Lily and the Octopus(43)
I tell her I will think about it without making any promises, and when I hang up the phone I wonder how long it has been since I have been home. Jeffrey and I used to travel to Maine every summer. We would go to the beach and eat lobster and fried clams and I would kayak with my mother while he would read on the riverbank, and then we would all sit on the deck of my mother’s house and drink rosé. It all seems like someone else’s life now.
But when was the last time my mother came to visit me here? I remember a trip she made, soon after Jeffrey and I broke up. She came for the weekend, almost spontaneously. Very unlike her. I don’t know if I’ve actively pushed this visit from my memory, or it just got lost in the fog of that time. But my mother’s last words on the phone just now ring familiar: “I know you think I don’t worry about you, but I do.”
I glance over at Lily and the octopus is laughing at me. He’s still amused by Lily humping my leg. “Jungian. You’re such an *,” I gripe.
“We were just conversing.”
“We are never just conversing. You converse, I plot your death.”
The octopus chuckles. “How’s that going?”
“Give me back my dog!”
Red ball rolls into the dining room and Lily ambles after it, taking the octopus with her. I think about what the octopus was getting at, float through Freudian ideas like free association, transference, and libido, until I land on Oedipal complex. But why does he think Lily suddenly suffers from a desire to sexually possess an opposite-sex parent, at least strongly enough to hump my leg? And what of the call from my own mother—whose love I pursue—right in the middle of the discussion? Coincidence? I sink back onto the couch. It has to be because Lily is blind. Oedipus blinded himself; the octopus blinded Lily. But am I blind to something, too? What is it I cannot see?
I need to accelerate my transformation.
6.
The guy in line in front of me has the hottest tattoos I’ve ever seen on a man. There’s a half sleeve of Japanese water imagery in the style of Hokusai that I imagine extends over his shoulder, as well as the most beautiful tiger on his opposite forearm that’s almost serpentine in the graceful way it drips from his elbow to his wrist. It’s hard to describe; you’d really have to see it to get the full effect.
“Can I ask you a question?”
The man turns around with a smile. If there was ever anyone’s word I was going to take on a tattoo artist, it would be this guy’s. Even though he’s just some guy in front of me at the supermarket buying Soyrizo, mangoes, lighter fluid, and craft beer.
“I’m going to grill the mangoes,” he says, his smile turning wry.
“No, no, no,” I stammer. “Who does your ink?” I wonder if calling it ink makes me sound cool or ridiculously stupid.
“Are you thinking of getting marked up? You’ve got to see Kal. He has a real philosophical approach.”
Philosophical approach to what? That would be a natural follow-up question, but instead I just say, “Thanks, man,” when he gives me the name of Kal’s parlor, and we go about our grocery transactions in silence while I try to imagine him shirtless.
I’m still not sure what a philosophical approach means in this context—philosophical approach to the whole thing? The artistic process? Pain management? I really have no idea. I don’t know why it’s appealing, or even why I would want this. But I do. So I take the mango griller’s recommendation and call and make an appointment, and now here I am, parked on the street in front of a window with imposing designs, afraid to get out of the car.
What I’m doing at a tattoo parlor is a little unclear even to me, even to someone determined enough to ask for a recommendation from a stranger. Since the octopus blinded Lily with ink, I’ve harbored a growing obsession with getting marked by ink myself, creating a concord between us. Call it sympathy, unanimity, or the desire to mastermind a fraternity with only Lily and me as members, denying the octopus the opportunity to pledge. I’ve flirted with the idea of a tattoo before, but felt I lacked the occasion. This time is different. I feel much more like a soldier getting tattooed in wartime, with an almost ritualistic desire for body modification to mark solidarity to outfit and country. It feels like the rite of passage I need, except I’m not fighting for country and I have no outfit—only one comrade—in this war. I thought of getting Lily’s birth date as my tattoo, perhaps coupled with the day we met—the day I fell in love—but a run of numbers on my arm seemed too evocative of another kind of war tattoo—the markings of war prisoners. One day it could become something to wear with pride, the hallmark of a survivor, but this war is too far from over to take that chance. Still, as I wait here for my appointment, my sitting with the artist named Kal with a philosophical approach, I’m almost giddy to enter this fraternity with Lily, even excited for the pain of the needle.
Excited to wear the mark of a real man.
With a few deep breaths, I gather the nerve to get out of my car and enter Kal’s shop. The lobby is painted a stormy ocean green, and it’s decorated with worn black leather furniture that still gives off an intoxicating animal smell. On the walls are photos of tattoos, I suppose ones with their origins here. There’s no wall of suggested designs. It makes me feel like I’ve found the right place, like I’m not going to be modified in some cookie-cutter way that makes my attempt to stand apart backfire, making me even more identifiable as a part of the proletariat. A receptionist who looks like a younger, less angry Janeane Garofalo directs me to another room behind a velvet curtain. I have an appointment with the wizard. I hope he doesn’t think me greedy when I ask for brains and heart and courage. I hope he is more than a fortune-teller scamming me and this tiny emerald city.