Redemption Tattoo
by John BowkerThe door rattled violently on its hinges in the haste of Paul's exit. As every head in the restaurant turned to stare, I found myself once again having to ask the question.
In every relationship, there is a cusp, a moment when you have to decide whether you want to push off from sight of land and take a risk on a guy. Can I give him the key to my apartment? Will he remember to feed my cats? Can I tell him about that long ago night, too much tequila and a condom that didn't quite work? Small things, but the answers are critically important. They make or break the relationship.
As the crowd returned to its collective breakfast that morning, the question had become immediate. I had to decide if I cared enough to find out what had inspired the look on Paul's face in the instant before he shoved past me, running from the restaurant without a word.
She was watching from the hostess stand as he left and even in that moment of confusion I noticed her, though I couldn't have told you why. She was average in appearance, average in height, average in weight. Her hair was a brown no company would ever need to bottle. But her lips curled in a small smile that drew your gaze and distracted from the washed-out polyester uniform. Her eyes took in every detail of the scene with a hint of amusement and a hint of something else. She wasn't beautiful, but she was something.
"Men." I said weakly, trying for a vague gesture of solidarity.
The woman laughed. It wasn't a kind sound.
"Yes," she said. "Men." Her smile grew wider. "You'd better go after him, sweetie."
Her voice commanded attention. I broke my stare and took her advice, following Paul's path back out into the morning rain.
It was our third date and I'd come to consciousness that morning caffeine-deprived, ravenous, and gloriously fucksore. My hair was a mass of tangles that had woven into his beard during the night, lover's velcro I pulled apart as I rolled out of his bed.
"Coffee. Now." Rain was falling steadily outside, a late April downpour that had outstayed its welcome well into May. He struggled to pull the twisted sheets up over his bare torso and groaned.
"I've got bad news," he said, his voice muffled by the pillow. "I don't drink coffee. There's none in the house."
No relationship is perfect. "You don't drink coffee?"
"Rachel, caffeine is really evil stuff. Give your adenosine receptors a break and come back to bed."
The hardwood floors were warm and dappled with moiré patterns from the ropes of water running down the windows. I took the sheets in both hands and yanked, exposing his naked body to the room. Even with my zen-like focus on ending the screams of my adenosine receptors, I paused to admire the planes of muscle and shadow on his back and arms. The jet lines of a tattoo curled out from under the mane of curly black hair I'd tangled my fingers in the night before.
I liked this guy. I'd dated men as handsome; I'd even dated a few as smart. Violating what I thought was an immutable law of threes, Paul also managed to hold down a job. On our third date I'd taken a chance, and it seemed like the gamble had paid off. His apartment was neat enough that I wasn't afraid to walk around barefoot. He was new to town, so he knew nothing about my dating history. He had been surprisingly good in bed. Not wanting to scare him too soon, I tried to put a playful face on my desperation and leaned down to kiss his shoulder before attempting to drag him bodily from the rumpled mattress.
"We're going out then."
"Jesus, you're worse than my clients. I'm going to check you in at the clinic." He reached for me, and though I was determined, he had the weight advantage. Giving in, I tumbled down only slightly unwilling into the warm nest of the bed, a few more moments of skin on skin.
Later, we escaped the bedroom, walking through the rain with fingers entwined. A little corny, we'd agreed, but it only made sense since we had only the one umbrella. His, of course. I had the Seattle native's disdain for the things, and it had been a point of pride until then that I'd never owned one. I had never considered the advantages; how close you have to be to walk along a rainy city street, melding your personal space with someone you're just getting to know on a lazy post-coital Sunday morning.
A few blocks from his apartment the neon of an old-fashioned streetcar diner glowed through the fog, the windows opaque with condensation.
"I've heard this place has the best pancakes in the world," he promised as we stepped into the glass entryway.
"And coffee?" I asked plaintively.
His answer came in a kiss with enough body english to have a promise in it. Stepping into the cacophony of the diner interior, he raised his voice to be heard over the brunch rush.
"The mugs are probably bottomless. I can't vouch for the quality of it, but - " He never finished the sentence. His eyes went wide, and then he was pushing past me and back out the door. Gone.
