchers, lava lamps, old stencils and Christmas cards pinned on these cork panels along the walls. I even painted the ceiling, still touch it up when I’m in the mood. Down on the floor is the doctor’s bench, a padded leather bier that I can winch up or down, it depends on how a client’s got to be positioned for me to work. In the corner are some folded up easels, a gnome airbrushed over, and an ink-splattered trash.

Slapping on some black nitrile gloves and my old trashbag apron, I unwrapped the needles. Tony brought the transfer paper. On the front winked a cartoon gypsy girl with a wraparound streamer of some Latin proverbs. I wet the man’s shaved arm and pressed the stencil so a purple outline simmered on his skin. Tony rigged the coil machine. I inspected the tension on the barrel and hex-wrenched the stem to make sure it was good. Other than that, the grommet and vice grip seemed secure. I wrapped the whole with rubber bands so that the needle curved just right, tension enough. Next I checked the voltage on the foot switch and attached the clip cords. Stepping on it, I watched the machine oscillate. I dipped it, still pulsing, into an ink jug the size of a thimble.

I didn’t like anyone handling this gun because I made it myself. (Most of it—I’m still iffy on the electromagnetics that goes on, but I have a toaster and I don’t much get that either, being honest.) Also it seems like anything I make, someone else ruins. I have be the grown up here. But isn’t that the way with everything. (But it might not look that way, people don’t like someone like me in charge.)

The color scheme was pretty standard. Your Crayola eight-pack, the easy middle-tone primaries and secondaries. Easy except for the chemical brainpower it takes in a batch of ink. Each mixture combines pigment and liquid carrier, which could be alcohols, witch hazel, or other chemical hoodoo. To get the eye-popping pigments, a tattooist has to find vendors with sciencey footholds, access to big names like cadmium, chrom oxide, carbazole. The gypsy girl called for cinnabar and cobalt, plain English red and blue, but I started with black (carbon) for the lineart. I had to pinch and stretch the skin to get a clean puncture, especially for my three-needle set. Once I upped it to magnum, the nine or fifteen groups for shading, the lines would look more like brushwork than penciling. In the meantime I could get lost in the work.

Jack and Tony were chatting it up, then decided I should take a break. Like I need their say-so. Still, I let the guy get a drink next door. He looked doughy. See, I have to keep wiping off the tattoo site since not all of it gets injected under the skin. So when I’m shading blue, but the towel comes off purple, I get why the guy goes white.

While Jack was out, a voice strayed into the studio. “O! It’s me, swinging by.”

Carmine. Now she was someone to stop work for. She and I’ve known each other since kindergarten. Her mom rented the flat across from ours, so we’d walk to class together. People didn’t much like me, and back then I didn’t understand why. But she was always there, even when her pretty girlfriend tried to tease her out of it. We’d hit the playground and soon all the girls knew me by name and let me alone. When the swingset was too small for us, we’d go to the punching bags. I go there regular now when I’m mad but I don’t think of the gym as a mad place, it’s a happy one. Plus the boxing coach sometimes points me out to his kids. I’ve gotten good.

She came back to the neighborhood after State school to work at Tiffany’s joint the Black Minx. I went in once, this haze and pink spotlights everywhere, and wheeled around soon as I recognized just whose legs were wrapped around the stage pole. Car laughed it off, though I doubt she’s used to guys walking out n her. She’s plus size, garters busting, but has the biggest green eyes, the meanest grin. Always cracking jokes, making me smile. She says Shasta’s the belle of the club, but everyone knows Car’s the darling.

She straddled the workbench, ankles swiveling in plastic pickaxe heels. “Saw Tony outside. Guess you’re working two jobs at once?”

I puffed out my cheeks. She knew multitasking made everything worse. It was good of her to come. She spanked on a pair of gloves and tidied my table. If she asked to play with my coil or pour bodysparkle in my paints, I’d let her.

She was humming Eleanor Rigby. “I’ve been working up a new routine. Gonna be showstopper.”

I shivered. Last she said that, she was shaking out a pair of frilly black wings from her duffel and poking me for which weave fishnet went better. She tossed her head back at my frowny face.

“Just giving you a heads up before the next gold rush.”

Right. That curlicue design on her wrist, that was me. Any one of her customers asks about it, she sends him over to be my customer. It’s a revolving door partnership. She dances on you, I draw on you. If it were anyone pulling strings for me, I’d have a fit. But again, it’s Carmine. She’s too good to be true, but she always is. One time she offered to be my next suit—be a living breathing commercial for the shop—but I got real hot and told her no.

We fixed the studio until Tony came. “Al’s just finishing his fries,” the kid said. “Anything I can do?” He smiled like I’d seen a mantis do on TV when he registered Carmine.

“Nuh-uh,” I said.

She butts in. “Actually, yes. When this client gets back, you’re going through the files and settle accounts. Sweep the gallery, too. And I’ll be washing the windows, so no skimping.

Tony’s nose scrunched. Sure he wasn’t expecting that out of her. She winked at me and steered him out. Seconds later Al came back, reeking of gas station. Oil, nicotine, antiseptic. Booze, more like. By now the gypsy looked more like a cutesy rash, the coloration smeared. Either taking the drippy red pigments for blood or seeing real blood prick to the surface, the guy had swiped at it. The whites were pinks and the greens were browns, and you could see the crinkles like rake lines from the napkin he’d used to muss it up.

“Someone bumped it,” he said.

I bit my lip and reset my things, a fresh set of gloves. I’m not a genius with words. So I hate when folks use them in lies.

He leaned back on the bench again, a little wobbly.

