"So, you're The Artist?"
"Hm?"
"It's a simple question, are you The Artist or not? Tell me."
"Listen man, I've got a long day ahead of me. If you want to act like a prick, take it outside."
"Look... I'm sorry, I've just got a lot on my mind."
"Don't we all."
"Really...I'm...sorry, you have to believe me."
"I don't have to do anything..."
"Ple..."
"Just ... stop it. Listen, I'll let it slide this time as long you promise to at least pretend like I'm a human being, OK?"
"I... Thank you."
"You can thank me by telling me what you're here for."
"I need to know if you're The Artist that everyone is talking about."
"Whose everyone and what are they saying?"
"Please...just tell me, it's important."
"No need to start crying. Yea, you're in the right place. My name is Tessa, and I'm 'The Artist,' how can I help you?"
"My name is Arnold, and I need a tattoo."
I've been a tattoo artist for most of my adult life. They say that no one is born wanting to paint pretty pictures of people's skin, but I think I might have been. For as long as I can remember, it's all I ever wanted to do.
But art alone never really did it for me – canvas is too static, sculpture is too rigid, and don't even get me started on computers. I've tried and tried and tried, but it always comes back to the same thing – flesh and ink and beating hearts.
"Are you sure? You don't look the sort, a bit too buttoned down..."
"What does the sort of person who gets a tattoo from you look like?"
"Aging hippies, trust fund hipsters, new agey types – the usual crowd. If you've ever tried to purge your liver of toxins with an enema, you've probably thought of walking through my door."
"I take it you're not a believer."
"Are you?"
"No. I try to only believe in things I can see with my eyes."
"And what do your eyes see right now?"
"A woman who hates what she has become."
There is something about the flesh that has always drawn me in a way that no other medium ever could. It's how it shapes the image, I think, the way it adds its own tone and contrast, the way it moves.
On flesh, no idea ever truly survives the first press of the pen. The skin takes the ink, but it gives something in return, it becomes a part of the conversation between the artist and the art.
In the end – the skin, the flesh – always wins, and you discover that it was never your job to create art, but merely to expose it, to guide it to some final form.
"And what do you know about it?"
"Only what they tell me, only what I can see."
"Perfect...And here I thought you were normal, so what, are you a part of a cult something?"
"I'm not a part of any cult."
"Pardon me, a 'movement'... You know what, whatever, I'm not here to judge, I'm here to draw."
"Don't you ever get tired?"
"Of drawing? No. Of listening to people like you, a little bit. So why don't you make things easier on us both, and tell me what you want."
"What if I told you I wanted a tribal armband?"
"I'd tell you to get out. If you've heard anything about me, you know that's not how I work."
"Then enlighten me, how do you work?"
"You tell me what you think you want, I start drawing, in a couple of hours we see where we land."
"And how do you know I'll like 'where we land?' Wouldn't it just be safer to draw what I ask you too?"
"If you wanted that, you wouldn't be here, now would you?"
They started calling me The Artist about a year ago.
One afternoon, I was working on a mandala for a client. They're pretty popular, probably because they come out nicely most of the time, and they make you feel like you have a complex soul.
As my hand walked through the geometries I'd sketched a thousand times previous, I felt the tug of the flesh, felt it more strongly, more profoundly, than I ever had before.
Don't ask me why, but this time I allowed that tug to take over, allowed it to guide my hand. In the end, the mandala was transformed into something else, something ... more.
The lines were bright and intricate, there was a depth and richness to them that burned, and more than that, there was something about the arrangement, the composition of it all that made it feel like a breathing thing. I don't know what it was exactly, but if you gave me a thousand years to draw it again, I never could.
I was terrified at what I'd done. If there is an iron clad law of tattoo work, it's that you don't just change a client's design mid-stream, but when I showed it to her, when she looked at it, she just started crying.
She said it was the most beautiful thing she ever learned about herself.
"A bird, draw me a bird."
"Just a bird?"
"They tell me it's better to keep it simple, so yes, a bird."
"I can do that, but listen, I don't know what you think is going to happen here, but it's not always...you know?"
"I know."
"And it can be dangerous, there are just some things people shouldn't see."
"I know."
"And even though I draw them, I can't really tell you what they mean, I've tried but..."
"I know. Trust me, I have this feeling I won't need your help."
"Then why are you here, Arnold? If you're not some mystic trying to peer into the future, or in a Doomsday cult, then why bother? There is nothing some tattoo can tell you, that you couldn't figure out for yourself."
"Because Tessa, there are just some things people need to see."
I've asked clients what they see when they look at my tattoos, but not a single one has ever been able to explain it in a way that doesn't sound stupid.
Some of the older hippies try, usually they end saying something like, "you're peering inside of your own soul man," but when I ask them to explain what that means, they just smile or sob or laugh uncontrollably.
More frustrating, it seems like the clients are the only ones who can actually interpret their own tattoos. Everyone else sees the same thing I do – a dramatic, sometimes beautiful, but otherwise unremarkable piece of abstract art.
The flesh hides its secrets well.
"Does it hurt?"
"Do you always ask clients that?"
"No."
"Then why are you asking me?"
"Because I figure it's better than a thousand questions about why you're here."
"Fair point. It hurts a little bit."
"Good. It means it's working."
"What is?"
"Your skin, the ink, the art, me – it means something is happening."
"I thought it meant you were sticking a needle into my arm."
"Cute."
"..."
"Arnold? Are you OK?"
"I'm fine, lets just get this done with."
"Alright. Stay with me a little longer, we're almost there."
While no one has been able to explain what they see, there has always been one constant – no matter how intricate the design, how sharp the angles, how stark the lines – the result has always burned, white hot as I finished.
White like a forge's fire.
All except this one.
This...thing, whatever it is, is midnight and pitch and filled with hate.
It doesn't breath, no – it snarls, it snaps, it bares its poison fangs on this man's skin.
As I pull the pen back to look at what I've made, at what the flesh and the ink and the art has made, I feel a chill, somewhere so deep inside me that until this very moment I did not know such a place existed.
I knew then, that what I had just exposed was...
"You have a gift."
"I'm ... sorry, this doesn't usually..."
"No, you have nothing to feel sorry about, this is why I'm here."
"You're here to have me scar you...with that?"
"Yes."
"Then at least tell me...what does it mean?"
"I'm dying."
"Is that what it says? You can't just belie..."
"No, that's not what it says, I've known I was dying for a long time."
"Then...what? What do you see?"
"You have gift Tessa, your art shows people the truth about themselves. I know it's hard, but you have to use it, the world needs you."
"I don't understand any of this, why are you here Arnold?"
"Because I needed to know the truth."
"What truth?"
"I've known I was dying for a long time Tessa. What I was afraid of, was what was waiting for me after it happened. Your tattoo has shown me the answer, and for that, I thank you."