Issue 10 - Fall 2020

Creative Nonfiction

A Thief is Born

Michael DuBon

Dad comes back after cheating on Mom because there’s no other way for our family to survive. Mom can’t make it with kids on her own. And so my parents are back at work together folding towels, washing plates, breaking up fights, and cleaning bathrooms at the Cal-Neva casino in Lake Tahoe, NV, while my cousin Bianca and I are left with my twelve-year-old sister Michelle or left to find ways to entertain ourselves in and around our Incline Village apartments.

Bianca, small and round and brown like me, has also grown a want for want. We might have home-cooked food and a roof, but we want more. She is eight, I am seven, and so she is my mentor.

I have never seen Bianca’s dad, and every once in a while, I wonder why he isn’t around. Much later, I will learn from my mom that Bianca’s father left her when we were both too young to remember him. Betty, Bianca’s mom, and my mom hate each other, but for now, they try to pretend they don’t because they have to live next to each other. I sense this already at a young age because Mom is always calling Betty, “Hija de la gran puta.”

But Bianca and I love each other as a brother and sister. She is my first true friend. We spin around on the living room carpet until we see it become a gigantic blonde cookie beneath our feet. We take creamers from the Raley’s to pour in a glass. We rent a Super Nintendo cartridge for $1 at the Video Maniacs and play it all day on the console in the store. She teaches me how to buy pizza from the adjoining Café. And then she teaches me how to steal; how to keep my hands innocuous and out of pockets; how to pretend to browse items; how to assess a situation.

Bianca and I walk from our apartment to the Village Market, a tiny grocery store. Our feet make tiny wet sounds upon the small puddles and brown snow on the mostly clear path. Large piles of snow lie pushed to the side, and we stand so small; it feels like we stroll through tunnels of ice and snow. The winter sun soaks into our dark hair. The snowcapped pine trees bristle with the wind and drop long, sharp icicles.

We stop at the entrance to the small shopping center. There’s the video store Dad takes me to where he rents me He-Man tapes. There’s the comic shop Dad takes me to where I might get a cheap X-Men comic. There’s the pet shop Dad takes me to just to look at cute animals and my favorites, the kitties. Bianca and I always window-shop as we walk by.

We stop at the stairs that descend to the lower levels of shops. Our breath puffs fill the air between us. From her jacket pocket, Bianca produces tough little green, blue, and chrome circles of plastic and cardboard: Pogs. The biggest, heaviest, chromiest one is called a slammer, she tells me. She hands it to me. Its heft fills me with importance.

“That’s so cool your mom got those for you, Bianca! You’re lucky!”

 “My mom didn’t get them for me.”

“How did you get them then? You don’t have money.”

“You don’t need money how I got them, Michael.”

My eyes audibly widen, like those old Tom and Jerry cartoons we watch when there’s nothing else on TV. This is what I have been dreaming of for years, a method through which you don’t have to pay for anything, and a place where you can have whatever you want—as much—no, more—than the fair-skinned kids.

“How?!”

“Come with me. I’ll show you.”

We stand in the toy-knick-knack-aisle of the market. The soft rock that I do not know yet is soft rock plays in the background: “I was born in a small town…” The natural blue light fills the store through its front windows. Adult customers tower above us, their legs like stilts. Their shoes shuffle by. The chatter of the market rages on, the front door chimes, the registers continually beep. The smells of the bakery bread, the misty produce section, and the people all blend together.

“So here’s what you do,” Bianca says. She looks up at the camera that’s right above the aisle. I follow her gaze.

“Those round black things—” She smacks my arm down. “Don’t point at them, tonto! Those black things are cameras.”

She takes a tray-like package of pogs off the slim metal merchandise pole.

“Come over here. We have to go to a different aisle, where there’s no black thing.”

She scans the aisles and finds the least populated one without a camera.

“How do we get it for free, though, Bianca? Tell me already. I don’t get it. What do the cameras matter?”

She moves close to me, so she doesn’t have to talk loudly. “Just wait, Michael, jeez. And be quiet! You have to wait for the right time for this when no one else is around.”

“Why?”

“Just wait—okay see? No one is here, and now I can show you.” She extends the side of her poofy coat with one arm and envelops the package. With her free hand, she tears the cardboard backing carefully from one corner of the pog pack and lets the pogs spill into her inner jacket pocket. Finally, she hides the spent evidence under the aisle’s racks.

The brisk air outside the sliding double doors feels like a breath of reality. Bianca’s very steps sound confidant, and I half-jog behind like a doggy.

“And so you have to take the package off because the codes on the back set off the machines.”

“But Bianca,” I whisper in a not whisper. “That’s stealing.” I expect that saying the words will make Bianca quit her brisk pace, so we can stand and talk about this. But she keeps on walking, and I keep on trailing.

“So?”

“Well, so my mommy and daddy said that was bad.”

“So?”

 “Look, didn’t you want some pogs? These are for you.”

“What? Those ones are for me?!”

“Yeah, they’re for you, dummy.”

“Yay!”

“Yeah, yay. So see, you know my mom and your mom and dad don’t have money. So if you want something, you need to get it yourself.”

She makes it look easy. And it is.

I can’t swim. I can’t ride a bike. I can’t read. But I can soon steal all on my own. I do just as Bianca has taught me: checking for cameras, casually looking up, looking around, and scoping out the joint; feeling for the weakest corner of the packaging and tearing quickly and quietly; hiding the empty packages; stashing the merchandise in my underwear or pockets and positioning the items so they don’t look odd in my pants. I decide to use my backpack on my own. 

I now have some measure of control. Even the Anglo kids with the most opulent snacks envy the sheer variety of snacks I possess, everything from Hostess cakes to those cursed Fruit Roll-Ups. And I have my snacks for lunch too. I will top your rice cake for a chocolate rice cake, and mine is free and all mine. I’m the snack king. I’m the emperor of treats. Yo soy el rey del sabroso. And I am no benevolent ruler; whenever Becky or David ask to share some of my snacks, never once having offered me any of theirs, I take pleasure in lying, saying, “Sorry, I only have a little bit,” just like they have said to me so many times before.

I am making a difference in my world.

One spring morning before I leave the apartment for Mrs. Mace’s first-grade class, I look into my horde, my backpack, and I see I’m out of snacks. There’s not even any unfrozen Otter Pop juice. The rain pours outside. The thunder crashes. The pine trees smell so deliciously of pine and sap and dirt and rain. I want some Quaker Oats s’mores granola bars, and I will have them. I don my Power Rangers raincoat and my Power Ranger’s Velcro shoes. I splash through shallow puddles along the way. But one is too deep, making half my sock wet and gross.

I return to my usual haunt, where all this theft began, The Village Market. Inside the double doors, I survey all that I may own before me. The familiar beeps from the checkout counter reassure me that I don’t need those beeps to come and go as I please. Those sensors by the front door are nothing to me. The adults are too self-involved to notice me when I’m careful.

I know what I want for right now. I can get the rest after school.

I have improved upon Bianca’s methods. First, my backpack is an even better tool than pockets—you can fit so much more. Second, since I do this so much more than Bianca now, I check for cameras, and I check for people much more efficiently; I have the whole grid of the store and the position of each camera memorized. Third, I’m just better. I’m the best at stealing.

I unzip my backpack. Sometimes the zipper sounds deliciously loud, like a mouth that has waited long to open with a sigh. The boxes sigh similar groans when I tear their cardboard strips off. The granola bars crinkle to the floor of my bag.

I feel the thrill of anxiety, and I picture  big brown moths tickling the walls of my stomach with their broad wings. I walk towards the front aisle of the store, my throat ever-drying. I have to gulp but can’t. My steps feel heavy. But this dangerous flutter is familiar, a constant companion through all my stealing experience. I see the double doors. I’m going to step out and feel the cold air on my face and the puddled water underneath my feet. I’m going to go snack loudly in class. I’m going to get away.

I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“Hello there. My name is Charlie. You’re coming with me, Michael.” We walk to his manager’s office in the back of the store.

Immediately I have some vague memory about this brown-mustached man. But I don’t know who he is. I can’t believe I’ve been caught.

“I’m really disappointed in you, Michael.” His blue eyes look tired like my parents’ eyes look tired. He takes the granola bars out of my backpack and puts them on his metal desk. He grabs his coat off the rack and makes sure my jacket is zipped up.

He takes me by the hand. We walk outside, back into the reality of the rain. Car lights reflect off the oil-rainbow puddles. I don’t know where we’re going.

