I think about the time HotCrazySteel hosted this shitty pancake breakfast at Ink4Life NYC Tattoo Convention. They were showing off their new eight gun turbo machines. I usually rented when I freelanced but this tattoo machine was so smooth I started immediate figuring out what I would have to sell to afford it.
I thought about the two West coast artist I’d shared a table with and the shit ton of vodka orange juices we’d had. One of them did a circuit from LA to Vegas and he had a bunch of crazy stories from the road. He didn’t get how East coast artist made a living during the cold months and when I thought about it Christmas was always a struggle. It’d been damn shitty one this year
Anyway, the guys wanted to see my ink and asked about my wheelchair. This was an audience that made a living with needles and open wounds, so I said I had fibromyalgia, which wasn’t a l lie. I mean same difference. I was screwed. Let’s move on.
When I thought about that memory I focused on the dirty jokes, the traded techniques, and the compliments I got on my work. I thought about all the invites I got to come out to California. Sometimes I even thought about the gorgeous models who smiled and flirted with us because they’d been paid to
I didn’t think about the spasms of pain that shot through my legs every 48.3 seconds like clockwork. I held on to everything else. I held on to the fact that when I remembered that moment I wouldn’t remember the pain. And I didn’t.
Just the apathy. That shit never went away.
I try to keep as much weight off of Sofia as I can as she helps me into the hard plastic chair she’d set up in the shower. My muscles feel like they are being pulled and twisted from the inside. I suck on the inside of my cheeks, keeping the pain inside where it belonged.
I try to forget that the shower chair was second hand and that this shitty fucking motel has hourly rates. I try really fucking hard not to think about the rust clotting up the corners of the shower. At least I hope it is rust.
Sofia is quick and efficient, just like she probably is at work. She sets her waterproof shower bag on the grimy counter and takes out six bright white washcloths, a small bar of hypoallergenic soap and a sulfate free shampoo. She rolls up her gray long sleeve shirt revealing the watercolor tattoo sleeve on her right arm. Venus had offered to do the cherry blossoms for free, but Venus liked the way her own work so much she’d added in some sky and stretched the design out with her signature koi fish, some stylized waves, a stylized caduceus and Elijah’s name for free. In return Sofia always had a stack of Venus’ business cards to give away.
I kept a towel over my lap while Sofia worked the lavender essential oil scented shampoo into my hair and rinsed it. I could have managed but my arms were sore from getting used to my new chair. The shampoo stung my eyes, but I was used to it by now.
She begins to work the small bar of lemon chamomile soap in small circles down my neck where I had a Lithuanian phrase inked there. It was the tattoo that had officially shut the door to gainful employment outside of New York City. She works the lather down my back, chest and stomach where I have a tattoo of a wayward looking angel one on side and a quote from Rent on the other. The geometric piece on my chest flowed with the neck tattoo wrapping around my body. Sofia’s name is inked on my back and across my shoulders and upper back is a string of detailed designs, from artist messing around when the shop was empty. I even had one of Venus’ unreal 3D butterflies. No fucking regrets.
Sofia rinses the soap with a wet wash cloth, then picks up the soap again and rubs it in circles down my right arm where after inking my mom’s name, anchors, clocks, flowers and a couple of skulls I’d ran out of shit to put on my traditional style sleeve, so I told Divo to do whatever he wanted. Venus had done my left arm in all black and gray, her shading and flow was fucking amazing and there were just a few shocks of red. Sofia still didn’t know I was making payments on it.
Sofia quickly scrubs over where POSITIVE is on my knuckles and the red ribbon is inked on my wrist. Wash rinse repeat.
She gets on her knees and continues rubbing the soap in small circles down to my legs, which have let me down so much that I refuse to ink them. After she rinses I will myself to stand up, but the spasms are so intense . . . I just can’t. I try not to curse. Not to get frustrated. I just endure the pain and try to breathe.
