Six drinks into the night, Brent could barely sit upright. “I want a tattoo!” he declared.
I looked up at him. “You want a what?”
“A tattoo,” he repeated, half-focusing on something over my shoulder.
What brought that on? I wondered. I followed his gaze to a girl sitting a few tables down and the butterfly at the base of her spine. I turned back around. “Sure you do,” I said.
“I do!” Brent said, still looking over my shoulder, though whether he was actually gazing at the tattoo, I couldn’t tell.
“Right,” I said, not in the mood for this. He had already spent most of the night sulking about his ex; I didn’t want to spend the rest of it hearing him talk about how daring he wanted to be to impress her and get her back.
“I’m serious,” he said, finally looking back at me. Either her shirt had come down and hid her tattoo or she had turned around.
“No you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. I want to get ‘Hey Amy, suck this!’ tattooed on my ass!”
I looked at him. I couldn’t tell whether the stupid grin was from the bad joke or the alcohol. “You’re dumb when you’re drunk, you know that?” I said.
Brent scowled at me. “I’m serious. I want a tattoo.”
“What? ‘VD Safe’ on your dick?”
He frowned. “No. Just… something.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said, leaning forward. “You’re drunk off your ass, so you want to get some random picture inked into your butt that you’ll have for the rest of your life?”
Brent thought about that for a minute. “Not on my butt. Somewhere where I can see it.”
I turned back to my beer. “Whatever.”
“C’mon,” Brent whined.
“C’mon what?”
“Let’s go get a tattoo!”
“No.”
“C’mon.”
“No!”
Brent went silent for a few seconds. “I’ll bug you until we do.”
I looked at him over my glass. He just sat there, smiling smugly, like he had actually accomplished something. Why not? I thought. It might actually teach him not to get drunk. I pushed my beer away and stood up. “Sure,” I said, “let’s go.”
Brent looked surprised. “You mean it?”
“Yes,” I said.
Brent stood up eagerly only to slip and almost fall flat on his ass.
“You want help?” I asked.
“Nah, I got it,” Brent answered, levering himself up off the table. He stumbled to his feet and followed me to my car.
There was a tattoo parlor just up the street from Café Yoko’s. It didn’t look to be the most reputable one in town, but at least I knew where it was.
When we got inside, Brent spent a good ten minutes looking around. “Are you sure this is a tattoo place?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“It looks like a doctor’s office,” he said.
I had to agree with him; except for the books on the stands against the wall, showing off possible tattoos, and the guy in the corner, dressed in a sleeveless leather vest with tattoos running down his arms, it looked just like a clinic. Bored and annoyed, I led Brent over to the books and opened one up for him. “So,” I said, “pick one.”
Confused, Brent began flipping through the books. “Isn’t there just, some kind of standard tattoo?” he complained.
“You mean like everyone else gets?”
“Yeah,” Brent said, missing my point.
“Excuse me, sir,” the girl at the desk said. She was cute, although the lip and eyebrow piercings weren’t my thing. “If you don’t have an appointment, you need to fill this out.” She slid a clipboard towards me from the back of her desk. It had a stack of duplicate forms on it.
Just like a medical form, I thought as I scanned it. “Here,” I said, handing it to Brent. He looked at it with a perplexed expression. “You need to fill it out,” I explained.
The girl cleared her throat. “Uh, sir, if your friend’s getting the tattoo, I don’t think he can. We’re not supposed to service people who are drunk.”
I looked at her. Then looked over at Brent, who was busy trying to figure what to write under ‘Name’. “He’s not drunk,” I said.
The girl raised her eyebrow. “Really?”
“Really,” I said, “he’s just dumb.”
She frowned at him, than at me. “As long as you’re taking responsibility for it.”
“I will,” I promised, then led Brent back to his seat to fill out the form. He finished it and walked it up to the desk. The girl took it, still frowning.
“So do you know what tattoo you want?” I asked him.
Brent thought about it for a second. “I want a butterfly tattoo on the small of my back,” he said finally.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?” Brent demanded. “The girl at Yoko’s did!”
“My point,” I said. “Here.” I handed him one of the books. “Find something else.”
It took Brent a good five minutes to find one he liked. “This one,” he said, pointing at a pretty generic flaming skull.
“That one?” I asked.
“That one,” he answered. “Isn’t it cool?”
“It’s… colorful.” I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes. Brent’s grin looked a little too forced. “You certain about this?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said hastily. “Dead certain.”
“Really? Because it’s not like you can just wash it off tomorrow.”
“I know, I know,” Brent said, annoyed. “That’s the point.”
“So where are you putting it?”
Brent shrugged. “I don’t know, arm, maybe? Wherever it is you put tattoos.”
“Okay,” I said. Can’t wait to hear the artist’s answer to that. “Well, you might not want to get it anywhere too painful.”
“Painful?” Brent asked.
“Yeah, the needles can hurt like a bitch.”
“They use needles?” Brent said shakily.
I almost felt guilty for dragging him all the way out here. “How do you think they get the ink under the skin?” I asked.
Brent shrugged stupidly. “Don’t know. Never really thought about it before.”
“Thinking of changing your mind?”
Brent glared at me. “Not a chance. It doesn’t matter how they put it on.”
“If you say so.” I went back to feeling pissed.
Brent spent a good five minutes contemplating needles until they called the name of the guy in the sleeveless leather vest. Two minutes later, the person the artist had been working on came out. He had gotten a tattoo on his arm and they had wrapped it in saran wrap. I couldn’t see what it was supposed to be though, since it was too smeared with blood and Neosporin, making a red, blotchy mess just above his elbow.
Brent took one look at it and threw up.
“Not drunk, is he?” the girl asked skeptically, standing over him.
“Dumb,” I said, “and has a weak stomach.”
“Sure he is. I take it this means he won’t want a tattoo?”
“Nah,” I said. I looked at his puke, mostly bile and liquid. “Sorry.”
She shrugged. “It happens all the time.”
I half-carried Brent out to the car and slung him in the back seat.
“See,” he muttered out. “I told you I was cursed. I can’t even get a lousy tattoo.”
I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. He was somewhere between pale and green, and there was still some wet spots of vomit on his shirt. “No,” I said, “you’re not cursed. Just stupid.”
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