 “You stole those granola bars,” Charlie says.

“Yes,” I say. Maybe starting with the truth will lead me to a day-saving lie.

“Why?”

Dang. He’s got me already.

“I don’t know,” I reply after a long silence.

But that is only half true. I kind of do know. I know that I was hungry. I know that that hunger made me more hungry. I know that I wasn’t going to stop until I was full. I feel full now, with guilt. I’m growing sick with it. The heavy raindrops on my raincoat hood each sound like the taut snap of a belt strap.

Still, I’m glad it’s rainy. The racket of fat rain means we don’t have to talk as much.

I see my playground. He’s taking me to Incline Elementary, my school, just around the corner. I imagine waiting in the office with Charlie, the rectangle-rimmed glasses of the receptionist shining under the fluorescent lights while she calls my parents. I need to pee.

We stop suddenly. We stand on the sidewalk outside the playground fence.

“Michael, I know your dad. I’m going to talk to him. You tell him he needs to come talk to me. You have to. Now go to school.”

 He lets go of my hand, and I run to school.

Mrs. Mace, my first-grade teacher, always looks at me funny or doesn’t look at me at all. When it was my turn to be “Child of the Week,” where we get special attention and prizes, Mrs. Mace pretended I wasn’t there.

“Is Michael here?” She asked among the uncaring din of children.

“I’m right here, Mrs. Mace!” I shouted from behind her.

“I guess Michael isn’t here. Chris, you’ll be child of the week again this week. Okay?”

I turned quiet. I thought maybe she made a mistake, even though it didn’t feel like a mistake. And then I knew I would never be the child of the week.

Mrs. Mace doesn’t look at me any more funny than usual when I walk into class thirty minutes late. She just lets me go and tells me what to do and what all the other students are practicing; they’re reading a list of words for a spelling and reading test. She hands me the list of words like apple and book. At least I know the alphabet now because of the alphabet song, but these words are too hard for me, and I can’t even worry about that because I’m in so much trouble. I’m dead. Plus I have no granola bars. Plus I’m going to get the belt. Plus Mommy is going to be mad and cry. Plus Daddy is going to be sad and yell.

My head hangs low on the walk home to our apartment across the street from school. I’m so scared. This is scarier than Freddy and Chucky and the rest. This time I’m the monster that’s done the bad thing. I’m the one with the dark and terrible secret. I’m the one who hurts indiscriminately. I’m the one no can love.

Mommy’s dark eyes light up when she turns and sees me close the door. She got off work early because she didn’t feel good, she says. She smiles her beautiful smile that spreads far out so you can see her teeth and part of her gums.

“Mommy, I have something to tell you.” The rain drips off of me.

“¿What, mijo?” She must see how bad I look. Tired. Guilty. Sad.

“I um.”

“¿Michael, qué? Tell me.”

“Um.” The kitchen smells of spice and bouillon, and it’s too strong, and my nose doesn’t like it.

“Michael.” She grabs me by the shoulders. “Please tell me.”

“You know Charlie at the store?”

She thinks for one moment. “Sí. What about him? What about Charlie?”

“He caught me stealing today, and he told me he needs to talk to you and Daddy.” My tears overtake the rain on my jacket, and I bawl.

“Ay, Michael.” Mommy says. She’s choked up.

“¿Por qué? ¿Pero por qué?”

“I don’t know!” I sob more, and I bury my face in my hands. The steaming bean pot whistles.

“Are you going to hit me?”

“No.”

“Is Daddy going to hit me?”

“Probablemente, Mikey.”

I bawl more. Mommy takes me in her arms.

Dad does hit me with the belt after Mom tells him. I hear the belt cut the air before the first blow lands, and he tells me “¡Eso! ¡No! ¡Se! ¡Hace!” Each word is punctuated by the sting and pain of each of the whips to my butt. And then Dad, exhausted, drinks two shots of whiskey and watches fútbol. I am so bad. I have made him more tired. It stings.

The next day Dad and I go get an ice cream at 7-Eleven. My favorite is It’s-It, a big chocolate-covered cookie ice-cream sandwich.

“Do you see why stealing is bad, mijo?” He walks with his strong hand over my little one. “You have to work for what you get in this life. Nothing is free. Mommy and me work all the time. And we want stuff too.” He laughs. He smiles. I see his big white teeth and don’t see his missing front tooth. “It’s not just you who wants stuff. And I wish I could give you everything you wanted.” I look up at him. “But you can’t get everything you want, and you have to work for everything you get. Do you understand?” His brow furrows.

“Yes, Daddy.” I think I do, but do I? I will stop stealing for now only because my want to be good for them currently outweighs my want for everything else.

 Now, though, this beast of want lives inside of me. I want the big toys, like Power Wheels. I want never-ending It’s-It’s. I want every cartoon on VHS from He-Man to Lion King in my own personal media library. My parent’s love alone is no longer enough.

We walk home together. Dad holds my hand and tries to pull me up every time I slip on the ice.

Michael DuBon is a first-generation Nevada native of Guatemalan descent. His poetry has appeared in The Meadow, and he enjoys writing in both English and Spanish. He holds an MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California, and he is currently working on his memoir: The DuBonicles. At his most natural, he is always laughing and smiling. He hopes to share the smiles and laughter through his writing.

B.G.S.

James Giffin

I’ll be homeless again, and soon, but I don’t bite my nails; I stay in my underwear, tap-tapping cigarette ash into one of the open bottles within arm’s reach.

In my sticky residential hotel this afternoon, it feels like someone cracked a frying pan over my head. My heartbeat pulses loudly, deep within my temples. Everything from my throat to my eyes is dry and I might be having an arrythmia, a jitterbug seizure, some sort of an attack.

The goal, of course, is to return to the prior state of intoxication as quickly as possible. Arrangements must be made regarding money, where to get it, and who to give it to.

In the end, I always must brave the wilderness. I sweep up yesterday’s clothes from the floor: a musty T-shirt with its crew neck stretched out, the jeans I’ve been wearing for a week, socks stiff from foot sweat and a little blood. The corners of my feet are smashed up so that toenails slice into their neighbors, and my shoes are worn thin around the ball of my foot, heel, and big toe.

My amygdala is boiling all the way to the liquor store, down impossible Market Street and across another.  I don’t want to think about what I look like: dripping sweat, knotted up and skittish as I mutter my requirements over the tall counter. The forced contact with the liquor store man is grinding. Not only is he a live person with judgements, but he happens to be beautiful, which makes his judgements all the more cutting. He takes a break from his phone conversation to hand me my two quarters. “Thanks, boss,” he says.

I run through red lights to get back inside the hotel as fast as possible. I am naked and must hide my body. I don’t trip, though I’m damn near blind, eyes pink and puffy from overexertion. I wonder if the liquor store guy is making jokes about me on the phone when I go in there. Like, Whoa! What happened to this guy? except in Arabic. He probably doesn’t even remember me by now, though; along with the homeless and decrepit, I have apparently become invisible. People only see what they want to see.

Hot water spewing from the tap starts to fog up the chipped mirror above the sink, distorting my reflection. The steam curls like smoke, an unfurling mushroom thinning as it rises. My used Styrofoam cup spits up overflow from too much pressure before I jam the knob back off. I shake out a congealed glob of crystals from a gunky container of Folger’s instant coffee and stir the hot liquid with my finger. I’m ready to drink now. With a swift crack, the plastic bottle of Taaka opens. I take back-to-back swallows using the coffee for chasing the vodka’s foul, unfiltered flavor away.

Breaths finally stop catching in my chest and come easier. I lean back in bed, able to think for the first time today.

I’ll have to drop some stuff off at my storage unit in the morning before I check out. The lighter I am on my feet, the better.

* * *

Evening.

I’ve just arrived at a creaky, classic three-bedroom flat in the Mission, and, after I caught him snorting some white powder, I’ve discovered someone who might like to party the way I do. “It’s only Neurontin,” he says apologetically.

“That’s interesting,” I say, producing a bottle of Dexedrine from my jacket’s inside pocket and putting it out on the table.

He says, “I’m Sean.” Sean snorts back a line after carefully shaping it with a BevMo membership card. “But you won’t remember that.” Snort. “Let’s be honest, you’re going to wake up in the morning and if someone asked you, you’d be like, ‘Who the fuck is Sean?’” He says it’s easier to remember him by his nickname. “My name’s Sean, I’m tall, and like in-your-face gay—” I observe his stretch-fit faded black jeans, torn sleeveless shirt headlining some forgotten indie glam rocker, and wiry handlebar mustache. This is Big Gay Sean. “So everyone just calls me that, it’s easier to remember.” He gets out his cellphone. “Girl, what’s your number?”