Cold rain trickled down the back of my neck. If Paul had maintained his velocity out of the restaurant, he could have been a half-mile gone by the time I reached the street. Cars splashed through bottomless storm puddles, headlights on in the gloom. Sheets of gray water sluiced down the sidewalk against my shoes. There was no sign of him moving up either side of the street, and after a soggy pirouette, I began to walk back towards his apartment. The muffled sound of a sob came from the alley.
He was curled up against the side of the building, gone to ground between the side of a rusted-out dumpster and a cinderblock wall. His knees were drawn in tight to his chest. A torrent of rainwater thrummed from the drainspout near his feet, but he made no move to escape the backsplash.
"Paul?"
He lifted his head and I saw it again, the look he'd had in the restaurant. It faded slowly as recognition replaced whatever private hell was replaying in his brain.
"I need to get home." His eyes were swollen, his pants caked with the indescribable muck of a restaurant alley in the rain. He held out his hand.
"Help me."
And there it was. The leap again.
I took it. I took his hand and pulled him upright. I cared just enough to know.
By the time we reached his apartment, we were both soaked to the skin. I had nothing but the set of clothes I'd arrived in the night before. I still hadn't had any coffee, and the beginnings of a killer headache were throbbing in my temples. My mood was not generous.
"Paul, tell me what the fuck is going on."
He'd leaned into me under the umbrella the entire walk home like a dog afraid of the rain. He didn't answer my question now, his footsteps receding down the hall.
I was resisting the urge to bolt. I'd always been a sucker for the boys with broken wings, the lost ones with the good stories and the tragic childhoods. Knight Rachel would ride out on her swaybacked steed with a sword of loving kindness to the rescue of a damaged soul. A long list of shitty relationships, a serious dent in my checking account, and one restraining order were the result. I'd kicked Lancelot syndrome cold and hung up the armor for good. The hours are long, and everyone knows you'll never get rich working for non-profits.
Still, there I was. The droplets from my hair made audible splashes on the satin-buffed oak. The exposed brickwork of the apartment absorbed the sound of the rain, but water sheeted down the windows, obscuring the view of the street below. He returned, carrying two thick terrycloth towels, an oversized NYFD sweatshirt, and a small red-lacquered box. He handed me the sweatshirt.
"You can change into that if you want."
I held it. I wanted to be able to leave without the delay of changing again.
"Paul, sit down. What the hell was that back there?"
He slumped onto the couch and lit a cigarette with fumbling fingers. He'd asked for non-smoking seating when we'd eaten out, and I had the finely tuned nose of the ex-smoker for a tainted household; he'd never smoked in the apartment before. He held the inhale for a long time before letting it out in a rush.
"That woman at the restaurant? Her name is Alysia. We...have history."
He met her through a friend of a friend, a California party where he'd known no one and had expected know no one when it was over. Too loud, too crowded, emotional aggregates the only possible medium for talking with anyone. Everyone was happy to see you arrive and no one would notice when you left. Smile, nod, make the gestures of swinging monkeycock and laugh just a bit too loud to let everyone know you're having a good time. She had made the first move, nothing striking about her, not his type, and he was already looking to leave. Before they left together, the only thing that surprised him was that she had come to the party alone and that she had been alone long enough for him to get close to her.
"And now she's here," I said, a little stung. An old flame that had burned hot enough to scar never bodes well. The cigarette smoke had curled its way through the room, coating surfaces as it went. The demon was rising up in me, tempting me to take the pack. The nicotine rush, the familiar gestures, the dragon mastery of breathing smoke and flame that had drawn me as a kid. I beat it down. "She moved here from LA to wait tables?"
"She doesn't have to work. She does that because it amuses her," he said. His fingers fumbled with the small brass catch on the little box. He put it on the coffee table, and lit another cigarette off the butt of the first.
"She's easily amused."
His friends all hated her. He told himself it was jealousy. There was certainly a lot to be jealous of. He had been with women, thought he'd explored the territory of sex pretty well. From the first moment, he found there were places he hadn't even realized existed, and you didn't get there by the roads on any map.
