Covered from scalp to toes, Kramer is cool. Laying down, rolling up your sleeve as high as it will go, you watch him arrange his little ink vials in a row. He uses a size one needle, the smallest size for the most intricate parts of the wings and eyes, “A tight-one” he says, “even though tight refers to the grouping, as in plural needles, and there’s no plural in a size-one.” You nod as if you know what he’s talking about. You don’t. But he doesn’t know Excel spreadsheets and Power Point shortcuts. You’re a fish out of water here, but he would never blend into your office.
For the color blending between the wings, he’s using “bug pin,” a size eight needle, and it only really hurts around the top-most parts, where the antenna and wings touch the crook of your arm, where it turns cyan from capillaries. You don’t squirm. Not one flinch. Squirming squeaks the pleather underneath you, so as a distraction you find yourself looking down, down at his feet. His fast-tapping foot over the chipped cement floor. A big Japanese demon stares back at you, its teeth and tongue sticking out. “That’s Vinny,” he tells you when he catches you looking. “Don’t worry, he won’t bite.”
This is so big for you, being here, with your lifelong aversion to needles. It’s more needles than ever before. Eight little hyper-dermic shots stabbing a hundred times per minute into your flesh. But somehow, it’s different. It’s cool, and it’s stabbing you into coolness.
Kramer pauses occasionally to ask if you need a breather. “No? It’s your call, Chief,” he says, and the gun starts buzzing again. “Sorry,” he says. He’s been staring. He smiles shaking his head. “We just don’t get a lot of your kind in here.” You look down at your necktie, your shoes, your Swedish watch.
Well into the second hour, laying there, admiring the art on the walls, the framed dollar bill with little squirting penises doodled over it, it’s painfully obvious how you’re at the mercy of this high-school dropout. How you went to school to put a wall between you and people that look like him.
Maybe because he’s been in your shoes before, a long time ago, Kramer takes pity. He walks you through each step. How he’s switching to a fourteen on the outline and an eleven and a seven for the arabesques on the wings. A good artist can look at anyone’s tattoos and tell you what size needles were used where. He’s coming up on his ten-year anniversary of slinging ink, from his apprentice-years to his own shop.
While the gun buzzes away, he says your Butterfly is not a mom-disappointer. It’s barely a job-stopper. No, this one is a true masterpiece. And after laying there for three hours, keeping your wiggling down to a minimum, your left arm pinned in place, numb, like it was blood-drive, he finally says, “Sick.” And it’s like a bell going off. He means it’s done. Voila.
The first day, day-one, he says, “Spotting is totally natural.” He wraps your forearm in three layers of plastic, and your wrist and elbow muffin-top out from the edges. The mustard yellow parts bubble up with pinholes of ketchup-red: Your skin resisting this masterpiece, crying blood under the plastic, trying to yank you back into your safe little career and 401K.
At the front counter you tip 25 percent and watch Kramer’s face for some acknowledgement that won’t show. The plastic will stay on for three days. He says to remove it slow as not to take any skin with it. Avoid strenuous activity the first week. No heavy lifting, no stretching. You mistake his fist bump for a hug, and there’s a moment of silence as you gather your pinstriped coat and exit the shop, closing the door slowly behind you as not to let it bang closed, but it still manages to slam close. You tell yourself the laughter you hear from inside isn’t about you.
On the long walk to your parked car on Oakhurst, you repeat his advice in your head, turning it into a song. A new mantra for your new life. Reflected in the driver side window you look like a guy from the wrong side of the tracks for the briefest moment. You look sort of dangerous. This time of year the birds molt their feathers all over the road and the steps of your townhouse. Dogs shed hair all over microfiber couches and chairs. Change is in the air.
You wonder why Kramer won’t follow you back on Instagram. But still, you heed his advice. On days five through seven, expect some scabbing. Do not scratch. Never scratch. Even when you wake up in the night in a cold sweat trying to find a place to rest your arm that doesn’t burn.
By the end of week-one, redness is normal, oozing plasma too, which forms jellyfish clouds of ink under the plastic wrap. Use a low-perfume soap and clean the area with warm water, holding your wrist under the bathroom faucet. With only the pads of your fingers, move them into soft circles and watch the black and blue skin flakes flurry down the drain.
It’s important to moisturize with an unscented, hypoallergenic lotion, and avoid direct sunlight. The process is just beginning, this new you.
What Kramer told you at the shop is now scripture for you. Three-to-four weeks of surface healing, and three-to-six months of subdermal healing. After 4 weeks the skin is still red and sore to the touch. The excess plasma bubbles up over the butterfly in a Green-Power-Ranger green fluid. But Kramer said this might happen.
