Needles Ripped My Flesh
Dave parked the van in Aldwych by Bush House, near the portals to
the BBC World Service. Should he have felt so inclined, he could
have looked up at the statues above the entrance and read the
inscription: "To the Eternal Friendship of English Speaking
Nations", but It was time to remove the dressing. He had
with him a bottle of water, a clean handkerchief and a small pot
of Vaseline. It had to be done. There was just no way he could
have continued to live without having experienced the glorious,
exquisite pain of the tattooist's needle. He had taken Mandi with
him. Together they had chosen a bird design for him and for her a
small sunset, to add to her collection. Both had them on their
upper arms.
She watched him wince. He watched her flinch as they bonded
themselves to each other. Adornment ad infinitem ad nauseam.
Needles ripped into tender flesh. They shared in an orgy of
anguish, with designs on each other that no skin graft or laser
should put asunder. He knew his friends would say she was leading
him astray, but he wanted something to last longer than memories.
Like Bogey and Bergman knowing they would always have Paris so
Dave and Mandi would always have a grubby little shop on Finchley
Road, and they would always have tattoos.
For Dave it could prove to be his last chance to be young, his
last chance to be wild and do something monumentally and
everlastingly foolish. A farewell to youth and the pinnacle to
his bizarre relationship with Mandi.
Normal people: shoppers and office workers on lunch, wandered
past, each with foibles and secrets to hide. Strange tastes,
macabre thoughts, weird fetishes they kept to themselves whereas
Dave was about to display his madness to the world.
He rested his arm on the back of the passenger seat and pulled
away the dressing. He then dabbed at the spots of dried blood
with the wet handkerchief and massaged the damaged skin with
Vaseline. He somehow felt a deflation, like post-coital
depression: the moment when duty demands you stay and hold her
though you can only think of making a cup of tea. An uneasy
feeling like the panic that comes in the night when you think you
have nothing left to look forward to.
He turned on Radio One where Damien the social worker was telling
"Steve Wright in the afternoon" something about the
"Comuuuuniteeeee". Then, totally unannounced, the
Everly Brothers started to sing "Love Hurts".
'That's what tattoos are.' he told himself. 'They are love
hurts...It has to be love or rock and roll.' He had suffered ten
thousand inoculations that would surely make him totally immune
to all known types of sanity. They had been a present to himself
and her, but the present made the future look dangerous.