With the outlining done, it was time to shade. I took a fifteen-point needle, the real bruiser, and fit it snug in the chamber. Dipping into my chrome inkwell, I was set to touch up the floral fringe around the gypsy, when—

“ARGH!”

His arm punched out. I got knocked down so all I knew was something like rainbow globs and tinsel mashing before me, and this red red goo that smelled like old coins sticking my gloves. The coil machine dropped dead by my face, needles crooked out of order and full of hot, pulpy shavings.

The guy howled. “You gouged me!”

He scared me past me. I got this salty taste in my mouth. My chin was wet—I was biting my lip when I went down, but that was last of my problems. Now he cradled his arm and looked at me. “Mongoloid fucker!” He swung.

I was up with the foot switch in hand, whooshing for his head to get him down and quiet and done. But he caught me. I felt red and trembly, and my teeth were splitting I was biting so hard, but I kept wrestling him for the metal box, the box was the world and he couldn’t have it. He must’ve been a guitarist, his nails were hashing me. Then there was a screech like an amazon from behind us as Carmine banged in with Tony’s broom and saw what was happening.

I wanted to tell her to leave, but I’m no good with words when I’m not fighting a drunk. The guy jerked hard and I lost hold on the foot switch so when he spun away he hit her instead. Carmine fell. She tried to cover her face but I was faster and I saw her nose wasn’t right. I saw the gush.

Then all of a sudden the guy was snailed up on the floor and I was on top of him, hooking and thumping until the sounds went smash then snap then spurt, until everything was a slick and I was tired at the back of my head but something else told me I couldn’t stop, the world was mine, this was my job. A good, good job.

Then cylinders hit my shoulders. Lights and barks popped all around me. I got really scared. My inks were everywhere. I never dreamed I had so much cinnabar.

They lugged me out my own gallery. Tony gawked by the landline, one cheek welting. Carmine had him by the scruff.

“Officers. This is a misunderstanding. Olin did nothing wrong. That man Jack came in drunk and swinging. Socked O in the jaw and did me this in the face on purpose.”

They wouldn’t stop so she followed us to the station in a second car. They buckled me behind a cage. I watched her ride in the mirror behind us and cried.

The chair made me cold, but I had a pencil and paper. Sometimes I heard voices outside, sometimes Car’s, but the wait was long and an empty page just looks wrong, so I filled it. Two silhouettes, one back one front.

Stories start at a genesis. You can see it far away as if through a porthole. A porthole on the small of the back, but like a blue iris that looks upon streams, fountains, and flower trees where two lovers cowered. But eyes need lashes—and there’s a dark fringe to the garden that coils around it and up the spine, and it has red eyes of its own. I crosshatched its scales like chain mail. Then plumage on the shoulder blades, flanking down the back, three tiers of feathers for three orders of three choirs. But the arms. Arms are how we put what we feel into timber, stone, or ink so that world will know it. Make them obelisks of that. The right will be trials, ending in initialed knuckles, INRI. The fight and the faith.

The arms winded up the shoulders into an Egyptian collar but instead of lapis or gold the beads were haloed heads. Michael and Lucifer sparred in center like a cameo of Olympians. Below the disciples broke bread at the table, staved in half by a gaunt crucifix dripping down the sternum, ending in fire and four mounted horses. Over the left pectoral a black ventricle heart and a Lamb of many horns. A shepherd’s crook and pharaoh’s flail, a sweeping tail from the Lion of Judah.

The officers came. “You can go,” one said, but I couldn’t see which. They looked like blue bowling pins all of them in their uniforms.

Carmine got a cab and dropped me back to the shop. She didn’t go in with me, and I thanked her in my head for that. It’d take me time to get my bearings, even though she lied to protect me. In my mind I get that she would spread herself in front of a gun for me and I love her for that, but in my body I couldn’t feel that trust. Nothing but a good week of sweat and ink would help me get it back.

Tony had killed the sign because of lunchtime, or because the owner had threshed client. Either way, I switched the lights on, but dim, and watched for Stinsen. Man, I had a day. Only a scheduled, on-time consultation, free of needles and machines, just watching the boats become blips between waves or if Tony ran out for lemonade but didn’t stay to drink it with me—only that could wash away what I’d seen. I was lucky not to be locked up or sued pants-off and I just wanted to turn down the studio and sit.

But Stinsen’s headlights shot through the windows and his blue sports car revved up the curb. He got out in a business suit, lenses Florida pink. He shook my hand soft—I think he saw I was rattled—and laughed when I showed him the design. I was this close to losing it, but then.

Then.

“When will you start?” he said. I don’t know why I said,

“I have to mop the room.”

“I’ll come back at three.”

That shut me up. Only Car looked at me that way, knowing.

The coil was still dirty on the floor and probably trashed, but I guess I could take up the rotary machine for lineart. If I wiped down the bench and made a good stencil, we could be in business today. And again, something made me say, “You know it’s never coming off.”

“That’s the idea.” He unbuttoned his jacket, and I started the stencil. Together the design was tricky, but each element itself was simple. I could have put more without oversaturating. Centurions in chariots, magin on moors—but the body is infinite. It can’t wear a man’s mind or soul. We can consecrate it with priest water or ink, but those only go so deep. Dermis deep, which isn’t that deep, it just hurts like hell.

We seek our own crucibles, whine when they finally come, and bask in the glory of martyring when everyone sees us. When we make everyone see. Because suffering doesn’t show. It’s infrared or imagined. But we can make it manifest if we really want. I like to think so, not that I would for me. But I guess I already am. Even if it’s not my body, it’s my design. That’s my craft, making a fresco of a man.