I was raised in a moderately strict household which cherished literal and metaphorical silence, and I believe this is why I now treat everything as if I might break it. Sometimes I can feel so deprived of sizzle that I overcorrect and end up swallowing firecrackers, and Big Gay Sean—B.G.S.—fizzes with such pop and spark that when I’m around him, it’s like being electrocuted with wonder. Those who are new to his gemmy brilliance, not yet acclimated to such a continual output of sass, snap into fits. He’s the one-man fag show of the evening. A burst of silliness and pep to awaken the excitable child within, he electrifies each room he twirls into with booming, blinding spectacle. Like an emcee chauffeuring those he encounters through his own odd world. All the celebrities rolled into one and showered with the strobe of paparazzi sensationalism. So glamorous. He glitters in an oddball, slapstick, endearing way so that my eyes are superglued to him, and I’m completely enchanted. I’m in a star-struck wonderland.

B.G.S. is the type who pretends to trip on the sidewalk and break his back, all hoping for a pop of Dilaudid in the emergency room. The way General Hospital works, he tells me, is they send electronic prescriptions directly to the in-house pharmacy on the first floor. It feels underground, a bunker in the thick of the building, past the reception area and information kiosks. Technicians point to blank lines on perforated carbon triplicate forms: sign here and here. “Easy,” he says to me on the phone after being discharged. Except that this go-around he suspects his records—tucked away electronically somewhere in a database that’s probably easy to hack into and full of misdiagnoses—are starting to overshadow his credibility. “This little whore in her little white coat handed me fifteen fucking Vicodin pills,” he says. “Not Percocet. Not morphine or fentanyl. Vicodin.”

For a whole day he’s loudly absent. It’s ten-thirty in the morning when he wakes me up with a phone call asking for money to pay for the refill. I have to go inside a Wells Fargo so I can withdraw exactly eleven-something dollars, whatever I can without going negative, and for that he slides me a few of the pills. I don’t feel dogshit from three Vicodin, but it’s not like I have anything on my calendar. Plus, hanging out with my new friend is like a thrill ride or a scary movie; I’ve got the flutters from not knowing what’s about to happen.

“Have you had to sleep on the sidewalk yet?” he asks me, right after inviting me to a sex party at the Armory. (“Best thing is, you don’t have to have sex with anyone you don’t want to!”) I tell him I haven’t yet city-camped, haven’t yet arranged umbrellas and shopping carts for optimal protection, or splurged on a tent from a sporting goods store on a wet first of the month. I’ve never stayed in shelters either. I can fight off biting predators in the park and chatter through the freeze, but scuttling in line to reserve an infested bed every night? I’d rather reach for my rattling pill vial, slap some more amphetamines into my mouth, and prowl the shit-smeared streets until dawn, finally crashing on some grass under the crisping sun. B.G.S. agrees that this nocturnal routine is depleting, a daily burden producing bloodied feet and anorexia-thin limbs. It’s difficult to stay bathed and dressed in clean clothes while running around meeting people on their schedule all the time. I feel deprived of my human rights without a shower, forced to live in my own repulsive filth.

“Hey, girl,” he whispers between cigarette puffs. “I just got a badass idea.” His eyes are strained and bloodshot as he details the ideal scenario: the two of us teaming up to boost our chances of landing a room with the luxury of keys. The mere idea makes us giddy. With the last of our G.A. money, we begin to brainstorm ideas over cocktails in the Castro (“cocks” is what B.G.S. calls them) and we have plenty. In fact, we drink such dangerous amounts of alcohol that our continued breathing would baffle scientists. Screwdrivers and Bloody Marys for breakfast and boozy happy hour bars by noon or one or two, getting eighty-sixed, progressing to whole bottles before nightfall. I don’t even get hangovers anymore. Or maybe I do, but they’ve become so normal that I can’t tell if I’m in pain or not.

Between sips, B.G.S. introduces me around to dozens of his friends. That’s what he calls them. It doesn’t matter where we go or what part of the city, they’re everywhere, and something about this makes me slightly suspicious. Time slips past us languidly in the sweet, sticky summer steam. We get stuck in an Inner Mission/Mission Dolores/Upper Market constellation of venues, Muni stops, apartments defined by their rent and square footage, convenience stores lit up with yellow neon signs for beer, and dive bars that open at six a.m.

One of these blessed early bird watering holes, The Mix, has a back patio for smoking cigarettes. I’m introduced to a highly effeminate Asian person named Alex, who confuses androgyny with fashion. Under a tilted beach umbrella, seated on a stool circling the center table’s ashtray, he wears an Armani Exchange T-shirt and black Calvin Klein jeans frayed at the knee. Throughout our entire first conversation, I hear nothing he says; I am considering his sex. I determine it to be female but switch back to male pronouns when I notice B.G.S. is using them.

Alex is asking if anyone knows of any housing opportunities. He’s got a wad of papers listing different low-income apartment application sites, words printed in bold, deadlines in UPPERCASE letters, but I never get a chance to look through them. B.G.S. doesn’t seem too interested, and the Long Islands keep arriving, courtesy of the man in the group wearing too much concealer and winking at me like he has something in his eye. B.G.S. belittles Alex’s opinions, refuses to agree with him on anything, and rolls his eyes when Alex compliments his shirt, but later whispers in my ear, “How great would it be to look down and see your dick sliding in and out of those tiny butt cheeks?”

Unfortunately for the both of us, Alex is more interested in me. I let him give me a blowjob or two, only because I figure one of us should be nice to him. He isn’t actually homeless, though he is in a hurry to leave the gloomy basement of his homophobic parents’ house in Ingleside. He doesn’t like me to stay there with him. We’re both embarrassed by our situations, but we use each other for what we each require, and it doesn’t feel any more unethical than in any of my other friendships. His floor of the house is littered with unopened bottles of Kaletra, an HIV medication, and when I ask why he doesn’t take it, he recedes into himself reflexively like a turtle. He crushes his eyelids together, shoulders rolling, and starts to hiccup little silent sobs. He goes someplace most do not know exists, a place where I’ve endlessly waited on grim iron platforms for safety-bound trains which never arrive. I’m cross-legged on the edge of his bed, with my limp arm latched to his shoulder, saying, “It’s okay, man. It’ll be all right. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be fine,” because sometimes there’s nothing left to do but lie. I don’t exactly have the warmest feelings for Alex, but when I think about how B.G.S. and I made fun of him behind his back, I feel like I have a parasite in my guts. He tosses up junk from the floor searching for something to write on. Finding a piece of graph paper, he writes one large Chinese character on it with a Sharpie and folds it into my hand. I leave in the morning to meet B.G.S. at the park, knowing I’ll never hear from Alex again.

* * *

B.G.S. is flip-flopping around topless in cutoff jean shorts at Dolores Park, with each cottage cheese pock mark and inopportunely placed coil of body hair exposed to all. He’s leaping from one island of blankets to the next. We’re at the very top corner with the best view of the city, the one where all the gays hang out in speedos sipping champagne. The gays, they fake-chuckle at each other’s comments, adjusting Ray-Bans, flipping from stomach to back or up on their knees, shiny from sunscreen. “Gay beach” is what they call this part of the park, but I once heard my friend Jason say the “fruit rack” and so now that’s what I call it too. It’s where B.G.S. and I end up when it’s so sunny during these summer days. The go-go boys and spotlight nightclub dancers are practically naked while I’m dressed like it’s snowing, chugging Dewar’s from the handle. B.G.S. is strutting around and talking to random folks. What’s up dearest, how are you? I watch him forget the day of the week in a conversation and laugh it off. Some aren’t having it, but his what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude gets him way more smiles and way more attention than I get.

“Did you say Austin?” B.G.S. is asking the group of guys sitting next to us if he overheard them correctly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I lived in Austin for a few years…” and suddenly everyone’s in a circle pooling booze: splashes of Bacardi Silver in plastic cups with sun-steamed bottles of Blue Moon to chase it with. He recounts war stories from the glory days, even though he is only twenty-nine (according to the occasional low whisper, he has been for years).

