For a full month the shop was dead, and it was happening all over the country. Even the national news picked up the story of slumping sales of Tattoos. Piercing was doing fine, but the tattoos pay for the lights and rent, we kind of need that shit. I was sitting in the shop when Martha Jo came up to me.
“We should take a vacation.”
“When have we ever gone on vacation?”
“That’s the point Elwin. You’ve been working since you were sixteen and you don’t know how to do anything else. Name a place you would like to go.”
“I would like to be working. I would like if someone walked through that door, I would like it if I could pay my staff.”
“You come talk to me when you remember who you are talking to.” Martha Jo said.
“Baby, wait, I’m sorry. Don’t go.”
Martha Jo gives me the finger as she is walking away. Vacation? What would I do on a vacation? I can’t read, I fall asleep in every movie I’ve been in. If she would have come with an option I would have answered better than I did. I don’t want to go to Paris, I don’t want to sit on a beach, and I don’t want to see a large hole in the ground. I want to ink people and buy shit with the money they give me. I want to sit in the shop and tell fucked up jokes, order pizza from Orsi, toss drunks on their ass, watch Knuckles hit on everything with tits.
That’s when it hits me. I get on the phone and I call Martha Jo. “Does it just have to be us on this vacation?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“This vacation we’re going on can everybody come with us?” “You want to take the entire shop with you on vacation?” “Yes, I want to go to Atlanta. I have a friend up there and I’m positive that we could get some work up there.” “You want to take a vacation so we can get some work?”
“Yes, we could fill the portfolios, create some buzz, we can remind people that getting a tattoo is safe.”
“I’ll call everyone and see if this would even be possible.”
Everyone gives me and Martha Jo the go ahead, I tell people to not worry about the airfare just the hotel fee. I shot a call to Michaels and he said that it would be a great idea to do so. It was a little slow in ATL but if some people came around and started a buzz we could at least put needle to skin again. We picked our hotel and I bought the plane tickets, Martha Jo packed our bags and everyone else did the same. It was only a six hour flight to ATL, Michaels picked us up at the airport in a company van. The name of his tattoo shop is Bleeding Rainbow.
The area his spot was in was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. To the left of his shop was a daycare center and to the right a comic book shop. Also in the strip mall was two bars, one country the other a nightclub. This strange dimension of commerce existing in the actually one stop shop of every lower class and middle class family, each business is a commandment of investing in your own instinct. You want that new issue, you want to have that baby and don’t know how to care for it, and the start of it all, you want to get laid.
Not a lot of things interest me, as I said I don’t like movies, and I can’t read, so that leaves out a majority of things I really can’t do. I’m irreparable when it comes being taught how to read, I can feel how that person feels about me, how dumb they think I am. Martha Jo picked up on it with the first year of us fucking. “You don’t have any books in your house.” And. “Why do you have a lawyer fill out all of your paper work?” She confronted me and I flipped, I’m just don’t want to talk about it. Everyone thinks it’s so easy, but I can’t get passed it.
The simple fact is I really never learned. My parents didn’t teach me, the school never taught me. My parents would just skip me the grade I didn’t pass and when my friends graduated and I didn’t I took that as a great sign to drop out, why would I want to stick around a place where my friends weren’t at? Time went on and I learned a lot from Fingers in that time I watched him while he yelled at me. The first place I did tattoos in was a bar called The Ranch Bowl, it was a bar, a twenty lane bowling alley and a music venue. I would set up in a little crook between the entrance, the bass from the metal music and the noise and voices of the bar and the crashing of pins would rattle the person too much there.
The rotary machine I was using at the time was solid and the battery didn’t take up too much space. I didn’t have a place and I was using a P.O. box to get my needles in, I worked by the needle. At that time I could only get an order of two hundred and fifty needles for three-hundred and fifty dollars. It was good living and I made a lot of friends in that time and meet other tattoo artist in town. I’m not talking nice meetings either, the owner of Hydrocephalus, Forge came at me with a pipe when saw me working on this chick. He missed me by a pussy hair and I stood up and backed away with my hands up.
His friends saw that I wasn’t trying to fight, and they tried to get him to calm down. He didn’t calm down and he spit the question he asked to me.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Getting something to eat.” I said.
“This shit makes us all look bad. We don’t have to hide because we never had to. This is a business and people want it. They don’t have to go to some back alley to get art on their bodies.”
“Well then, can I have a job?”
“Girl, what’s your name?” Forge asks.
“Grace.”
“Come over here.” She creeps over to us. “Show me your tattoo.”
She brings her right wrist up to his eye level, the word strength dug into her skin with ink, little dots of blood on the outline.
“Did you trace this or are you doing freehand?” Forge asks.
“Freehand. I’ve never traced.”
“Come by the shop, I have work for you but it won’t be tattooing work. Don’t let that discourage you I really want you to come down. And you Grace, come down to the shop and I’ll finish the work for free. The kid did a damn fine job, you using clean needles?” I shake my head yes. “I’ll see you two soon.”
Forge walked into the door for the music venue side but even still the cracking of strikes and the shouting of a bar mixed with the heavy metal music still bleed through.
