Fingers was never a good person, he joined the Army just to kill someone. He would always say to someone, “You should be happy that I don’t get paid to kill people anymore.” To say he is abrasive would be a compliment. He thought about every word he said so it would offend everyone in the room. And whoever stood up to him just got his full attention until that person stopped coming around or tried to fight him. Someone asked Fingers one time why he thought he had the right to talk to people like that. He told them that Korea gave him the right to do whatever he wanted. He was in the Battle of Osan which was one of the deadliest battles in the war. He was one of the only people who wasn’t K.I.A. or given a purple heart on that day. That was why he got his first tattoo, the grim reaper on his right forearm with no eyes or scythe. “I’m making sure death cannot find me.” He said. While in Korea Fingers learned how to tattoo from the sergeant that gave him his. The sergeant was in mortuary affairs and they would practice on dead soldiers, and the live ones in the med-bay. When Fingers was honorably discharged he moved back home to Omaha, and set up shop in an abandon house on sixteenth street. My friend Anthony was the first person I knew to get a tattoo, he was sixteen, the words, “ain’t that shame.” On his chest.
The next day he took me to the house on sixteen and every burnout and delinquent of every age was there waiting on Fingers’s couch that looked like everything possible was done to it. When I first saw Fingers I couldn’t believe he was a human. By the time I met him he had countless tattoos, he had the words, “Tuff love” above his eyebrows, a mixture of images on both his arms, a rose on the left side of his neck, a gun on the right. I’m happy to say I’m one of the ones who never saw him naked so I don’t know what he had below the waist, but his chest and back was covered. I didn’t want a tattoo at the time I wanted to see how it was done. The image I painted in my mind of what I thought tattooing was didn’t match up to what I saw and how it’s done now. I could only describe the early days of tattooing as vicious suffering put on by the tattooist. They call us artist now. I wasn’t the first guy to ask Fingers if he could teach me, and I wasn’t the first person he told to fuck off, but as things piled up from all the people coming over to his home and leaving things he saw his opportunity. The word is apprentice but Fingers used the word slave which made all the black guys who came around his house uneasy except Michaels. He learned everything he could from Fingers and moved to Atlanta. Fingers had his own labor force and had the house fixed up in four months. By that time most of the freak kids from school took Fingers place to be the hangout. Fingers hated that shit and never had a problem expressing it. He poured beer on kid’s head, threw shit, human shit at another, slapped one so hard it knocked out a tooth, and he got his name Fingers because of his treatment of women. That was his rule when teaching women, “You don’t have to do any of the hard work if you handle my hard work.” He would click his tongue when he said that as if you didn’t understand. Some women went along with that until Veronica… something. Fingers tried that shit on her and she sent him up the river for fifteen years for statutory rape. By that time the nineties came around and tattooing was looked at as a legitimate business. A shop in Lincoln was started and was getting major business. I was selling weed and coke to get by. The whole school thing didn’t work out and dealing was getting old. I had some money saved up and I wanted to do something that I didn’t need a gun around. I was a fool to think that. It wasn’t so much a legitimate business when your competitors could come into your shop and bust the place up and there was no one for you to call. The cops wouldn’t come around because they thought you were a front business anyway. By the mid-nineties that shit started to die down and you could allow walks in, and set up appointments. My shop Permanent started to get busy, I had to hire four more artist and two piercers.
Last Friday I opened my second shop in Lincoln, it was the old shop that was set up in Lincoln. Kyle didn’t want to do it anymore so I bought him out and changed the name. That Friday was the best day of business I ever had. We were packed to the gills with folks wanted to get inked. People wanted tattoos of all kinds these days. The paws of their pets, the faces of their children, elegant painting on their backs and chest. Really exciting and impressive work.
We don’t have common law in this state but I call Martha Jo my wife because we’ve been together for seventeen years. We both decided that a piece of paper wouldn’t really confirm anything, and if we would split we would have more paperwork to deal with than a divorce. Martha was my needle rep and whenever I would call in my order we’d talk for hours. She asked me out to dinner and she moved in a month later. We don’t have any children, I got a vasectomy when I was thirty and she hates children, she really does. She hates anything you have to take care of that’s alive, a business just needs maintained she says. I was horribly managing the shop until she came along. I did the best I could from what I knew about from selling drugs. Actually running a business is tough work, especially when your state recognizes your business as a medical practice. The paperwork involved in that was madding, honestly. I’m dyslexic and illiterate so thank goodness for Martha Jo. As the popularity of tattooing grew we did as well, interviews from the local news station and paper. We had a feature in the magazine Painted Scar. The conventions that started popping up all over the country and then the internet. We unknowingly became a flagship of a community that didn’t consider itself a community. I had become a positive Fingers, I just didn’t treat people like shit. I love this job, and I can’t call it a job because of all the fun I’ve been having since I started Permanent. People always want to bring their rama-drama into the shop, and I never cared for it. From all the people you meet and all the things that become every day occurrences, the usual clusterfuck of bullshit that people go through is just tiring. Martha Jo thought it would be a great idea to take the crew out on a night on the town in Lincoln to hallmark our big opening. We hit up the O street strip in Lincoln and barhopped, we ended up in a cigar bar named Fox’s. That is where I met Violent, a crazy looking chick, blood red Mohawk and tattoos from the neck down. She drank like a fish that was lost in the desert for forty years and cursed like fifty sailors.