By week five the hives show, but it’s important to resist scratching. Scarring is most common at this stage, so you’ll want to use up that vacation time at work. When the skin on your forearm falls off in sloughs, don’t panic. Kramer prepared you for this. The tattoo will reappear with your new flesh, more vibrant than ever. Just keep the blinds down and lay low. It hurts to be so cool.
When the chills and fever set in it’s important to not call 911. Most people panic at this stage, but not you. You’re a Everett-Business-School major for God’s sake. Get it together. EMTs, doctors, they won’t understand what you’re becoming. What you’ve already become.
By week-five you’re rubbing your knuckles against your arm through the shirt, calling the shop where some girl tells you your artist is gone. Not just out sick or on holiday, but gone. Quit on the spot, leaving his ink vials and gun behind.
On Instagram he’s sunbathing in the Cayman’s. In the pictures his legs are bare, blank tan canvases. All those black ink tattoos are gone. On his foot, that blue-skinned Japanese demon, with all its teeth and tongue, gone. Just sun burn and black hairs.
A day later Kramer responds to your DMs. He’ll say you’ll want to find a good shop you can click with and start an apprenticeship ASAP. He adds best of luck, Chief. After this he blocks you. You watch cars pass by your house through the squeaky mail slot.
By day-thirty, the mom-disappointers are showing past your sky-blue Oxford button up. The job-stoppers fractal out past the sleeves. Your butterfly is growing somehow, inviting more friends over. By Hump Day all your coworkers avoid eye contact. They whisper more. It’s important not to scratch.
Eventually you’ll run out of vacation time. Your coworkers will stop talking when you walk through the office. They’re not laughing.
In the sixth-floor men’s room you’ll splash water on your face and remind yourself there are people that would kill for this. In the mirror there’s stains on your white shirt. They’re not on the fabric but on the skin. It’s faint, but under your sleeve you can see can the outline of a heart. There’s what looks like an arrow going through it and the word “mom.” On your ribs, there’s a ship in a bottle forming like a purple-yellow bruise. People would kill for this. Paying for one piece and getting a full body job. Somehow, you’ve punched in an infinite ammo cheat code for tattoos. So why are crying? And Christ, the itching is worse than ever, and the hottest showers stopped doing the trick, but maybe if you just use your knuckles you can trick your brain, fool yourself into a state of comfort, but before you know it you’re bleeding through the work shirt. Soon your supervisor, who has no tattoos or piercings, but who paints his toenails mailbox-black and wiggles his toes through his sandals from his swivel chair, he’ll decide you should take an adjustment period. Go home he’ll say. Rest. We’ll manage here. Mr. Krauthamer won’t understand what it means to be cool. You say, “Are we done here, Chief?”
When you get back to your townhouse with the red door, you’ll never be so tired as you are in this moment. This is all part of the healing process.
Week-eight, you’ll ignore friends when they knock on your door, when they peer into your windows during workdays.
If friends do see you, week-nine you, they’ll cover their mouths. They’ll look you everywhere—your slippers, your baseball cap—but never in the eyes, and they’ll insist on dragging you to a doctor. Today, not tomorrow.
You’ll tell them “Tomorrow,” and you’ll show them out, and you won’t scratch once while they’re there. “Scratching,” as Kramer said, “is so uncool.”
By week-ten, mainly, you’ll want to eat. You’ll eat and eat. Last week’s leftovers and expired dry goods in the pantry, the celery soups and beef stocks and tomato pastes. Food will be the only thing that stops the itching. When you’re finally full you’ll want to rest. You’ll crash in your bed and roll yourself up in the sheets. You’ll use extra blankets and duvets, and the fleece throw in the towel closet you keep for guests you never have. Your artist will call this your pupa phase.
By now, you’re more scab than man. The trash is full of pink Calamine bottles and cotton balls wet with Witch hazel. The process is almost complete.
Don’t panic when you wake up. Time has passed, but this is OK. Everything is OK. It’s week-fourteen and finally the itching is gone and you’ve never felt more rested. You’ve become you, the best version of you possible, which in the mirror may look nothing like what you used to be. In the mirror you look more like what Kramer used to look like. Your big, gauged ears you don’t remember piercing. On your foot, there’s a familiar, blue-faced Japanese demon staring up at you. “Vinny,” you call him. That tattoo, all of your new tattoos, they’re so vibrant. So so vibrant.
When the shock dissipates, because it always does. Ignore the pile of mail by the door and all the texts and calls. Instead, look up local shops with apprentice positions. When you find one upstate, no experience required, you find yourself mumbling “sick,” over and over. One day, around week five-hundred-twenty-one, you’ll be so cool, making your little mom-disappointers and job-stoppers, you’ll be ready to gift your masterpiece to some cocky young necktie that dings the door open, a guy looking for a change. This gift of cool you will choose to bestow to him.