Sofia very neatly puts the washcloths in a drawstring plastic bag and puts on a pair of bright pink latex gloves. Sofie removes the towel over my lap and washes and rinses my genitals and backside, I’m semi hard but she doesn’t notice, she’s working on autopilot.
She turns the water off and pats me dry with a towel, she helps me into a pair of underwear and a t-shirt and gets my wheelchair. The heavy stench of Sofia’s cleaners embarrassing the cleaning staff make my eyes sting.
Everything was clean . . . just to fucking clean.
“Can you feed him”, she asks, “His schedule is all off”
I nod, and then unlike with her patients at the hospital she keeps the water on and the door ajar while she takes a shower. I wheel over to where Elijah is crying and screaming where he is strapped in his car seat.
She’d already given him a bath first, so I have to be careful not to make a mess.
Elijah kicks and screams at me when I try to pick him up, he has a diaper rash from daycare that was still bothering him. I put him back in the car seat and set it up on the bed then opene a container of dollar store applesauce
The Dollar MegaMart had been the only place open when we pulled over in Maryland. The motel clerk had been nice enough to let us boil some water in their breakroom microwave for the cup-of-noodle Sofia and I had for dinner.
I taste a little bit of the apple sauce, it was gritty and a little starchy? I take the plastic spoon out of my mouth and stare at it long time before tossing it in the trash and digging for another one in Sofia’s book bag. I know it was stupid, but I did it anyway.
Elijah doesn't want the applesauce and just spits it out on his clothes. It wasn’t like the one Sofia made, there just wasn’t enough room in the coolers for food. Elijah keeps wailing so I take him out and give him the remainder of the chamomile tea Sofia had been drinking in the car. Then I change and wipe him down with the proficiency of a guy who’d had 8 different single mothers as roommates growing up.
I try to distract him with a game where he gets to pull all the stuff out of Sofia’s book bag but he is not having it. He has a light up talking caterpillar toy, but he pushes it away and the tea comes right back up. I put him back into the car seat so he won't be on the dirty carpet. He’d just have to cry himself to sleep like the rest of us.
I pulled out a notebook I’d bought from the Dollar MegaMart and start working on some sketches and occasionally rock Eliah. I practice some pedestrian shit like styled heats, flowers, ‘tribal’ symbols, anchors plus a few Kanji symbols I’d picked up from Venus.
I didn’t even notice when Sofia gets out of the shower, she is hovering over Elijah and peering into his mouth with an otoscope she’d “borrowed” from the hospital.
“Throat is still sore”, she says to herself.
She takes a pink stethoscope one of the RN’s had given her out of the suitcase and checks Elijah’s heart. At birth he’d been diagnosed with a misshapen heart that didn’t quite beat right. It left him small for his age and at 8 months old he hadn’t even began to crawl yet.
“What about me”, I say trying to lighten the mood.
I’m not sure she is up for humor, her mouth is still set in a neutral line as she places the cold metal over my chest.
“Is it racing?” I ask.
She seems to catch on that I was kidding but doesn’t put an effort into her response.
“Just a little.”
Instead of stripping the bed which could lead to some unfortunate discoveries, Sofia covers the motel sheets with blue ones from her suitcase. Elijah stops crying and she places him in his travel bed, putting a quick hand over his mouth to make sure he is still breathing.
“The clerk said there is a laundromat a few blocks away, I’m going to get up early to wash everything before we get back on the road.” Sofia says.
“Okay.”
Cause, what else am I going to say?
“We should still have time to stop in D.C, right? We’ll still make it to Petal Brooke on time?”
I nod.
She helps me into bed and folds up the wheel chair, keeping it close to me.
Today we are technically homeless, in two weeks Sofia will face her rapist in court, and tomorrow is our three year anniversary. In the short time after “I do” I’d managed to take a trip to prison, runaway and shoot up with a needle so bad I had to stare down AIDS for the rest of my life.