“Did I ever tell you about the time my hand got bit?” he says, ready to spring into a new routine. “‘By what?’” he mimics incredulously. “What do you mean, ‘By what?’ By a human, that’s by fucking what. Bitch nearly took off my thumb.” He was sucking off a straight guy, he says, and the dude started to come when his wife walked in on the scene. Face soiled, B.G.S. made a big show of sweeping everything up with his index finger and letting it all slowly dribble into his mouth. He turned to the man’s wife, who was apparently frozen. “I said, ‘Now there ain’t none left for you, bitch.’” He stood up to leave. “Then she bit me,” and he nods with wide eyes at everyone’s contorted faces. “I know, what a psycho.” I hadn’t been watching, but now I spin to look at him. My eyebrow muscles pinch, and I must appear gray because I’m about to regurgitate my lunch of alcohol.

At Dolores, we meet and fall in with a lazy crowd of fag hags and hipsters whose home base is an ex-warehouse in the Mission called The Box Factory. It’s now a residence, a kind of commune, with industrial architecture, ultra-high ceilings, and vast, open space. The master tenant holds film screenings here, with projected images lending flashes of color to the largest white wall. She also throws hyperkinetic parties with noise and alcohol and cocaine in abundance, with no nearby neighbors to disturb.

B.G.S. is just now beginning his San Francisco stage career. He’s six-foot-three, but when formulating his drag persona, he selects a blonde beehive wig that boosts him to over seven feet tall. Getting ready before a Box drag show, there will be three or four queens and me, holding their bags and wardrobe accessories, and it’s all concealer, vanity mirrors, curling irons, and gaudy shades of lipstick. We drink wine from plastic cups while B.G.S. lip-syncs Whitney Houston ballads, clutching his mascara-streaked face as the wig shifts tectonically. Headfirst into the streetlamp-illuminated rolls of fog, jewelry clinking against the glass flask of vodka, the queens cackle at each other’s jokes while searching their secondhand vinyl purses for misplaced iPhones. As an entourage to The Stud we take up the whole sidewalk. Zip this up, baby? they keep asking. I try to keep up. Light this for me, hon? Heels slapping asphalt, B.G.S. scrambles up to club entrances and hugs the security. Our covers are waived at the door and red velvet ropes are unclipped.

I meet a fun, gawky guy named Fil at an epic drag queen lineup sensation event at the Factory. There’s so much glitter, it’s amazing any of us can see at all. It’s under my fingernails and in my underwear. Slight, little Fil wears skin-tight jeans, a snazzy olive jacket, and most notably, platform sneakers which make his feet three times bigger than they really are. He follows me around the party, docile from the booze but certainly not without intent. I don’t really know yet if I’m attracted back, so I don’t return much of his attention. But slight, little Fil is sweetly persistent. He tells me he wants me to go home with him to his apartment on Dore Alley, and stares at me for a response underneath all the noise.

During a particularly rough bout of kissing, Fil cuts his lip on one of our teeth and a few drops of blood land on my arm. When we realize what it is, Fil spasms in panic, hysterically swatting at the syrupy red liquid.

“We have to stop,” he says.

“Why?”

His composure starts to crack. “I have this virus in me. It’s in every drop of my blood. Okay?” He looks at me hard. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘Why?’”

Naked, I retreat to the bathroom and wet a rag, like it’s all I’m capable of doing.

* * *

In the sticky, overcast, mid-morning span of gray, we scuffle down the sidewalk, this large cement arc veering left as we head south on Folsom Street. Its rigidity makes my bones ache and ankles swell. I can’t wipe away the sweat fast enough from my face. B.G.S.’s scratchy voice is hammering out meandering, meaningless sounds.

“I told that motherfucker he could suck the shit out of my goddamn ass, is what I did. See this?” He points down to the ground. “This here’s the sidewalk, he doesn’t own it. He was in my way; I don’t care if he had a walker.” He itches his nose and says, “James?”

“I need Tylenol,” I say to him, but what would really fix me is a drink.

“Know what?” he continues. “I thought you were kind of a dick when we first met.”

I stare at a bush sprouting from a cement-framed square of earth in the sidewalk ahead of us. “What?”

“Then we got shitfaced together. I yakked, but you were like, totally fine.”

“So?”

“So you’re the only person who can keep up with me and not die or get arrested. You always make it back at the end of the night, even if you can’t remember doing it.” A look of panic slices through his eyes. He’s let a secret slip, but quickly swerves back into control.

“That’s what you like about me?” I say again and swallow a ticklish string of spit creeping down the back of my throat. Is this even meant to be a compliment?

“Honey, you should list ‘binge drinking’ as a skill on your résumé. I mean, you can drink more than me.”

I already know this. I assume I can outdrink anybody because I’ve always been able to. A wave of suspicion rushes in and I look up at him. “Is that the only reason we’re friends?”

His reaction time is long even for being intoxicated. “No, but I mean, you know, it helps,” he says while looking for something to look at. The musty stink of urine steams up from the cement.

I lift an eyebrow, but don’t push it. “I’m just so fucking nervous all the time,” I admit with so much resignation that I almost start to cry.

“Don’t have to be Freud to spot that one, boo. I don’t know what bug got shoved up your ass, but I bet it’s got a stinger.”

I ignore his attempt to humorize the situation. “I’m not like you. Meeting new people… it isn’t that easy for me.”
“The first step,” he says as he lights a cigarette and inhales, “is opening your mouth.” He winks at me and emits a stream of carcinogens that ghosts into the breeze. I lurch on, envious of the smoke’s ability to make itself disappear.

* * *

They verify the check at Wells Fargo, of course, and I can’t blame them. I wait patiently, whistling in my head, as the teller phones the lawyer group listed in the upper left-hand corner of the check, or whoever. Got to make sure I’m not just some wacko off the street with a criminal career of forging paperwork. It’s very San Francisco, where nobody accepts credit cards or lets you use the bathroom without buying a six-dollar scone. But I have nothing to conceal. I stand taller and with more confidence than I have in months because I fucking earned this measly bullshit, I overpaid for it with my mind’s and my body’s pain. My family members can’t trust me, and perhaps shouldn’t; over two-thirds of my friends don’t want anything to do with me, and the few who remain by my side are strained and stretched thin. For fucking up my life, this check for just under seven thousand dollars certainly doesn’t cut it. But I’m hungry, and it feels like winning the Mega Millions.

Last year, when the dust settled after my big neuropsychiatric meltdown, I found myself, above all, broke. I found out about a class action lawsuit against the drug company who makes the pill I took. I forgot all about it: the mailed packets of paperwork, letters from doctors, prescription records. Finally some of that hoop-jumping from long ago is paying off. I discovered an oasis inside my P.O. Box today… what might happen tomorrow? (Especially since I have cash?)

B.G.S. says he knows of a residential hotel, a place on Sacramento Street in Nob Hill. He says he knows the manager and that the place is alright. The manager’s name is Anthony, and when we get there, his eyes scan me as they would an intruder. When he turns to the till, I know he can still see me. I can’t tell if he’s picturing me naked or dead. He scribbles some jargon onto a perforated receipt from a pad and extends me my room key.

“I got next week,” says B.G.S., and I don’t really care if I believe him or not. I don’t even care that there’s technically no overnight guests and that we’d have to sneak around. I don’t care much about anything except the liter of vodka in my backpack. We settle into our new ten-by-fifteen-foot home, and I immediately toss back half a dozen shots using an empty prescription bottle as a glass.

B.G.S. leaves to go to the Power Exchange and probably fucks somebody who doesn’t have a name. I’m happy to get some space. He comes around every other day or so, between binges. And every other day or so, there is a noticeable amount of prescription pills missing from my backpack. Which is great—how do I accuse my friend of stealing medication behind my back? It’s too saddening to contemplate, being taken for a fool by someone I can supposedly trust. When he is around, at the end of the night we observe the twin-size bed and mentally strategize before climbing in. With two bodies so close, the soupy heat in the building makes it impossible to sleep, and B.G.S.’s hands keep trying to pull my dick out of my underwear. I mentally cringe and push him away.

After making a little too much noise at The Cinch this evening (mostly B.G.S.’s hoarse growl demanding more Kamikazes from the bartender, who had cut him off), we retire to my accommodations with a welcome liter of Smirnoff. His hand behavior is unusually grandiose. He alternately shrieks unintelligibly and groans over his knees, one palm wrapped around his forehead. He takes forever in the bathroom, which is communal. It’s next door to our room, so I can hear grunts and curses and something hitting the pipes, like he’s slamming himself against the porcelain.

