Ty’s Tattoos opened last year in the old Organic Grocery building on the corner of Fourth and Halliday. Twenty years ago, Tamsin’s mother and I came to the Grocery to buy ginseng tea and eat wild rice soup; today, Tamsin’s here for a tattoo, and I’m along for I’m-not-sure-what: the ride? moral support?
There used to be three small tables jammed against the windows at the back of the store and a minuscule kitchen where the Soup of the Day simmered in a giant porcelain kettle and where a waitress of natural beauty cut sandwiches made with heavy slices of whole grain bread and served them on handmade stoneware. Nothing remains of the Organic Grocery now except the smell of patchouli and one huge fern that dominates the north window, its long fronds trailing nearly to the floor. The bins of lentils and dried fruit are gone; the wood-burning stove with its bubbling teapot has been replaced by a table piled high with three-ring binders, their plasticized pages offering every imaginable kind of tattoo. Every inch of flat surface in the tattoo shop--walls, doors, even the ceiling--is covered with samples of the artists’ work: rampant dragons dripping green scales, ruby blossoms with thorn-laden stems that wind in and out of the eye sockets of grinning skulls, figures of women whose majestic limbs arc and droop like the fronds of the fern hanging in the window, or whose hair spikes away from their heads and circles their wrists like barbed-wire bracelets.
“Take a break,” he says to his client when we enter the shop. He lowers his tattooing machine carefully to a table at his side that holds a tray of ink vials and extra needles, a jar of drawing pens, and a box of antiseptic wipes. He snaps the surgical glove off his left hand and taps the long ash from the cigarette that’s been smoldering in an ashtray on the floor behind him. Then he turns down the volume on the CD player above his worktable.
“Help you?” he asks. I see from the certificate on the wall of his booth that his name is Brando. I’m not sure if that’s a first name or a last name, because it’s the only name on the certificate, just “Brando,” centered on the line below the words, “Certified Technician.” Brando’s wearing tight black levis and a black leather vest over a black t-shirt. Black and green vines and snakes cover his arms from wrist to shoulder, and a wide band of tattooed skulls peeks above the neck of his shirt. His dark hair juts stiffly up and away from his head, as if it had been lacquered when he was hanging upside down. Brando’s skin--where it is not decorated--is pale and opaque, and his chin is covered by black tattooed lines that drip from his lower lip and curl under his jaw.
“I stopped in last week and talked to Freddie about a tattoo,” says Tamsin. She idly flips the pages of the plastic binders on the table. “A music note. On my ankle.”
“Can do that.” Brando glances at the clock on the wall behind him. “Can you wait? Freddie should be back pretty soon, or I’m just about finished here.” Tamsin nods, and Brando turns the volume back up, snaps the glove back on, and resumes his work. The large man squeezes his eyes shut against the pain and moans again.
We look at designs and listen to the groaning. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask. “It sounds pretty painful.”
“Oh, I’ve already got one, remember?” Tamsin lifts the ragged edge of her cutoffs. A small yellow rosebud clings to the front of her left thigh. “It didn’t hurt much at all. Mostly, it’s just irritating--like a little bee sting, over and over again.”
“Well, if you say so.”
“Relax. In fact, you oughta get one, Aunt Jackie.”
“Oh, right! Me, with a tattoo.” We both snort at this absurdity, but the truth is, I’ve thought about it. Tamsin usually treats me like one of her friends--I’m not really her aunt--but I wonder if today my role is surrogate mother. Maybe I’m supposed to raise the objections that her mother might make if she were here. The problem is, I’m not all that sure Rose would object to a tattoo. I suspect that had she lived long enough for Ty’s to arrive in Pocatello, she would have been their first customer. Maybe that’s what Tamsin’s thinking. Maybe I should get a tattoo just for the sake of family ties.
Tamsin hums a little with the music. “Hey, hey, you got me goin’ boy,” she sings. She executes a swaying, swiveling dance step. The large man on the stool stops groaning and opens small, piggy eyes.
Tamsin points to a design of ribboned hearts. “How ‘bout one like that?” I shake my head. She laughs and dances over to the booth where Brando bends to his task. She peers around him at the tattoo on the large man’s shoulder. “Better get ready...I’m comin’ back,” she sings to the buzz of Brando’s needle. The large man tries to turn and look at her, but Brando nudges him back into position. “Burn you like fire...I’m a pyromaniac,” sings Tamsin, and she dances away across the shop. The large man momentarily forgets his pain and smiles and tries to catch Tamsin’s eye, but she’s got hers closed as she sways to the music, her wrists riding gently on her hips.
Brando finally snaps off his machine. “Okay, all done.” He blots the large man’s back one more time and tapes a gauze patch over the new tattoo.
The man stands and buttons his shirt. “Thanks. See ya later, man,” he says and hands Brando a wad of bills. He gives Tamsin a final, slightly wistful look before leaving the shop.
