Tattoos just began appearing on her, she
said, because literature is more ephemeral
than television. None caught the logic
but who's to argue if it's her body
she's talking about. It wasn't a bar or
a backyard or a cab or a hallway
where she told us, and by her lights
it certainly wasn't a tattoo parlor. A
nail salon, a row of neon chairs facing
a wall length mirror, in which a row
of inverted neon chairs, some of which
were occupied by people who looked
very like us, but not entirely, or
entirely, but very unlike us--where
we belonged while she was talking
to us, while our nails awaited their
lacquer. She was only ninety percent
skin, her shirt long sleeve buttoned
at the collar. Jeans down to boots.
Even her hands were making like
gloves, though she talked with them.
Every time, she told us, I swear. Every
afternoon after work she'd come home
lift off her shirt step from her slacks
or skirt and find them. Ink freshly
found on thigh, breast, or shoulder.
Once even found a full overload of
color had broken out all up her back
like kinetic mold. And what of?
Things she'd thought of. Or people--
an ex, a dead girlfriend, some lady
who bemoaned her house on the
morning news, chewed to wheaties
by a tornado. But mostly celebrities.
Leftovers from TMZ's weekly gossip
quota. By morning, they'd be gone; to
that, she swore with both her arms--
honest, not lying, when I wake up
my skin's as fresh as it was when my
mom was first pregnant. But by noon
it's something new. I even steal off
during my lunch break, lock the
restroom, just to see what. A Mayan
calendar. Hanuman tearing his chest
open. An old timey map of California.
Took a while before I realized I had
some kind of control over it. But
when I did, I could cook up all kinds
of ink. Miniatures of every one of my
ancestors. Rasputin buck naked. Full
color portraits of every third shift
manager of Wendy's, ever. I even once
flipped through a book on complex
typology over breakfast. By noon
my whole upper torso was swarming
with equations. It went on like that
for, like, four years. I didn't tell anyone,
and any guy I slept with I only
slept with once. How to explain this
kind of skin to someone who thinks
they want to touch it? It was fun at
first, but god, it got tiresome. One
month after the tenth anniversary of
my dad dying, every night I'd have
to see some other version of him
in some sad place in the flesh. So
I decided: enough. I thought, to
stop it I should just stop sleeping.
But that didn't work. When I did
finally conk out, something new would
be waiting for me. Then I thought,
if not sleep, then what--clothing? I
took off work pulled the shades and
passed a few days naked. It work for
a while, but as soon as I pulled on
a shirt, that was it. Off again, there'd
be some new thing waiting for me.
What then? What I put into and drew
out of my head? So tested that out--
blindfolded myself, took in no fresh
sights. Thirty days and thirty nights,
blindfold, blindfold. When I let out
my eyes again, it's just what they saw:
a full grown woman with skin cured.
But cured--and here she laughed rough--
isn't that the word you use when
you've cooked something long, and slowly?
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