This morning, which is actually this afternoon, he isn’t jammed up against me in bed. He isn’t in the room at all. I call his cell phone and listen through the wall for it to ring. It doesn’t ring, though; it goes straight to voicemail.

Someone knocks at the door. I wipe the dots of sweat from my face with the tummy of my undershirt and confront the door’s peephole with suspicion. It’s Anthony.

“That friend of yours can’t come around here anymore,” he says when I open the door. “I had a tenant call the cops really late last night because she found him drunk in the hallway.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Were you aware of that?”

“No.” I sleep super heavy, so all this is actually news to me.

“Well he can’t come around here anymore. Not even supposed to be having overnight guests.” When Anthony’s shrill, twangy voice trails off into silence, his eyes—little, nystagmic stones set deep in his face—caress me for too long of a moment. He’s not pulling off the menacing landlord act well from a foot below me. He has his knuckles on his hips, and he’s pushing his chest out to reinforce the concept that police visits at three a.m. are frowned upon.

“Absolutely, I understand. My bad. Sorry, Anthony,” I say, squirming. I think for a beat. “Was there any damage?” Maybe I could owe him some money if it isn’t too much. A payment plan perhaps. It feels like I shouldn’t burn bridges with someone established in San Francisco decades more than B.G.S., who (now that I think of it) seems to have just breezed in.

His hardness softly morphs into curiosity. “No, no damage.” I don’t know where to look, so I close my eyes and count to three (a panic move) but before I get to three, Anthony says, “Are you okay?”

It’s sort of a stunning question. Most people couldn’t give half a nasty fuck about me. That, or they think Jesus hates me and I should be eradicated from Earth, tossed into Hell’s kiln. I slow down and try to analyze what’s being asked of me. “I guess,” I say, a bit dazed. I remember what B.G.S told me: The first step is opening your mouth. Out of nowhere, an automatic reply gets pushed out of my throat like vomit. “I’ll be fine,” I say. “That’s the way it works, right?”

He inhales slowly through his nose. “If you’re lucky.” His eyes wince right after he says this. “I don’t mean to sound pessimistic. You seem like a bright kid, just apply yourself. Plus,” he continues as I break eye contact, “you must have family.” He looks me over one last time. “Checkout is tomorrow at eleven, drop the key on my desk.” The hallway’s wood flooring creaks under each step as he walks off to the stairwell.

I accidentally slam the lightweight door because the window is open. Around me, the floor is a battlefield in the aftermath of combat. Orange prescription bottles lay still like dead bodies, leaking stale, back-washed vodka. I consider the bottles through a haze, a hangover that’s not a hangover anymore. Anthony’s word family is buzzing in my ears. I think about my parents. Right now, mom is hearing dad open the front gate that screeches and bangs like a tambourine. I can hear it everywhere. Maybe they’ll mention my name over dinner tonight. That would be nice. Maybe they’ll say, “I bet Jim’s up to something these days that’s going to work out great for him. I just know it. Something’s clicking with that kid right about now.”

I should try to be as light on my feet as possible by the time I check out tomorrow, so I start packing a reusable grocery bag to run over to storage in the morning. I stop to look out the window at the late, golden afternoon. I’m sweating from its heat. People are getting off work, the sidewalks are getting busier with passers-by on their way home. I spot a gay couple smiling and walking hand-in-hand, both attractive, about my age. They turn off Polk and buzz themselves into an apartment building, which I imagine anchors their perfectly happy lives.

James Giffin is a multimedia consultant, emerging writer, and proud uncle, holding a BA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. He believes literature has the power to progress cultural values regarding homosexuality, homelessness, mental illness, and substance use. He resides in San Diego, California.

Elbows off the Table

Jay Stringer

A bolt of lightning flashes inside your body, tingling even the bed of skin under your fingernails. This is a new feeling for you: too quiet to be anger but much louder than pain. You’re a teapot left on the burner well past the screaming.

“No, he’ll be alright, Toni,” Dad tells your Mom.

Alright. Dad says you’ll be alright. No. No, Dad says you are fat.

Dad says you will have a heart attack if you keep eating like that.

Dad says it isn’t any of your damn business whether or not he smokes, to get your ass up off the couch and go play outside, for you to worry about your own self before you start telling people how to live their lives.

Eyes averted to the saucepan, Mom is in the corner bowing before her domestic altar.

“Eat your salad, honey,” she says. She adds three drops of salty tears to the boiling water, just so the macaroni noodles won’t stick together.

Sweat drips off your nose and onto the rusty brown pillows nestled in the bed of green. You can eat these. Mom says these croutons are low fat. She wants you to be healthy. She wants you to be around so you can take care of her when MS steals her bladder at forty-nine.

There’s a roar of thunder churning in your guts. You’re bubbling like that Diet Coke bottle after Mrs. Silvers force-fed it a sleeve of Mentos in science class. Your throat feels like the roll of sandpaper you used to smooth down your Pinewood Derby Racer for Cub Scouts.

“Eatshesaid.”

You’re consumed in fire bursting out from the inside. All you need is water. Water slurped from the bathroom sink would soothe your throat, if you could just excuse yourself—

But your Dad says, “No! Elbows off the table!”

You dig in, thinking only of running away. You forget how to chew. You forget how to slow down. It hurts like you’re trying to swallow a cocklebur. Your untrimmed fingernails carve into your neck. You are new to the concept of dying.

And then, you can’t breathe.

Gulp.

And then you can’t speak.

Gulp.

And then you can’t get up.

You should have never snuck those cheese slices from the refrigerator after they went to bed and never opened your mouth about your Dad’s bad habits and never opened your mouth to eat at all. Then you would’ve remembered that death has no respect for the young. 

In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, flash. You break the sixth commandment. You are so light on your feet that your Dad will say, “Damn boy you shoulda been a quarterback” when it’s all over. You are running faster than death. It would be the last time you could outrun your mind.

Prepared to meet thy God, you dive into the warm, blue, Finding Nemo comforter on your soft three-quarter mattress. You suck in deep, so hard it’s painful, like breathing in knives. So hard, your organs seize inside.

You can take in air again. You wonder if this is how your first breath tasted, like the one you took when you almost drowned in your Aunt’s pool: chorine, nasal spray, the adhesive side of an envelope. You feel it cooling down your body from your raw, pink neck to your squirming toes.

And then, stillness.

You are confused. You outran death. You can’t get enough of the mothball and must-laden air.

That would be the last time your father would hug you. That would be the last time you would have dinner for a while. The spell will only break when your Mom lets you see her cry as she begs you to just eat something, please.

Though your parents would take you to the doctor, and then a counselor, and then a doctor again to try to find a diagnosis for a condition they don’t understand, even though they have it too, you’ll never get better. For years after, you will feel the same crouton buried deep in your body, next to your heart, where it will be for the rest of your life.

Jay Stringer is a recent English Literature graduate from Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. They look forward to attending the MFA Playwriting program at Hollins University during the summer of 2021. Currently they live in Richmond, Kentucky with their partner while working as a full-time cat-parent raising their child, Jellybean, whom they had out of wedlock. This is their first publication.

Body Projects

Ashley Williams

From shoulder to shoulder, clavicle to cleavage, my chest is marred with a blue tribal tattoo adorned with black, blue, purple, and pink stars. Ink striates under the skin forming hazy clouds from needles that punctured too deep. Scars of crooked lines feel like braille upon my breasts, and what it reads is “look at me.” The color is splotchy and undersaturated on my sternum, where the purple ink had wept from raw wounds; it didn’t want to be there any more than I wanted it there.

I got the tattoo when I was twenty-three. Phil, my boyfriend of five months, carried the nickname Tattoo-Phil. He did tattoos out of our house when he needed extra money. Phil was (and probably still is) many things: a pool player, a tattoo artist, an independent contractor, a hustler, a bowler, and an alcoholic. He was also generous and loving, intelligent and charismatic. The relationship was unhealthy most of the time; he was ten years older than me, and that gave him power and control. He used his admirable qualities as weapons. He was generous until you forgot to do the laundry. Charismatic until his tenth beer. Loving until he thought you were being a fucking bitch for not letting him drive to the liquor store for another case. I was defenseless, a puppet under his control.

The day I got my tattoo, I shivered in a spaghetti strap tank top while the stencil was placed. My back remained ramrod straight because you only get one shot to get the right placement. Once I checked the placement in the mirror, I was instructed to get on the pool table and brace my head upon the railing. The cold, unforgiving slate of the table made my body tremble.