"I wanted to talk about it to someone," he said. "She was incredible. Every night was like she was directing an issue of Penthouse Forum, and every activity on the list had to get done under deadline. Guys don't really talk about sex. We brag, speculate, joke about it. But how many times can you tell your buddy you had the best orgasm of your life?"
"Not exactly locker room conversation, is it?" I said sarcastically. I already knew exactly how I was going to talk about my night with Paul with my friends and my roommate. Men have absolutely no idea.
"No. It just came across as banal. It got harder to be around them. There just wasn't that much to say. They had their lives and I had Alysia. She didn't seem to like my friends any more than they did her, and after a while I didn't see them much any more. I thought she and I were just bonding, becoming a couple. There was nothing else. There was just us."
I nodded. "I've been there. I remember an entire month of weekends with this one guy where we'd disappear into his room on Friday afternoon and not come out until Sunday at the earliest. Just breaking away from each other to use the bathroom and eat whatever we could get delivered." I smiled. It was a good memory, one I made an effort to keep separate from the things that followed. "Everybody does it, Paul. Eventually you figure out that there are other ways to have a cheap date."
He shook his head. "This was different."
I couldn't help laughing gently at his earnestness. He so desperately wanted me to understand. "People have been fucking for an awfully long time, boyo. How long did you two carry on this sybaritic monastic existence?"
"Eleven months," he said.
It was always at his place, and there was no rhyme or reason to her arrival. He would rise out of a dream and find her standing over his bed in the middle of the night, streetlights casting shadows on her naked body. More than once, he would wake to find they were already fucking, find her body already in slick transit down an erection that had risen for her without consultation with consciousness. Her teeth were sharp, her nails shaped by a manicurist with a talent for the whetstone. As their relationship progressed, his style of clothing changed, becoming looser, higher in the collar and longer in the sleeve.
"Eventually I stopped going to the gym," he said. "I didn't know to explain the marks."
"I have a friend," I said slowly, "she teaches third grade. Nice, polite, middle-aged woman with a husband who works in insurance in the city and mows his lawn twice a week because he enjoys it. Barbeques on weekends. After the kids got to bed, she puts him in a collar and harness and they play Stable Pony together." The temptation was too much and I gave in, taking the cigarette pack from the table and lighting one of my own. I pocketed the pack against either of us lighting another. It was two years down the drain, but I felt like I was getting closer to understanding Paul's problem.
"Anyway, they're perfectly normal folks. It's just what they get off on. Didn't Alysia give you the spiel? Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is Okay?"
I didn't know what I'd said, but for the first time I saw a flash of something ugly cross his face.
"You really don't get it, do you? You think this was just some kinky fun between happy, consenting adults. It wasn't. Alysia changed me, Rachel. I didn't realize how much until much too late."
Alysia always talked, never stopped talking. Her voice was in his ear when he was inside her, deeper, faster, longer, harder, directions and nonverbal cues of breath and sigh. She told him about men that she'd had, about women, couples she'd lured to her bed. Ropes and knots and the surprising spice of pain on tender skin that hadn't even known it had wanted it. She laughed at his feeble attempts to match her, to find her fantasies, to elicit an equal reaction from her.
"Just listen," she said. "I'll teach you what I like."
Her stories began to evolve, no longer her alone, but him with her. Another woman in the room, how she'd touch and kiss and caress them both. Another man, the two of them fulfilling her every desire. She knew him by then. She knew the effect of her words as if he was wired to a machine: the racing of his heart, the sudden rushes of blood and heat and lust she could bring boiling out of him. Afterwards, sweat cooling on his skin, his head against her breast, she was still talking, telling him the rules. "It's just us, Paul. They don't matter. You and I are the ones who are real. Remember that."
He was surprised when she suggested going to the party. By then he hadn't talked to a friend in months. He still worked, still went to the clinic every day. He dispensed the little cups of methadone and orange juice and the encouraging words to the sad people who walked through his door, but they no longer seemed quite real to him - just intangibles he needed to pass through in order to get to the true reality of his life. He would work his eight hours, get in his car and go home to her. It surprised him that she'd want to share themselves with anyone else.
"I lost her the moment we got inside the loft," he said. "It was a big factory space someone had chopped up into rooms. Some of them were bigger than my apartment, others were so small they could have been closets except there were no hooks or bars."