She didn’t tell me that she knew who I was until Martha Jo came up to me to tell me she was ready to go.
“You’re Elwin Aliano. The owner of Permanent, right?” She asked. “Did you get some work from us?” Martha Jo asked. “No, I just know the greats is all.” She said. “Did you hear that Elwin, you’re a great.” Martha Jo said. “If I’m a great then why haven’t we done any work on you?” “I just moved here from Atlanta and most of my body is already fucking covered. Your name travels like VD. It’s not hard to know who you are.” “Now that we know who I am. Who are you?” I asked. “The competition is who I fucking am.”
The week after that was fucked up, a construction crew was fixing up a building across the street from us. Knuckles, one of the artist from my shop found out that a tattoo shop was opening up there. A chain shop called The Crystal Needle, they had just come up with a new method of tattooing people. A heat application, an iron press that sprays the ink onto the skin at a temperature that sets in the dermis and doesn’t sink in too deep. All of the advertisement for The Crystal Needle was about how it was more painful than a traditional tattoo. Which was enough of a selling point to most, people were lining up outside their shop before they opened, they had an online appointment book that had to be shut down to process all of the orders. Which wasn’t a problem because the iron press could complete large tattoos in thirty minutes and fairly sized ones in ten or less, fast food tattoos is what Knuckles called it.
A month after construction The Crystal Needle opened and that was the beginning of all this. The first month of them being opened they took all of our clients in Lincoln. They could do fifty tattoos in an hour, and the press did moderate work. I only say that because it wasn’t how I inked people, it was strange to watch someone sit down in the chair and get up as soon as they sat down. I went in to talk to this Violent chick to see what kind of operation they were running. Walking into The Crystal Needle is like walking into an insurance office, the front receptionist was in a black dress suit and a dark blue tie and he sported a pompadour. If he had any tattoos he had them covered up which was strange to me. “Sup.” He said. “Is Violent in?” I asked. “Yeah.” “Can I speak with her?” “Why?” “Because I want to.” I see that blood red Mohawk coming toward the front desk and see stops behind the pompadour and tells him to take a break. “Here to get some work done?” She asked. “I just wanted to check all this shit out. You guys have been busy non-stop I wanted to see how you ran this place.” “I got time to show my hero the ins and outs of my operation.” She guides me into the back of the shop and shows me the ten rooms they use to tattoo people. Inside each room is a disgusting machine. A large table with straps that wrap around you in four-points like a P.O.W. Above that table is a machine with four guns attached to it, the apparatus the guns are connected to looks like the light the dentist uses. “We have to strap people down due to the pain the iron press delivers. The worst part of tattooing people is that they move, we took it out of the equation.” “You tie people down who want to get a tattoo?” “You know how jittery people get when you’re stabbing them, and that is tripled with the press. We get all kinds of screamers, criers, the people who faint are my favorite the people who realized they made an everlasting decision.” She laughs. “One of the great things about getting heat is that this method of tattooing is permanent. That neo mag light shit doesn’t work on the heat-ink.” “Is that how you got all of your tattoos?” “Most of the owners of a chain were the guinea pigs for the iron press. If you made it through the experimental trials you were promised shares in the company. No pain, no gain.” “What kind of ink do you use?” “We can’t use traditional ink because of all the metal that is used. We use a plastic based ink that sets and expands when cooked in.” The pompadour kid shouts to Violent that she has a telephone call. She tells me that she would love to continue the tour but duty calls. Martha Jo made an excellent dinner, spaghetti and meatballs. I picked at it and she called me on it. “I’m thinking about how I’m going to continue our business.” “Oh baby, you don’t need to worry about that. You know it’s an ebb and flow. Trends don’t last.” I picked up the tabled and did the dishes while Martha Jo took a bath. I needed to be alone and she knew that. I know what I got and I don’t want it to be gone. I love what I do. I roll out of bed in a stride excited to go to the shop. I have the best conversations with Daily, Knuckles, Tupac, Sally, Ruby, and Niles. I will say it’s deeper than family and more powerful than magic. It more that I don’t want to lose them. Even the nights when the drunks wobble in shouting, throw up on you, shit on themselves, every day is exciting. The people who pass out just when the needle touches them, the ones who have to stop because of the pain, men and women, they both cry their eyes out. This service has become a ritual for all of those who want it. It is something that people know that will last, something they will always see, a reminder, it’s not bad enough to look at yourself in the mirror, but you have to brand that moment, emotion, or thought onto yourself in case you forget it.
