Inking the illusion.

See, not so long.


So, yes. I'll have you know, I'm extremely talented at drawing.

Don't look at me like that. If they can stick a paintbrush on an elephant and sell the canvas as highbrow art, then I have talent, alright?

I take the sheet and familiar click-action plastic black Pilot pen Charles fishes from behind the desk. Feeling a little amused at what I'd got myself into, I lean over the desk, waving away the chair he begins to wheel over. "Mind if I watch?" he asks. Artistic courtesy or something, I vaguely understand.

You'd expect him to go get a drink, put things away or, I don't know, beat off in the loo after a while. But no, for the fifteen or so minutes it took, he was as good as his word. Stood and watched quietly. Surprisingly, it wasn't at all like having someone watch you write. Must be the artist in me. Or lack of, thereof.

The deed duly done, I straighten apprehensively. It was the sort of feeling you get, standing next to an African-American at the urinals. You kinda knew you wouldn't measure up, but you really wanted to know.

This was it, in full photoshopped glory:


...there goes that bit of internet anonymity. Anyway, the thing was black on white, originally.

"Hmmm. Done," quoth I. He studies it. I tense.

Then he looks up from that classic Thinker pose. "I think...you have art in your soul. I like it."

I simpered like a schoolgirl. A little over the top, the art in soul business, but hey, Charles was an artist. They get away with selling little tins of their own excrement. It was a positively mundane statement, in that light.

Either that or he was a really good salesman, I suppose. He then asks why I wanted to get that done and I say quite simply that it was the name I wrote with. At some unknown point, the whole decision process had been quietly disposed of. We discuss where it was to go. Blazed across chest? Arm? Left buttock?

I decided on the less obtrusive lower-back option. It was just for me, after all. Charles smiles as I say this and there was a little feeling of having passed some sort of test. Enigmatically, he tells me not to worry about the price. Trustingly, I...uh, trust him. Come on then, he says, ducking into the doorway. With everything seeming a little surreal, I trot after.

He opens one of the two doors inside and holds it for me. It was...something else. A low black leather...bed thing, a similarly low red metal stool and a mobile steel shelf of sorts occupied the middle of the room. Neatly arranged on the shelf were all sorts of bottles and sharp pointy things I immediately put out of my mind. The far side was the one-way glass, looking out onto the street. The length of the left wall was all mirror and the middle of the right wall led to the next room. On the left of the door, more shelves and on the right, a little basin.

Decor was consistent, the only difference being the lighting was a series of fluorescent tubes instead of wall-mounted lamps. Easier to see with and better for matching colour, you see. I will not lie and say I figured that out all by myself.

What I will say at this point is that the degree of weirdness involved in having another man say to you, "So, you want to take that off?" is something else, altogether.

What goes next is the preview, in two stages. From the side of the shelves, Charles wheels out one of those dressing mirrors and angles it so I can see my back in the mirrored wall. He holds up what I drew against my back, adjusting till I nod. Then he brings the stool over, with some sort of special marker. He deftly copies what I drew onto the spot and presents it for inspection. The talented little bastard gets it in one, on what he calls the rough sketch. Bah.

He confirms that I wanted it done in just black. Then, of course, is the point of no return. With a little huff of finality, he asks if I wanted to lie down on the black...bondage bed thing. Seeing as it was that or spreadeagled against the wall, I confirmed that I did.

I began to understand what Charles was talking about with the back-tattooing. Ok, maybe not. Because while he was talking about surrender, what with the weird clicks and scrapings I could hear BUT NOT SEE coming from behind me, my own emotion more closely approximated sheer terror.

He tells me, as he wipes my back down with a sterilizing swab, that it would hurt a lot at first and get better along the way. Something about endorphins, but like a broken record, the mind replaying "HURT A LOT" drowned out the rest of what he said. Well, at least he was honest about it. He flicks something on and a sewing-machine noise begins.

Besides the psycho ones who cut themselves, most people who get want to get tattoos worry about the pain. What's it like, then? Put it this way, if Pain was a course of study, after you get a tattoo, you graduate with a Bachelor's. Or maybe I'm just a wimp, like that. Professorship reserved for women who go for natural childbirths, because I've had some horrible shits in my life and still cannot imagine passing a football.

And what happens during the thing is, the tattoo gun drives a hollow needle into you and releases a small amount of ink each time. It pierces the upper few layers of skin and deposits the colour right above the fat. There usually aren't any blood vessels in the area, so you don't bleed much. You still, however, get all the other benefits of having a needle driven into you twenty thousand times. With a wipe of alcohol every few minutes to disinfect the area. Also, to refresh the pain.

Charles was right, though. The initial shock does wear off and goes from sharp-stabby to dull-achy in ten minutes or so. Depends on your level of tolerance, he tells me. I'm reckoning mine is about 4cm, the indent I left in the leather after I managed to unhook my fingers.

And after only twenty repetitions of "almost done", it was done. After a swipe of more alcohol as a gentle reminder that, yes, I could feel that much pain, I got off the bed and inspected myself in the mirror. There it was, amidst a throbbing sea of angry red welts. The sad part was, besides the swelling, I couldn't tell much difference between this and the marker-penned one.

Perhaps having seen the look on my face, Charles assured me it would look much better once the swelling subsided. As he handed me a bottle of alcohol and some cotton wool in a bag, I asked him how much I owed him. Cue mental arithmetic face. Then impish grin. "Got fifty?" he asked. "That'll cover the ink. Fuck the rest, it's on me."

Considering I was counting out the hundreds in my mind, it came as a huge, pleasant surprise. Yes, he was definitely sure. He liked me. And no, he didn't do this for everybody. Sure he didn't need the money, but it was a nice thing to have.

He friendlily snapped the note out of my hand and walked me to the door. I didn't have to, but it would be great if I would come back once the swelling was down, so he could see it. And anytime I wanted to hang out, really. Dianne would be back next week and I could meet her then, he said, handing me a business card.

Thanking him again, I told Charles I would love to come back soon and meet her.
But I couldn't. Not soon, not ever.



Because he doesn't exist, you see. And neither does Dianne, or the little shop in Geylang.

Thank you for reading my first work of fiction.