He paused. "I take that back. Some of them did have hooks and bars. But not for clothes."
I squirmed a little on the couch. None of this was new to me. I was an enlightened female in the age of cable television, silicone, and batteries. Still, Paul's monologue had begun to stroke perilously close to some of my own buttons. His relationship with Alysia might well have been sick, dysfunctional, and scarring. Still, I could feel myself channeling certain details into a private file, one that I'd visit alone in the dark.
"Did you do anything?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Not without Alysia. Nobody seemed to notice me anyway. The place was so big and I was getting desperate looking for her. In some rooms you couldn't walk -there were so many people on the mattresses, against the walls...it was like walking through a labyrinth of pheromone. Men with women, men with men, women with women, every combination I'd ever seen or imagined. All I could think about was how badly I wanted Alysia, right then, right there. I didn't care who saw us."
She was waiting for him in a room he'd walked past a dozen times without even realizing it was there, a weird little jog of whitewashed fiberboard passages, a turn you didn't see unless you were right on top of it. She wasn't alone.
He was taller than Paul by a good margin, and older, his skin colored by summers outdoors and hard work done with hands.
"He's for you, love," she said. "You wouldn't ask, but I knew."
The hands were as rough as the face, tangling into Paul's hair, guiding him down. Alysia was on her knees beside him, her voice in his ear, telling him he was hers.
And he was. He hadn't told her about the fantasy. He hadn't told anyone about the fantasy. She'd known and provided it for him, her lover, her willing performer in a play she choreographed word by word.
The man above him did all the right things. He thrust, he moaned, he provided validation of Paul's offering in the rush of fluid and guttural cry that marked his orgasm. Still, he was irrelevant. They were the only two that mattered.
"After he came, it was just us again. I barely noticed him leaving the room. Except for one thing: He had a tattoo on his shoulder."
Paul removed his shirt in a violent motion and turned, showing me his back. "It looked like this."
I hadn't examined his tat closely the night before. How often do you really get time to look at a guy's back? Now it was presented for close examination, and I saw it wasn't what I'd thought.
Midnight linework on skin that didn't see sun, a serpentine circle lay buried in his shoulder. I knew what the symbol was supposed to be, the benefits of a liberal education and too much bad television: Ouroboros, the serpent devouring its own tail even as it creates itself anew. Paul's diverged from the classical symbol in one small detail: the snake's mouth and tail did not converge. Every quivering scale, every grasping erg of energy, it put into reaching for an ending it would never reach.
"She did this?"
"She's very good at any hobby that involves pain and sharp objects. It's her mark. I pissed her off, you see."
He woke up alone, thirsty and still sticky on the mattressed floor. The party cacophony had not faded in the time he'd slept; if anything, the volume had increased. He didn't know how long he'd slept, when the party would end, or even when it might have started. As he wended his way through the labyrinth, he had the absurd feeling the party had never started, and might never end. He stepped gingerly through the oblivious crowds, and after several wrong turns, came upon a kitchen area strewn with booze bottles, puddling ice, and pillaged dishes of snacks. He found a cup and drew a glass of water. No one spoke to him, but looking out into the adjoining rooms he saw a familiar face. It was Alysia's friend.
He was sprawled in a chair, its shape indistinct under a white sheet to protect the upholstery. On the mattresses before him, three couples shifted in an evolving sexual fractal, a fluid shifting of bone, skin, hair, and genitals that might have been beautiful to watch had Paul been in the mood for it. At that moment, it seemed like an obstruction. He needed to talk to a friendly face. Moving around the edges of the tangle, he sat on the edge of the chair and offered his name to the man he'd shared his body with a few hours before.
"She was on me the moment I spoke to him." Paul said. "I hadn't seen her for hours, but the moment I held out my hand, she was sinking her nails into my skin and pulling me away. I'd never seen her get so mad about anything."
You don't talk to them, Paul. This is about us. Nobody else. They don't matter. Clamping down on her hand a little too hard, he pulled her nails free of his shoulder, looking down to see the four half-moons of blood well up and weep. "I think I can talk to the guy I just had sex with, Alysia. Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you?"