Grandma’s kind words, the lyrics to a song, the stanza of a poem, their dead kids’ faces, their grandpa’s face, mom’s famous recipe, a favorite cartoon character, that one guy’s name, that girl’s name, their children’s name, their own name, I don’t think I could name something I haven’t tattooed. I’m not complaining either, who else can say they were paid to tattoo a vagina on a guy’s wrist? Tattooed the words, “My husband is behind you.” On a woman’s back. If I was locked in a room and told to guess what tattoo I was putting on someone tomorrow, I wouldn’t get close to the answer.
I hired Knuckles first, he is the son of a dude I went to high school with. He used to come around Finger’s place and try to get in with us. Fingers put him in a sleeper hold just to choke someone out, he stopped coming around after that. His son got into tattoos and was really good for an eighteen year old. He had a thick portfolio he had already tattooed two-hundred people and done all kinds of pieces. Back, calf, every part of the arms and legs, head, neck. He really keeps to himself and doesn’t do much of anything except work. I’ve never seen him with a girlfriend, I’m not trying to say he’s gay, what I’m trying to say is he puts his time into tattooing and nothing else.
I didn’t call Tupac when I got his portfolio or application. I thought it was a joke, especially since he is a white boy. His mama is black but I guess he didn’t get any of the color. The kid had been fighting his entire life, his knuckles were not existent and he has more scars than tattoos. He told me that a white boy named Tupac is like a boy named Sue. He caught a really serious battery charge and was sent to prison for five years but got out in three. He picked up tattooing in the clack, he actually brought the gun he made in prison. It was an impressive piece but due to every health code that is written and every one that ever will be I couldn’t have that thing in my shop.
Daily moved from Hawaii sick of all the bullshit that comes with living there. People would always say, “You left Hawaii for Omaha.” She’d say, “If it’s so fucking great why aren’t you there?” Daily has pierced everything under the sun and is the best teacher in any distance. She has you practice on a thick strap of leather. You have to get use to hurting a person, you have to remain calm if they jerk, or when they can’t stop bleeding. A car drove through the front office and was stopped by the front desk which is six foot wide and six foot deep slab of steel. But when the crash came through the wall of the shop everyone hauled ass except Daily and her client. She got up to see what happened and when she saw it she could stop laughing. Sally is my first student. She stayed with me, she didn’t feel the need to go out and find a job when there was one right in front of her. All of my other students picked up and moved to L.A. or the twins, some are in Seattle, but Sally stayed in town. Marta Jo told me that she wants the shop if we ever think about retiring. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it, I don’t consider Sally the daughter I never had she means more to me than that. She was the first person to ever have my complete trust, in all the years I’ve known her she has never been late, sick, lied, gotten angry at a customer. I used to tell her that she could come out as a robot. Sally would just shake her head and then say. “I work in a tattoo shop, it ain’t exactly a salt mine.”
Ruby is someone I would have never met or became friends with if I didn’t own this shop. Ruby is transgender, and I don’t know which gender Ruby has settled on or if Ruby has picked one. It’s still funny to me when people ask Ruby out on dates. The men get embarrassed and the women are always staggered. Ruby just tells them that they don’t want what I got, going on to tell them it’s not a disease, it’s more about information. “You don’t need to learn anything about me, sit back, don’t move so I can give you a fucking tattoo.”
Niles is Daily’s apprentice and he stayed around as well. The kid took a real shine to it and he’s a real straight laced kid. Comes from a rich family, he’s the only person in his family with a tattoo, his family put the freak in Jesus freaks. He graduated college with a B.A. in something I don’t know, but he fucking hated it and went to a tattooing and piercing school. He sent his portfolio in the mail and it looked good. I hired the kid on the spot. He flew out here and Daily picked him up and brought him to the shop to get straight to work. He was sweating shotgun shells by the end of the night, he didn’t have a place to sleep because he couldn’t meet with his landlord to get a key so he crashed in the shop. Daily told him to get used to it.
For fifteen years we grew together, if I could I would live this life every reincarnation. If I had a time machine I would try to speed all of this up early. I don’t know what I was doing before and I can’t imagine what I’ll be doing after. Paying the bills, like booze, drugs, rent, and everything else is nice, but what I enjoy the most is what I do with who I do it with. There isn’t a shitty enough customer to get me to stop and there isn’t any kind of pressure that could squeeze me out. I’m here to stay.