The next day I was down at Hydrocephalus and Forge was standing at the front of the shop. He wasn’t waiting for me he was simply standing there. I don’t think he remembered my face, his expression didn’t change when I said hello to him. He did have a look of get to the fucking point already. When I told him I was the kid he was going to hit with the pipe and said, “Which one?” I couldn’t tell if that was a joke or not. I told him the one at the Ranch Bowl, and once again he said which one. I told him the one tattooing the girl. That was when it all clicked.
“Oh yeah. You never told me you name.”
“Elwin,”
“Elwin what?”
“Elwin Aliano.”
“Isaac Wilson Smith the third, so please call me Forge.”
He showed me around the shop and showed me a locker where I could put my stuff. He just had me cleaning the first day. Making sure the needles where in the receptacle and learning the portfolios and the traces. Most of the work in a tattoo shop is walk ins. People come in and look at the volumes of portfolios we have and want an illustration they see. You would think that would be easy but the traces could and would mostly get filed wrong, never filled at all, and misplaced. That was my main job while at Hydrocephalus.
I cataloged at that time over two thousand traces. I had to make my own cataloging system since I couldn’t read. I would fill a file cabinet with animals, I would start with animals on the land, animals in the sky, and then water. The next cabinet would be people, starting from realistic people to cartoon drawn people. Words I would just put in a jumbled mess, I would just try to make it neater than other cabinets. By the fourth month of work at Hydrocephalus these calculated discrepancies drew attention to me. Forge called me into his office, he told me that we never filled out any paperwork. He put three sheets of paper on his desk, the silent landing of the paper made a loud crash in my heart and gut.
“Once you get done with that, can we go over the filing system you’ve implemented with the traces.”
The pressure of the room was too much for me, I was forced out of the room by it. I don’t remember running out of Forge’s office or running pass the front desk. I ran until I couldn’t anymore, I ended up in front of a place called Time-Out Chicken. I walked inside got a cup of water, and sat until I came up with an idea to make some money and tattoo people. Selling drugs seemed like a pretty good idea.
We put out a newspaper ad and a radio ad about coming down to Bleeding Rainbow to get some work done with a name your price deal. You would believe how many people showed up, who wouldn’t show up to a name your price deal. The news showed up before the cops. The cops told us we had to modify the advertisements. We got to have free ad time to correct the name your own price. We have to notify that it had to be of a taxable monetary value. Cash or credit only.
That just helped more than hurt. The woodwork spilled out and people set up shop, tailgate, camped out, whatever you want to call it. We had live music we didn’t set up or pay for, food we didn’t set up and pay for, but we had enough ink and needles to have work. Due to the bars being close we had to have a breathalyzer on site, we couldn’t be liable for buyer’s remorse. We had to do a type of triage, some would come in for touch ups, others had gotten shitty tattoos. We had all kinds of work to do that day, it couldn’t have been help. The day went into the night and the night became darkness and still the people wanted to get inked. The cops came again and told us we had to shut down, some bullshit about the hours of commerce.
When we were having breakfast at the hotel Martha Jo got about twenty calls about us in ATL. Our news station had carried the story and word had travelled. People had demanded that we come back to town. Martha Jo told everyone that we took a week up in ATL and a week is what we will stay. The phone number posted and in the phone book is a cell phone Martha Jo carries so people can still make appointments. We don’t need to be there to pull business the buzz will be nice to have when we get back.
The third day of the Bleeding Rainbow tattoo festival, that is what people were calling it. Michaels brought up Veronica, the girl who sent Fingers up the river.
“You remember that chick that scratched out Curtis’s eyes and took ball from him? She used to work for me doing front desk work and catalog work. Do you know what happened to her?”
“I didn’t know she worked for you. Why are you curious all of a sudden?”
“She stopped showing up one day and I thought she traveled around syphoning work off honest-joes like us.”
“Did she ever get violent when she was working for you?”
“No, she had gone through some therapy she was taking pills. She seemed like she had her shit together.”
“If I run into her would you like me to give you a call?” I asked. “Su..I don’t know, I’m an old man. I would like what Martha Jo and you have. People only get that kind of trust with a person if they were P.O.W.s together or a genie gave them a wish.”
“Did you two ever go out privately?” I asked.
“The day she left I was going to ask her out.”
“What’s stopping you from asking out any other woman?”
“I just want to be around someone who understands the business. I don’t want an outsider.”
That day we did a ridiculous amount of work, we had a new system worked out for the rest of the week. We would push new customers through so they would have to get work done when we left, and all of the other customers that already had work done could wait to be worked on by the two tattoo artists who were doing touch up work. This system worked out great. We got people who will be following us back home, there are people planning on finishing their tattoo here at Bleeding Rainbow, and their appointment book is filled for the next four months.
On the plane ride home we celebrated a job well done. We helped out a friend, got to do some work, I was able to put some money in my friend’s pockets, and a good time was had by all. Our plane dropped in on a Saturday afternoon which was great. We kept the shop closed on Sunday’s so we got a day of rest before we hit it up on Monday. Martha Jo and I dropped everyone off at their homes and we made our way back to our house. I unloaded the luggage while Martha Jo went to bed. Or sat in the bed while she watched me put them in our room.
“That was such a great idea Elwin. We’ll have to hit it hard Monday, we have a full day.”