The design was a piece of flash art that Phil pirated to expand his portfolio. He had the whole set-up: machines, ink, and even a small ultrasonic cleaner. We had agreed on him placing the whole stencil of the chest piece, so we could see how it looked. He was only supposed to tattoo two nautical stars close to my shoulders. When he started, though, the pain was more excruciating than anything that I’d ever felt, like a hot scalpel filleting my chest open. Like a needle was exploring the very depths of my breast. When you get a chest tattoo, the pain radiates out. So it’s not just pain at the point of contact, but also pain that expands like a wildfire encompassing hemispheres of mammary tissue.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Phil was a “scratcher.” “These are the people,” according to Karen Hudson, author of Living Canvas, “who know just enough about tattooing to be dangerous. They ‘scratch’ their friends, causing irreversible damage through scarring.”

I felt him continue lines that weren’t supposed to be there. I asked him to stop. Told him I didn’t want anymore. But he pushed my shoulders to the table and kept going. I cried, muffled sobs, chest heaving. He told me to stop being a pussy. It was my fault. If I would just calm down, it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

Hudson explains, “It’s very, very rare that a person is so sensitive that it makes them cry. When this happens, there’s a good chance their body was overly stressed to begin with.”

During the third hour, I vomited. After brushing my teeth, I swallowed a hand full of Advil and went back to get it finished. I couldn't, after all, leave the tattoo half-colored in. It would eventually look badass when it was finished. Right?

****

The tattoo machine was created by a New York City tattooist named Samuel O’Reilly. His design centered on Thomas Edison’s 1876 patented “Electric Pen,” which perforated holes into a material, creating a stencil in which to pour ink. O’Reilly modified the pen by adding needles and a reservoir for ink. He was granted patent (# 464,801) on December 8, 1891. Prior to that, tattoo equipment consisted of mallets and piercing implements that were made from thorns, fish bones, oyster shells, thread and needle, razor blades, bamboo slivers, nails, or glass. According to the Smithsonian, some of the first instruments were found by renowned archeologist W.M.F. Petrie at the site of Gurob, which dated back to 1450 B.C. Machines now are made for precision. They can be adjusted for depth and line width and are powered via electromagnetic motors which pierce the skin at a rate of 3,000 punctures per minute. Whatever you do, don’t call it a gun. Most artists think of the machine as “a tool for creating art—not a weapon.”

****

I went to the Laser and Light Surgery Center on a Monday afternoon for a tattoo removal consultation. The office was little more than a few treatment rooms in an office suite. I read through the paperwork, one of which was a list of alternatives to laser removal, such as makeup and covering the tattoo with another tattoo. As if this wasn't my last resort.

Makeup rubs off on your interview clothes when you try to conceal your shame. And a tattooist at Skin Deep took one look at your tattoo and shook his head. "The lines are so thick there's scar tissue. I can't cover that up." So laser surgery was my only option. Sitting in the chairs that lined the hallway was a man with salt and pepper hair in a black leather jacket. I tried to guess what regret he was getting blasted away. I didn’t make eye contact, though, because I didn’t want him to try and guess mine.

I have gone through great efforts to conceal my chest tattoo because people stare. Some women look at me like I'm a slut trying to take their man. Pastors, co-workers, professors, doctors, men, their eyes trace along the lines of my collarbones and follow the stars down the slope to my cleavage. Wondering how far it goes. If I'm as freaky in the sheets as my tattoo implies. Ninety percent of the time, I hide my ink under hoodies and t-shirts. I don't want people to think I'm unintelligent or aggressive. I don't want people to think I'm seeking their gaze. I don't want to offend people with my appropriated tattoos. I don't want to feign the confidence that belongs to this tattoo. I just don't want to deal.

****

My only visible tattoo is a ladybug the size of a quarter on the back of my neck. At the time, the ladybug not only signified my independence, but I hoped it would bring me luck. I went the night of my eighteenth birthday, January 19, 2002. It was unseasonably warm that winter, and I remember wearing a canary yellow Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt. Before walking into the shop, we smoked a fat joint with the tattoo artist in the parking lot to calm my nerves. It was me, my best-friend Roxanne, and friend Tracy (she was our Stoner Mom because as an adult, she watched over us when we were high) and her boyfriend Kevin, who joined me to celebrate the moment. Tracy and Kevin were authentic hippies from the hills of California and hated it when we called sodas “pop” because they thought we were saying pot. They let us chill at their house as long as we shared our weed.

I paid the mandatory $40 shop fee to sit in a chair for five minutes while the tattooist worked. It didn’t hurt as much as I expected, quite the opposite. The tattoo is located on an erogenous zone, so my body was warm with gooseflesh during the whole process. The tattoo was so tiny that the tattooist pierced my tongue for free.

That night, I went home, tongue swollen, speaking with a lisp, and sat on my mother’s couch smoking a cigarette. She arched an eyebrow at me and scolded me by my childhood nickname, “Nikki,” but that was it. I guess she thought what’s done is done. Either way, my little act of rebellion had little consequence.

****

In The Seattle Times, writer Taya Flores explains, “For some, getting a tattoo not only honors the dead, but also provides an opportunity to bond with living family members.”

My step-sister Tracy Jo died the morning of January 25, 2008. She had an artificial heart valve and couldn’t afford her blood thinners. A massive clot formed around the valve. During her open-heart surgery, the clot broke off and found its way to her brain. She died at 7:32 am from a stroke. I went with my stepfather and mother when they received the news. At her funeral, my son was crying, and Teddy, Tracy’s six-year-old son, rubbed his back and told him, “Don’t be afraid, it’s not a monster in there. It’s just my mom.”

That night, I found myself in a tattoo parlor. I needed to focus on a different kind of pain, even if just for an hour. I selected a butterfly with a hidden ladybug in the middle. It wasn't original, but it meant something to me: she had her wings and took a part of me with her.

A week later, still grieving and barely able to make it through the day, I went back to the tattoo shop. I was still seeking the pain, but I also needed a reminder to focus on the living. I had my son and Tracy’s son to raise, and I couldn’t lose myself to grief. Plus, Tracy in her raspy, cigarette worn voice would have told me to get up and do something before she kicked me in the ass. But she’d say it with a chuckle because, as tough as she wanted to be, she was always a silly, soft-hearted woman.

The new tattoo was a tribute to my son, a promise that I would love him eternally and a permanent reminder to him that he was a piece of me. The pain from the tattoo that night felt euphoric. A six by six-inch heart and a gray banner with Paul’s name graces the middle of my upper back. The needles sent vibrations up my spinal cord. And the numbness in my head slowly receded.

****

In her Tin House essay, “Her Tattoo is My Name & My Name is a Poem,” Amy Lam writes about Holland Christensen, a white woman who unknowingly got the Charlotte Hornet’s second-string point guard’s Chinese name, Jeremy Lin, tattooed on her. Coincidentally, Lin and Lam share the same kanji symbol.  Lam explains that the traditional Asian naming convention is based upon family poems. It’s a way for Asian-Americans to remain part of their tribe. Thus, Christensen’s negligence to research kanji characters angered her. “I wanted this white woman to be the proxy, a wall to spit on” (55).

During World Wars I and II and the Korean and Vietnam wars, skin art increased in popularity. During that time, American men, especially sailors, brought tattoos back from their foreign destinations, so a lot of the early tattoo history in America was appropriated from foreign artists and designs. Lam states that she’s “familiar with the impulsive desire to offer a part of yourself to a stranger with electric needles […] But to condemn her for her catharsis would give me absolutely nothing.”

Part of my chest tattoo consists of a tribal tattoo that is heavily influenced by traditional Hawaiian tattooing. In order to get the traditional kakau tattoo, Hawaii-based tattooist Keone Nunes stated that his clients have to bring their genealogy report because that will help him decide which design he will ink into their skin. Nunes prays before, during, and after the tattoo placement. The process is heavily rooted in spirituality and tradition. But my tattoo wasn’t part of a tradition. It just looked “sexy and badass.” I wonder if Kunes, like Lam, would want to take his anger out of me.

Another tattoo that I collected just months after my chest piece was finished was a koi fish half-sleeve. A substantial black outlined fish, with faded yellow, orange, and red scales breaches the surface of a lake decorated with by cherry blossoms. The background is a haze of purple mist to add richness and contrast to the koi. The style of the koi originates from outlawed Japanese tattooing called Irezumi. Traditionally, anyone with that style was considered low-class or unsavory. “Japanese tattoos often showcase the culture’s reverence for nature—namely, animals and flowers.” Cherry blossoms are a symbolic flower of the spring, a time of renewal, and the fleeting nature of life. Koi fish, a native of Japan, are "symbolic of numerous things, but given their extraordinary lifespans, they are most commonly associated with longevity, persistence, and overcoming the trials of life."

