"How did you find out about this place?" the cab driver asks. "From the phone book?"

"The phone book, yeah." I'm not really listening to him. My attention is on the barrio; the auto body shops and the graffiti and the trash in the gutters. The human filth walking the Saturday night streets in scenic Upper Long Beach. This is the part of the town that the tourists don't visit. Ever.

"There are other places I could have taken you to that are closer to your ship. And they are much cleaner, too. Very clean."

"I don't want clean. Take me farther North into Long Beach. I want you to take me to a dump. A real Hell hole."

My cabbie shoots me a puzzled glance.

"A. Hell. Hole." I repeat, for clarification purposes. A cesspool. A blighted mire of human squalor. "I want filth and grime and motherfucking Hepatitis C."

Reluctantly, he takes me there. To sort of place where the only semi-reputable business within miles is the twenty-year-old International House Of Pancakes across the street. And I strongly doubt they've passed a health inspection in years. It's the sort of place I grew up in. All that's missing is my dad on the corner, selling those La Rosa bars that helped put me through college.

"Be careful," the driver cautions me, "this isn't a good place to be after dark."

"Don't worry," I tell him, "I can handle myself. I'm tough. I work out."

My facetiousness is met by a face that reveals zero confidence. God damn it, I'm so much funnier than people realize.



The cab driver forces a business card into my hand. "Call me as soon as you're done," he urges with a concerned voice, "and don't walk too far by yourself in this neighborhood."

This is fuckin' awesome. My cabbie just warned me to watch my back.

As soon as I get out of the taxi, a white guy in a longshoreman's jacket walks up and asks me for a cigarette. In Espanol. In good Espanol. For some reason, whenever I'm in a predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood, everyone assumes I comprende the Espanol. On account of my nondescript ethnic-ness, I suppose.

The only reason I know what the Hell he's talking about is because he supplements his Spanish with the universal hand gesture for "gimme a cigarette."

I nod, and - like a cool pachuco - give him a smoke. Cool pachucos don't say anything. They just stand there holding a steely badass vato glare.. And sometimes nod. Odelay.



The tattoo parlor isn't too bad off. There's some visible water damage in the ceiling. It smells more like sweat than antiseptic. All of the shop's policies are scribbled out on posterboard with a black marker. Something about no credit cards, no personal checks, nothing but cash. Something about no refunds. Something about quality work. That last one strikes me as odd.

There's a fella ahead of me, talking with the tattoo lady. I think the tattoo lady is a lesbian. She looks like a lesbian. This is a horrible thing for me to say, but they all look alike. The ones you find in seedy bars and tattoo parlors. It's like they're mass-produced in some secret, underground, subculture lesbian factory.

"All right, Punk Rock Lesbian #C25K002, looks like you're good to go. Here's your monkey boots and your cargo shorts. Give 'em Hell, girlfriend!"



The guy ahead of me is asking to see a portfolio of the tattoo artist's work.

"Is this all you've got?" the customer asks, slightly indignant. There are only ten or twelve photographs in her binder.

"Yeah," the girl replies, "I'm better at doing tattoos than taking photographs. I've done a lot more, but all the other pictures came out kind of blurry-"

(Whenever I take a blurry photograph, it's because my hands are shaking. On account of my alcoholism. Just sayin'.)

The person formerly-known-as-"customer" turns around and leaves without saying another word.

I'm the next (and only other) person in line. I unpack a couple printouts of the design I want and the tattoo lesbian immediately launches into a long list of disclaimers.

"Tattoo guns aren't like pencils - it won't look exactly the same."
"Perfect circles are hard to do."
"I've got the palsy."

This is fuckin' perfect. I'm totally going to get a tattoo here. Oh sweet folly, I choose you.



The tattoo artist leads me into the "work area," which is more water-damaged than the "foyer," and begins working on the carbon transfer while I seat myself in a cheap folding chair. I'm a little pissed off that it isn't leather, and that it doesn't come equipped with stirrups.

Further proof of the tattoo lady's lesbian-hood appears in the fact that she doesn't straddle me when I take off my shirt and expose my hairy, bulging man chest. *sigh* It seems like there's always lesbians around when I take off my shirt.

Seated across the room is a middle-aged woman that I presume is the tattoo artist's mother. She has tattoos, a tank top, and a disproportionate amount of arm fat. And she's watching a movie about monkeys.

I start watching the movie about monkeys, as well.

It involves a bunch of rednecks with shotguns hunting down a King-Kong-esque gorilla. The gorilla wins.

The tattoo artist surprises me by actually sanitizing my chest. She sprays me down with some isopropyl alcohol (from an old 409 bottle), and transfers the carbon image to my chest, and then smears petroleum jelly across my skin and then dips her gun in a small pot of black ink.

"Do you think this is going to hurt much?" I ask her.

"No," she says, "maybe a little bit where the skin is closer to the bone."

"Damn. I was kind of hoping it would hurt so bad my dick would get hard."



I don't really say that. But I want to.

We get to work. She begins outlining the image with a slim tattoo gun, and I resume watching the movie about monkeys. It goes slow. Every couple of seconds, she has to wipe away the pooling ink and re-lubricate the skin. And I wonder who in their right mind would go hunting a 30-foot tall gorilla with a 12-gauge.

"I'm really impressed with this carbon," I tell her, "it's really holding up." To all the wiping and the pooling ink and the petroleum jelly, I mean.

"In the old days," she tells me, "they used to use charcoal, and it'd wipe off real easy. So they'd have to keep re-applying the image, which is hard to get right. That's why if you see some of those older sailor tattoos, like ones of naked ladies, one of the boobs will be bigger than the other one."

All this time, I just thought the girls in the tattoos had cancer or something.

We adjourn for a smoke break.

I step outside and enjoy the night in the ghetto, smoking, without a shirt on. And a half-finished tattoo on my chest, with black and red ink splattered all over my torso and arm. There's a cat howling across the street, and the blare of a police siren not too far off.

An African-American man walks by, carrying a 40 oz. bottle of King Cobra. Sans pants. I note his lack of trousers. He notes my lack of shirt. We briefly make eye contact and share an "I read you, man" moment. I feel disturbed that this doesn't disturb me.



I flick my cigarette butt into a puddle of what I presume to be piss, and go back inside.

Back inside, I return to my movie about monkeys and the bull tattoo artist resumes inking me. She uses a wider gun to fill in the open spaces. which is more irritating than painful. The gorilla is picking hunters up and snapping them in two with both hands. Arm Fat lady hasn't moved at all, entranced with the monkey movie as she is.

The rest of the job goes smoothly, punctuated by the occasional "whoops," or "dammit" coming out of the tattoo artist's mouth. When she finishes, she doesn't say goodbye. Doesn't take my money. Doesn't acknowledge any of the intimacy that comes with spending two hours dragging a motorized needle across a complete stranger's chest.

I don't think she's very proud of her work, because she doesn't even bother to try to take a picture of it.

Bitchin'.

-Jb
CEO FTW, Inc.
01.22.06