Sketchbook (1)
1.
“Does it hurt?”
I’m perched on a swivel stool, disposable razor in hand. The booth is too tight for easy work; the portable lights Mandy brought in because the exhibitor hall is dank as hell make me sweat. My customer’s sweating too, down the crook of her jaw and under her chin. She’s got glitter paint on so under the lights her perspiration looks like a smeared constellation.
I can’t remember her name, but that’s fine because customer relations is not my job. She wants a bee – one of those tiny fat winged bumblebees you find on bottles of expensive tequila – inked onto her collarbone. It’s her first tattoo, and she’s eager, and also a little drunk off cheap Con beer.
Usually you’re not supposed to ink anyone who’s relied on liquid courage for balls, but this is NYC’s biggest comic convention of the year, and honestly most of my sit-downs are at least half buzzed.
“Depends on the person, depends on where.” That’s Mandy, working the customer relations game from the front of the booth. We’re so close her ass almost nudges my elbow as I set aside the Schick and pick up an alcohol swab instead. Bee Girl shivers when I swipe her collarbone, disinfecting an inch square.
“Will that one hurt? The one he’s doing there?”
The kid asking all the questions is wearing reindeer suit: round-bellied brown and white, plush worn through in places. He’s taken off the fat-cheeked, solemn-eyed, antlered headpiece so Mandy can hear him, and is cradling it under one arm like some sort of gruesome hunting trophy.
Mandy doesn’t like the furry crowd; she thinks they’re creepy. She’s going to blow him off just to get him to move down the line and away from our booth. We’ve got the standard queue wrapped almost once around our small square of commerce. A single lost sale won’t kill us. But the kid – he’s probably almost sixteen, which means I really couldn’t ink him, not today – is as wide eyed as his head-piece and I’ve personally got no problem with furries.
“Yes,” I answer before Mandy can shoo him away. “On the collarbone hurts.” Bee Girl twitches in my chair but smiles gamely.
The kid looks past Mandy and our pile of display books. He doesn’t quite meet my eye. His gaze skitters sideways and back again. He’s got spots on his skin and his hair’s been flattened by his headpiece but at least he’s not sweating like the rest of us.
“You him?” He asks, looking not at me but at the banner hanging at the back of our booth. “Hemingway?”
I nod. Hemingway’s my surname, but its what I go by, have done for the last ten years since escaped Idaho for safer places.
“Huh.” He’s reluctantly impressed. “Did you really do Artic Fox in their hotel room before their last show?”
Mandy hides a snort in her hand. Bee Girl giggles. I check my ink cup before ripping a pair of latex gloves from a box and stripping them on one finger at a time, making sure they’re sound.
“Matching tatts and all,” I agree. It hadn’t been a very exciting job, they’d been specific and unimaginative, but rock bands mostly are. “Pictures in the red book, there. Take a look.”
The kid opens the book and flips through. Behind him my line shifts because I’ve been talking too long. I turn on my machine and Bee Girl holds her breath in anticipation. Past the buzz of the machine I hear the kid ask Mandy one last question.
“How much for the one with the swords?”
“You’re not old enough,” Mandy retorts. “Come back in three years.”
“It’s a stupid law,” the kid complains, and a few people in my line mutter agreement. “Shit, he barely looks eighteen, anyway.”
“His license is right there,” says Mandy. “Beside the price list and all the big fat awards and testimonials. So fuck off and come back when you’ve grown a few pubes.”
Mandy can be a real bitch. But so can life.
SKETCHBOOK is something I’m working on for fun, alongside my other more important deadlines (shhh, don’t tell). I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet. Might be fun to toss it out into the universe and see where it lands. I’ll update here occasionally, when I remember. Because who doesn’t want to read about a trans-masculine semi-famous ink artist named Hemingway, adventures on the SFF con circuit, and scandal in the NYC fine art world?
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