Gerry's Tattoo

The sixties were a dreamy time, so many young people at one with the universe. Flower children with feathers in their beards and flowers on their raggedy T-shirts. Volkswagen vans with peace symbols and daisies, and it was perhaps this saturated atmosphere of floral ornamentation that propelled Gerry into Spike's Late Night Grocery and Tattoo Parlor to make just one tiny statement on his left butt cheek, a cheerful little posy with 5 petals, 2 leaves, and a stem. It was a secret shared with very few, but elicited that signature Mona Lisa smile when he spotted swaggering young men with rococo depictions of hearts or anchors or snakes peeking out from the sleeves of their undershirts.

Then one day, urged by several classmates, he obligingly went out for basketball, and a welcome addition he was, being a full 3 inches closer to the basket than the next tallest member of the team. It wasn't long, though, before one of the point guards noticed Gerry's little gluteal blossom in the shower and alerted the rest of the team to his discovery. This triggered, over the next few weeks, jokes, discussions, and at least one limerick, as the point guard was not one to allow a dead horse a moment's rest.

Gerry soon grew weary of the attention and after a great deal of thought he returned, one Friday, to Spike's Late Night Grocery and Tattoo Parlor to discuss his options. Spike was a clever and persuasive fellow, and a skillful artist to boot, and so it was that Gerry went home that evening with a flamboyantly modified ornament on his hindquarters in which his modest little flower had been subsumed in a considerably larger image of a northbound lizard whose sinuous tail effectively camouflaged the embarrassing flower with exotic symbols and shapes conveying stealth, danger, and cunning and probably other things, none of which echoed that sissy little flower. This was a predator, an alpha lizard, clawing its way inexorably up toward some unseen goal or prey, its fearsome spiky head emerging from Gerry's waist band, one clawed foot reaching for his left armpit.

It was with a firm step that Gerry joined his teammates in the shower the following Monday. The flinty glare and the reptilian transplant together effectively muzzled the point guard and ever after all editorial comment ceased; he was top dog among the pups.

Time passed, life unfurled and there came a day, well, an evening then, when Gerry was out on the town with some of his old friends celebrating something: a birth, a death, a wedding, who knows? They had talked about the celebratory event over a few beers, and then had solved most of the world's problems over a few more, dismissed most of the current sports teams as useless as tits on a sewing machine, and argued unconvincingly over which of the remaining few was best, and now Nigel, the de facto leader of the group, struggling to decide whether to go for another beer or another pee slurred “So, Ger, about time to update that old tattoo, doncha think?”

Gerry, who had been nodding amiably at anything anybody had said for the last half hour continued doing so.

A look of beery cunning jostled for dominance on the flushed face of Gerry's alleged friend as he wobbled to his feet and lunged off toward the Caballeros. When he returned, he and another of the group who may not have had Gerry's best interests at heart, got the gently nodding Gerry up on his feet and the whole parade staggered off down the street for Gerry's third visit to Spike's Late Night Grocery and Tattoo Parlor where he was laid out flat on the couch for a snooze and an upgrade while the balance of the squad adjourned next door for a game of snooker.

While Gerry snored that modest lizard expanded as a dragon rampant slowly emerged with green scales, blood-red eyes, serried rows of razor teeth, breathing red and orange flames up over Gerry's left shoulder, his right scapula gripped by a clawed fist.

When Gerry's so-called friends returned, Spike was just putting the final touches on the mythical beast's coiled tail writhing up to meet its fist, effectively filling the only remaining unadorned quadrant of Gerry's back. It was Spike's finest work, spanning as it did many years. The small audience gathered around, belching occasionally, and admiring the design, the balance, the dramatic tension. Spike was already twitching to flip Gerry over and start work on the Saint George he had already plotted out in his mind, complete with multi-colored pennants, lances, snorting war horse, maybe a virgin tied to a fence. Unfortunately Gerry was inconveniently showing signs of life, humming a scrap of a bawdy tune that they had been singing earlier, and finally sitting up.

“Hi, Spike,” he said, confused. “Why did we come here?” he asked his treacherous friends.

“Oh, well, we just stopped in to see if Spike had any sour cream and then you had a little nap,” said Nigel. “C'mon, let's go.”

“Sour cream?” said Gerry, trying to make sense of it all while Spike helped him into his shirt.

And so the happy throng all went their separate ways, Gerry thinking something had happened that he should probably know about, but didn't really, and the others to coordinate a story.

It was the flames that gave it away. The next morning Gerry noticed the flames edging up over his left shoulder, hardly visible from the front, but when he twisted around and saw the blood-red eyes and the lashing tail he had to sit down for a minute, try to reconstruct the previous night. It took 3 cups of coffee and a large greasy breakfast for the full sequence of events to emerge. By lunchtime Gerry had a plan.

One by one, Gerry had quiet conversations with all the celebrants except Nigel in which he casually let slip that Nigel had told him that they wore underwear from Victoria's Secret. “Is it true?” he asked with wide-eyed innocence. “Really I'm not judging,” he continued. “I was just wondering which garments you preferred. The camisoles or the padded bras? The split-crotch panties or those slinky peignoirs?” And finally when their faces were sufficiently purple with rage, he whimpered in distress, “Oh, I'm so sorry. I guess Nigel made a mistake. Please don't tell him I blabbed, you know how he is.”

Then when the stage was set, he talked them all, including Nigel, into another jolly evening at the scene of their recent celebration. Tensions eased a bit as beer after beer fueled discussions of the latest political scandals and sports doping and such. Nobody noticed that there was a large and expanding pool of beer next to Gerry's chair where he was pouring half of the beer that appeared before him, to ensure partial sobriety.

By the time Nigel was mellow enough for the next stage, Gerry and the one remaining accomplice still standing were both a bit unsteady on their pins, but they were able to mobilize Nigel sufficiently to get him out the door and over to Spike's. The couch there was pretty comfortable, as Gerry knew well enough, so it wasn't long before Nigel was fully unconscious. The two bystanders watched while Spike performed his magic.

And so, if you see a homeless guy with a thick, wooly beard through which butterflies can be dimly seen, and the rest of his face covered in daisies, petunias, rosebuds, and bluebirds, tell him “Hi Nigel” from Gerry.