Cultural appropriation—co-opting specific elements of a culture that is not your own—is often applied to American people who get tattoos in styles that are distinctly traditional in another culture. When I got the traditional tattoos, I just enjoyed the style and didn't have a clue about the meaning behind them. However, despite needing a touch-up, I'm glad I have the koi tattoo. I may not have honored the tradition when I got the tattoo, and that ignorance, I regret, but the symbolic meaning behind the koi and cherry blossom has become deeply personal to me. Someday soon, an artist will fix it because I want to pay homage to the original artistic influences and a tradition that I admire.

****

“Don't worry about me / The heart is supposed to bleed” –10 Years, Fault Line

It took me a long time to put myself back together after my relationship with Phil. I was seeking something, a reason, an answer, absolution. Over the next two years, I felt so many needles penetrate my skin that I currently don’t know how many tattoos I have. The 10 Years quote is tatted across my back, hidden snugly under my bra strap. The song and quote helped me cope. I don’t want anyone to see it, but knowing it’s there helps me remember my strength.

Surrounding the heart, in four corners are  an anchor, a lock, a key, and a four-leaf clover, and to me, the images symbolize staying grounded, love, freedom, and hope. My shoulder blades have matching old-school swallows, one red and one blue; yin and yang; the person I was before and the one I am now. These tattoos tell the story of my recovery.

I have a two-inch tattoo of wet, dripping cherries on my left butt cheek. It's absolutely horrid, with the lines blown and color faded. It looks like a four-year-old child used chalk pastels to tattoo me. There is absolutely no meaning behind the tattoo. I forget it's there most days. But when I catch a brief hint of it, I smile. I got the tattoo during a Halloween Tattoo party hosted by Tracy and Kevin. I don’t remember the artist or what he looked like. We were in the throes of the party when I asked Tracy asked to pour me a Cherry-bomb. She scrunched nose and squinted her eyes, trying so hard to focus on my request. "Did you say Cherry bottom?" We rolled with laughter, the way that stoners laugh about something that's not that funny. Somehow, I ended up with a cherry on my bottom that night. That tattoo documents a friendship, a night, a single moment that brought me happiness.

****

Tattooing is a process of injecting pigments, lakes, or dyes into the intradermal layer of the skin, which is the area between the dermis and epidermis. Tattoo inks are considered cosmetics in the US; thus they are not regulated or recommended for subcutaneous use. Many of the inks injected into the skin contain heavy metals, toxins, and nanoparticles. Reds and blacks contain various mixtures of iron oxide (FeO); blues can contain copper carbonate, cobalt aluminum oxides, and chromium oxides; purples can have manganese ammonium pyrophosphate; whites can contain small amounts of lead.

From the moment tattoo ink is injected into your skin, your immune system, aka white blood cells, begins attacking the ink particles, assuming the metals are foreign matter. The problem is that the metal particles can be immensely bigger than a white blood cell. A tattoo fades over time because your white blood cells continually eat away at the ink. However, they never having enough time to completely remove the metals from your skin. A Pico Laser penetrates the epidermis and uses thermal heat to shatter the pigments into smaller pieces, making it easier for your immune system to remove the color.

No single laser can remove all tattoo colors. Different dyes respond to different light wavelengths. Black and dark green are the easiest colors to remove; yellow, purple, turquoise, and fluorescent dyes are hardest to fade.

****

Tattoos are a form of non-verbal communication with various meanings. My body art is a complex narrative of conformity and alternative constructs of doing gender. It's a record of my low self-esteem and body dysmorphia. It's a loss of control and power taken back. The lines of toxic metallic pigmentation that scars my skin is a story of the last fifteen years of my life: shaky, bumpy, faded, unfinished, yet vibrant and beautiful in places.

It took me a long time to come to terms with the trauma of my chest tattoo. Even now, I battle with the shame of not putting up more of a fight. I have to remind myself that I did not let Phil tattoo me. If I would have pushed his hand away…I should have protested more…I shouldn’t have let him put the whole stencil on. But that’s all bullshit because if he cared, he would’ve stopped instead of mutilating my skin. Faced with that reality, I was ready to take back the piece of me that Phil claimed.

In the treatment room, which was set up with two boxy white machines on either side of a cushy treatment chair, I read over the aftercare instructions. Bandages and triple antibiotic ointment for seven days, which is not unlike aftercare for tattoo placement. On top of one of the machines was a laminated chart of the Kirby-Desai scale risk assessment for tattoo reduction and removal. I read over it and the questions I had prepared on a notebook.

The doctor entered the room and stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “How can I help you?”

I pulled the collar of my shirt down. “I would like to remove this.”

 The doctor snapped on a pair of gloves and ran his finger over the tissue on my sternum and clavicle. He didn't ask any questions—he'd probably heard it all before—besides he wasn't there to heal my wounds. The doctor sat on the circular rolling chair, with his perfect posture and coifed hair, and said, "The treatment will be $250, and the blue will be hard to get rid of. We can treat the color, but the scarring would still be there. We offer packages: buy six get four treatments free."

To him, I was just a number on the Kirby-Desai scale: 17. I’d need one treatment for my fair skin. One treatment for the multiple ink layers. Three treatments for the location on my upper trunk. Four treatments for the various colors. Three treatments for the moderate amount of pigment in my skin. And five treatments for significant scar tissue. I would need seventeen treatments at $250/piece to rid myself of this tattoo. This doctor would make $4,250 over 170 weeks removing my tattoo.

I told him I was only there for a consultation, that I was afraid of the pain and was too nervous. He graciously offered to do a spot treatment so that I could see how it felt. I asked him to remove the top two blue stars on each side of my collar bone—they were usually the most visible—and he agreed. While the doctor warmed up the machines and gathered the iodine-tinted safety goggles, I removed my t-shirt for easier access. That morning, I pulled a brand-new tank top from my drawer where it had sat for years, unused because it didn't hide anything. 

The doctor didn't look at the koi fish on my arm or the collection on my back but grabbed the tubing coming from the box to my left. Chilled air drifted out, cooling my skin, preparing it for the blast of heat to come. The snap from the laser was painful, like a pop of bacon grease, except at an interval of a thousand pops per minute. I gritted my teeth, held my breath, and watched the second hand of the clock tick. The pain was negligible and didn't reverberate into my tissue. After he finished, he globbed some ointment on the wounds and bandaged them.

At home, I pulled the bandages down and looked at the twin wounds in the mirror. The skin was inflamed with angry red welts. Over the days to come, the welts transitioned into yellow bruises and peeling skin. The pain receded into a pestering itch.

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In his book, The Body and Social Theory, Chris Shilling, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, discusses the intentional modification of the body (size, shape, appearance) as “body projects” that are important in constructing and representing identity over the life course. I have used my body to communicate a wide range of personal and cultural messages: self-expression, rebellion, the visual display of my personal narrative, tributes, and even therapeutic reasons. But the message on my chest is not my own; to me, it's a brand that says "you are mine."

Five weeks after visiting the Laser and Light Surgery Center, the wounds were completely healed. The doctor said it could take up to ten weeks to see the full effects. The cobalt is still vibrant blue, but some of the particles have faded to the point where you can see wisps of lines from Phil's "scratching" technique. And on the right star, if you look closely, there is a one-millimeter gap of missing black ink. I have taken back one-millimeter of my skin, which gives me hope that one day, I will erase all of Phil's message. My body is a project and is far from complete.

Ashley Williams is a writer and graduate student in the MA English program at Indiana University. Her work has been published in the anthology, Flicker: Stories of Inner Flame. She lives in Indiana with her family.