Her eyes got wide, staring at the pale white places where his grip had pushed the blood from her skin. Irrationally, he lifted his arm to ward off the blow that came only in her words.
"Get out," she said. "I don't want to see you again."
The daylight was dying, but neither of us stood to turn on the lights. I whistled quietly, trying to read the distorted outlines of his face in the spatters of light that came through the window.
"Hell of a way to break it off with someone," I said softly.
His voice came out of the dark.
"The funny part is, the guy? The one I'd wanted to talk to? He had nothing to say. Really, nothing. He just kept watching the people on the floor during the whole thing. I thought he was just taking her side, willfully ignoring us. That wasn't it."
He was still angry as he found his way out, losing his way out of the loft, searching for far too long to find his clothes, crushed and wrinkled behind those of dozens of new arrivals. The streets were deserted, pre-dawn industrial park empty. He walked many blocks before finding a cab to take him home.
As he unlocked his door, he thought of Alysia, standing in the middle of the party, cold even in rage. It was over. He hadn't thought about it on the ride home, hadn't considered it at all really until right that moment, but the truth was waiting for him in the darkened hallway of his empty apartment. It was over. Back to reality. He'd ended relationships before. He was a mature adult. He could handle it.
He was begging her to take him back within the week.
There was no one he could call, no one left in the city who cared, or whom he could make understand. Food was ashes in his mouth. Sleep was a haunted place, no refuge. He would jerk awake, certain he wasn't alone, that he was being watched, only to find the room empty. The idea of touching himself to find release was too ridiculous to even contemplate.
He worked through it, pulling up to the clinic in the morning, doing the job, leaving at night to go back to an empty apartment. He cycled people through his office on autopilot. He said the right things.
"His name was Carlos," Paul said. "Skinny little guy, weighed about 120 pounds, most of it in his Adam's apple. Been through the system more times than I could count, veins blown to shit. On his last backslide, he'd started shooting into his dick because there was nowhere else left. Skin like those witches apples you'd make at Halloween when you were kid, just dried flesh and old dirt trapped in the wrinkles."
"I'd been working with him for about a month, and he actually seemed serious about it this time. He had a granddaughter now. He wanted to get clean. I met with him as usual on the Wednesday after Alysia. He was sitting at the little formica table, and I handed him the cup of juice and the methadone. Automatically, I asked him how he was doing."
"`Better than you, Cap'n,` he told me, slurring the words over bare gums. His teeth were gone, too much sugar, bad hygiene. He said it again. 'Better 'n you. If the red rock ain't doin' it for you no more, you better find a man and soon, 'cause you got it bad, brother.'"
"He thought I was an addict. And by then, maybe he was right."
"She answered my call on the fifth day, my twentieth attempt."
"She told me I had to repent. I'd hurt her feelings." She had all the toys for the game she wanted to play, soft, black leather and tempered steel, encircled wrists, a bar to keep his legs spread apart. She'd been gentle as she'd slowly, lovingly immobilized him facedown on his own bed. Always his place before, he had never considered that he'd never seen her home, didn't know where she lived, what she did for a living.
She left him like that, exposed to her whims, the only sound in the room his breathing. He waited to find out what she planned to do, what form his redemption would take, what it would require of him to win her back. Their time together had left him with an imagination more than equal to the task. He twitched involuntarily at every small movement of air, every slight sound in the room.
Still, the first needleprick came as a surprise.
"It means something to her." I said. "Ouroboros."
He nodded slowly. "The connection between sacrificer and the sacrifice. I had fallen from her grace and she marked me as such. But she took me back. I thought it was over. I fell asleep in her arms that night thinking that everything was back to normal."
He didn't want to go to the party again so soon after the fight, but she'd insisted. With the waters just recently calmed, he didn't resist, didn't question why she'd asked him to meet her there. To meet him in the same small room he'd found her the night before. She wasn't alone.
The girl might have been eighteen, certainly not much older, small breasts erect and proud in the cold room. The pale gold tuft of pubic hair shone in the light from the hallway, a hint of color in skin luminous in its perfection. She drew in a breath at the sight of Paul entering the room but did not speak.
Alysia didn't speak to him either. She gave no orders, made no demands. He lowered himself to his knees, then onto his back. She ran the barest edge of a fingernail down the ivory skin of the girl's breast and whispered, "He's yours, love. You wouldn't ask, but I knew."