The next morning on our way to the job, Martha Jo has the radio on NPR. There is a news story about the Iron press and the negative effects that it has been having on people. Today they are interviewing a man whose wife had died two days after getting an iron press tattoo, and he lost the use of his left arm.
“It had just opened and we booked our appointment four months in advance. Everything seemed fined, and we loved the ads that were playing on the television and the radio. “More pain means more gain.” The fact that the iron press technique delivered more pain was the selling point for the both of us. Margaret used an image of her black bouquet she had for our wedding, and I wanted her wedding dress, we both picked our left arms. We couldn’t be in the same room when we got our tattoos, Crystal Needle’s policy. It wasn’t our screams that were out of the ordinary, it was more of the fact that mine didn’t stop. Margaret wobbled into my room and unhooked my restraints. I couldn’t move my left arm.”
“Donavon had suffered from myopathy. The heat spray that the iron press gun uses to set the plastic ink into the dermis was set to a high level. When the spray passed through his arm the heat and plastic killed any and all muscles it came in contact with.” Dr. Haines said. “Please continue.” “I was rushed to the hospital and we stayed overnight, two days of exams and Margaret fainted on my way to get x-rays. The plastic ink entered her blood stream and caused an embolism near her heart. When she fainted that was when it burst, when the doctors got her into emergency surgery she had already had too much internal bleeding. They called the end of her life moments later.” “We will return to All Things Considered.” The radio voice says. “Did you know about this?” Martha Jo asked. “You’re the one who works the radio.” “Don’t get snappy, you’re the one who met this Violent gal, you’ve been in the belly of the beast. I just thought you saw something when you did.” “No, and if I did I would have said something. What the fuck is that?” Outside of the Crystal Needle there was a picket group, holding wooden handled signs with neon colored paper. Martha pulled into the shop and we enter the back of our store. Everyone was at the front of the store staring at the crowd.
“Do you two know what’s going on?” Tupac asked. “We just heard the news story on the radio. The iron press process is very dangerous and two people were injured.” I said. “More than two.” Niles said. “I’m reading a story from CNN’s website and it says that over the five years of this new process being applied over one thousand people have been injured or killed. The reason a lot hasn’t been done is the contract they sign when they get a press. It’s no different than the ones we have our customers sign, but the exclusion of their contract is the fact that it is the process not the person or handling and care of the tattoo.” “This is going to be bad for both of us.” Martha said. “How do you want to handle this Elwin?” “Do we have any appointments on the books?” “A touch up and a piercing.” Sally said. “Let’s just wait until those appointments come in and we’ll go from there.”
Now that I’ve been thinking about it, the girl that sent Fingers up the river was named Veronica Savala. She grew up nowhere near the tracks making it impossible for her to know the wrong side or the bad side. She showed up at the house when it was very close to being fixed up. The only thing keeping it from that was Fingers. He’d get drunk and rip a wall away, take a hammer to the hardwood, set things on fire, break every glass, plate, window, he threw the toilet tank lid through the front door.She would flip when people called her Vicki and Fingers like that kind of shit. The first time it happened she jumped on top of the guy and clawed his eyes out and punched him in the groin until he cried and vomited. The guy tied to retaliate a few days later, she took an eye and a ball from this guy. The nutty part of it all was that she was fifteen, which confused all of us. She had the body of a full grown woman, and in the late nights at the house we could hear from Fingers and her that she knew how to use it.A week of this and I had to get out. People started coming to me and some other guys for tattoos and drugs. As time went on we got enough of our own money to buy apartments and houses. For a while some people tried to fill the place of Fingers, none of us wanted that shit, we knew we didn’t have to take it anymore. Things became very simple after that, all of us from the house started to talk and become friends. Which was strange, the effect of us in that house made us hate others. We had learned being away from him that there was a different way.A few days later a guy I was selling to came over to pick up and told me the news about Fingers. I didn’t know how to process that information, I knew the two of them were fucking, I knew no one would call the cops on Fingers, how did any of this happen? When I came to that question I realized that I didn’t care. I got out of that house so I wouldn’t have to. I can’t say that I was sad that it happened to Fingers. It’s like grabbing that empty carton of juice, you’re mad but you know it will be replaced.Veronica was like the wind after the trial, and she was also a vagrant. She wasn’t from Omaha and no one knew where she came from. She most likely stepped back into the black hole she came out of. The house was seized by the state and they couldn’t figure out that a house in this state was labeled condemned. Until one of the appraisers spoke up, he grew up around this neighborhood and told them about Fingers and his tattoo school. They had to sweep the rape, tattoo and drug den history of the home under the rug.