On Blood Loss

Rachel Wyatt

Once, a nurse told me that I was lucky because of the quick peek of a thick, indigo vein on the inside of my left elbow. I get about a tablespoon of blood drawn every six months to make sure my thyroid levels are balanced. My thyroid gland doesn’t produce the normal level of hormones, and it is common practice to check patients with underactive thyroids twice a year to make sure their medication is still at the right amount. They never have to stick me more than once, but I still hate the way the needle slides under my skin. There’s a scar now, a tiny, darkened spot indicating where to open up my vein. I can feel the blood leave in splashes timed with the pulse of my heart. Drawing blood isn’t like filling up a syringe, a smooth flow. Blood moves and while the needle does some of the work, it’s mostly your own heart that pushes blood up through the needle so that your blood splatters against the glass sides of the syringe before sliding down into a tiny red sea. I turn my head away from the needle and mentally try to separate my left arm from my body. It helps to wear a jacket sleeve on just my right arm, leaving my left arm bare. My right arm, warm, is still mine, still safe; I don’t want any sensation from where I’m losing blood. A woman my size has about 3.5 liters of blood in her body and is constantly producing new blood cells. I will never have enough blood drawn to be in danger of physical harm. I have nothing to be afraid of.

People think that blood is one color. It’s not. Thick clots come out as black; the blood that dries in the cracks of your skin is dark brown. Blood has a green tint when it’s mixed with bile from your gallbladder, the only two things left for your stomach to throw up when you’re sick with the flu in 7th grade. It’s violet, spreading across your then-boyfriend’s cheap blue sheets. Delicate pink and foamy when you’re rinsing stains out of your clothes in the sink. More translucent than you’d expect when it spills from your hands onto the tile floor, scattering in a pattern like oil on water.

I lost consciousness for the first time in 8th grade health class. My teacher was describing how Princess Diana bled out after her car crash. I pictured my own neck, artery open, my blood spilling out too fast. I felt it in my neck, too, a tingle from the bottom of my left ear down to my collarbone, pushing my throat closed. At the time, I thought I could feel the artery in my neck. Later, I would realize I was feeling my Vagus nerve going into overdrive. I went to the front to ask for a pass to the nurse’s office and then I was slumped forward on my teacher’s desk and she was standing up over me. She pulled her chair around and helped me back into it. Another girl in the class pushed me down the hallway to the nurse’s office. The chair had one bad wheel and we kept veering toward the wall.

The Vagus nerve is actually two nerves on either side of the neck, but only my left side lights up and sparks when I see or picture blood, pushing my throat closed. When the nerve is overstimulated, as in the case of a phobia, blood pressure drops. The nerve also secretes a neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, which is essential in breathing and is disrupted in the case of panic. The combination of low blood pressure and near-hyperventilation lead me to the ground while a room of people who have the exact same nerve as I do remain standing, calm.

There is an evolutionary theory for the fear of blood. If our ancestors were losing a lot of their own blood, they were probably being attacked; if they fainted at the sight of their blood, they could appear dead and, therefore, less appealing to the animal attacking them. Blood pressure also drops when you’re unconscious, slowing the rate of blood loss. I printed out copies of research articles on the matter, thinking that one day I would show them to someone—classmates who asked what was wrong with me; the school nurse when she told me to go back to class, I was fine. Black ink that would say, louder than I ever could, There is nothing wrong with me. There is a reason. I pulled psychology articles, too, that told me that we are all plagued with a huge, mostly unconscious fear of our own mortality. When we drip red, we’re reminded of it. I’m not weak. I’m aware.

But I watched my classmates leave health class on their feet or ignore a paper cut and struggled to convince myself I’m not broken.

My nose started bleeding in the middle of a work shift once. I was straightening cat food cans when I felt the rush through my sinuses, and even though I started running then, I left a trail of blood down the right aisle of a Target in southern Indiana. On the bathroom floor, toilet paper pressed against my face, my walkie-talkie went off, a manager calling a cart attendant to clean up a biohazard. Some 16-year-old making minimum wage had to block off an entire section of the store and spend twenty minutes mopping up my blood and disinfecting the floor. A manager followed the trail of blood to the bathroom and knocked on the door. I was silent, caught in a grip of panic, blood in my throat and rushing to my cheeks. I didn’t want anyone to know it was my blood splattered between the groceries and cleaning supplies, that I was so easily reduced to a ball of a person on the floor, so easily prone to losing a vital part of myself. I didn’t want them to see me bleed.

Blood doesn’t want to leave your body. Like any liquid, it has surface tension, a weak force that attempts to keep the molecules together. Surface tension is why blood swells at the tip of your finger, falls in a drop. Blood falling through the air forms perfect spheres, but they aren’t nearly strong enough to withstand the shattering force of gravity driving them into the floor.

My worst nosebleed started as thick drops on my then-boyfriend’s light blue pillowcase. I ran to his bathroom, but soon I couldn’t control the blood. His floor was covered in toilet paper, wilted white flower petals broken from a stem soaked too long in red dye. The blood was coming so fast it dripped down the back of my throat and, when I tilted my head forward to try and combat that, blood fell over my lips. Before, I’d thought keeping blood out of your mouth was as simple as keeping your head tilted back and lips closed, but if you try to speak, try to explain where your bottle of Xanax is, you can’t avoid your tongue brushing against your lips. The “p” in “purse” presses your lips together, giving fresh blood a quick transport to your tongue. “Hurry” is worse; there’s no way to make the “hu” without opening your lips.

I would find out months later that the cause of my severe nosebleeds was a slightly deviated septum. The center cartilage of my nose created an angle that left a sizable vein particularly susceptible to rupture. Even though my nose bled for the better part of an hour, I didn’t lose nearly enough blood to put me in danger; it isn’t physically possible for that to happen with a nosebleed. But it’s not the simple blood loss. It’s the black clots of blood that feel so vital but just get thrown in the trash, the stick of your own sweat growing cold on your skin, the black dots of panic that block your vision, the awareness that something is wrong with you and you can’t stop it or control it.

I ended up curled in the fetal position in his bathtub, letting the blood swell into a puddle underneath my cheek because my hands were shaking too much to hold a tissue to my face. I remember feeling utterly weak that night: shaking hands, pale cheeks, damp skin. But, more than that, it was having me leak everywhere. Few things are more personal than blood. It’s yours, it flows through your body, through your brain and heart and lungs. Those cells have been everywhere in my body. There is an intimacy that is crushed or, at the very least, becomes clouded. When I bleed, I’m everywhere. Part of me is rinsed down the bathtub drain; thrown out with the trash; shipped off in a vial for tests. I know, rationally, I will make new blood cells, but I’ll never get over the shock of watching something that was inside of me and that made me whole dripping onto the floor.

Extremities are a problem, too. I scraped my toe once on vacation. Fingers and toes don’t clot as quickly as parts of the body closer to the heart. By the time I walked back to the condo my white sandal was slick with blood and I slipped every time I put weight on my right foot. I made it to the bathroom before I hit the floor, somewhere between unconsciousness and pure panic. I remember my parents over me, discussing whether I needed to go get stitches. I shut my eyes tighter and turned my face down so I couldn’t see anything. When my parents tried to get me to stand up, I curled up—bleeding foot exempt, sticking out from my ball of a body—and pretended I couldn’t hear them. I didn’t have to get stitches, but I’ll always have the white half-moon scar from where my skin fell away from my body. The scar swells out from my skin a little, like blood is still ready to flow at the slightest invitation.

Growing up, my parents had a giant medicine cabinet stuffed with pills and bottles. There seemed to be a cure for everything: headaches, scratches, upset stomach. I grew up with the belief -- or maybe in hindsight, just the illusion -- that I could control my body. For the most part, I can still convince myself that this is true, that my body will not betray me, but when I bleed I’m opened up to a deeper, much darker truth. I cannot stop my blood. I have to wait for it to taper out, for the clots to form, and there is nothing I can do to change or speed up the process.

After getting blood drawn once, the nurse taped the usual cotton ball to my vein and then wrapped my elbow in a disposable bandage that would normally have been used for a gash or tear in the skin. When I walked out, my dad raised his eyebrows and asked how big of a needle she had used, but it felt appropriate to me. I kept the wrapping on for three days, until the tiny cut had begun to heal.

I don’t get nosebleeds anymore—I had the angled vein cauterized, burnt shut with silver nitrate—but I don’t think I’ll ever shake the habit of running my hand under my nose just to make sure no blood is leaking. And when I get a paper cut, stub my toe, scrape against something, I’ll keep that moment of dread and of closed eyes, of vague hope that there won’t be much blood. And every six months I’ll be back in the clinic, left arm exposed, the thick vein ready for a needle, for draining, for a bandage, and, when the puncture heals after a week, for the darkening of the small, pinpoint scar inside my elbow.

Rachel Wyatt graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Evansville. She works as a software engineer and likes to spend her free time reading, writing, and exploring nature. Currently, she lives in Virginia with her husband and their dog and cat.