The girl played her role to perfection. She posted upon him as if driving a horse toward home, sweat pouring down her body in the heat of her effort. She whimpered, she moaned, her shuddering orgasm traveling through her to him like earthquake season in another state. She collapsed down into him, panting, her eyes glazed. Throughout it all, Alysia's voice was in her ear.
Alysia took the girl's hand and lifted her off him slowly. A dark slick of blood stained his still-rigid shaft. Without a word to him, they left the room.
He was not intangible. But he was immaterial.
Paul took the little box from the table and opened the lid. Nestled into the interior was a carefully folded square of aluminum foil. A box of blue-tipped matches. And a small glassine bag, filled with powder.
"Addiction counselors know where to get the best dope," he said. "That night I blew a week's pay on the purest stuff I could get, and tried to put myself in a place where I didn't need her anymore."
I didn't want to be there. The fantasy had lost its ability to thrill and was now reality. He was broken. I'd chosen wrong.
"You goddamned idiot," I said.
He flinched, but didn't waver. "The chemistry isn't that much different. Dopamine uptake, replacing one stimulation with another. I was careful. I didn't get hooked. I managed to medicate my way through her. Damn it, Rachel, I moved across the country to get away from her. Now she's here and I'm scared to death."
I was through being gentle. "I'm sure you are, you pathetic ass. Your little dominatrix goes walking off and that's the best solution you can think of?" A nasty suspicion was growing, one that should have occurred to me the moment I'd seen Alysia in the diner, but was coming home with a vengeance now.
"And I'm part of your therapy, aren't I?"
I left the apartment to the sound of his voice calling my name.
The rain had stopped, the streetlights cutting rivers of green and red down the empty streets. I was walking angry and when I saw the diner, my anger blossomed into rage.
She wouldn't be there. It had been noon when Paul had made his run out the door. It was evening now. A girl like that doesn't have to work double shifts.
It wouldn't hurt to ask, though. And I had some choice words for her.
The guy at the register barely looked at me as I came in the door. I cleared my throat to get his attention, but the effort of lifting his head to look at me seemed to be almost too much for him. His skin hung in folds off his throat, his eyes like watery tomato soup. "A table, miss?" He managed to get out the words with difficulty.
"Is Alysia working tonight?" I asked.
His response to her name was like a drug. I could see his pupils dilate, his breathing become short.
"She's in the back on her break," he said.
He craned his neck to see into the kitchen, exposing the slightest bit of skin from the stretched neck of his grimy t-shirt. On his right shoulder, curling just above the sweat-stained collar, were the reaching black lines of an open-mouthed snake.
I had been concentrating on him exclusively as I'd come into the restaurant. At the sight of the tattoo, focus expanded outward, the lens encompassing the rest of the evening diner crowd. The man hunched over his paper, the small curl of black on his hand. The woman head down, weeping quietly into the table, the tip of a tail showing under the strap of her sleeveless blouse. Most importantly, I saw Alysia leave the kitchen and walk back across the restaurant, eyes like torches burning through fog.
She had made modifications to her uniform -a dart here, a tuck there, turning the tacky into fetish. Her hair was up. Every head in the restaurant turned to follow her passage and I had the sudden, certain knowledge that any one of us would kill the other for the chance to let it loose, pouring over our hands like washed silk.
I knew what it would be like. It would be easy, perfect, beautiful. I could walk up to her, introduce myself, and let it begin, find out what had driven Paul to the edge and over it. A cold circle traced itself upon my left breast, the promise of things to come.
"It was never about him," she said, taking my hand. "It was about us. It was always about us."
Bathed in the envious stares of every human being in the restaurant, she kissed me. And then there was nothing else.
To be human is to want to taste the forbidden. What no one considers is the forbidden may have tastes of its own.
And some people know how to get under your skin.
©John Bowker
John Bowker's work has appeared recently in On Spec, Andromeda Spaceways InFlight Magazine, Sybil's Garage, and the anthology Sex in the System. A systems analyst, graduate student, and occasional editor, his lack of free time has made it easy to avoid unwanted tattoos.