Joshua Mohr - Some Things That Meant the World to Me

After her solo, she said, "Sorry to wake you up, but we need to get to the tattoo shop."

"Now?"

"You said you knew what you wanted so I made an appointment."

"I do. Thanks."

"Let's go," she said, blowing the party favor another time.

I took a shower and we walked up to Guerrero Street, avoiding Valencia. "They've got the whole neighborhood shaking like Baghdad today," old lady Rhonda said as cement trucks rumbled around, fixing spots that had been damaged on the sidewalk while jackhammers continued their clattering boom.

It was foggy out. A homeless man had hung shirts up on a chain-link fence, but because of the strong wind, they flopped around, a few falling. He asked if there was anything we wanted. Old lady Rhonda looked at the shirts. I looked down and was standing on another sidewalk stenciling, in silver spray paint: You have less time than ever!

I'd known for years that I wanted to get a Rorschach inkblot tattooed across my chest. I don't know why I kept putting it off. But I had the design. When they let me out of the hospital, I'd asked Angel-Hair to give me one of the inkblot cards. "Why?" he said, and I said, "Something to remember you by," but it wasn't just about him: it was also about my mom: this was one of the cards I used to see her face in when I gazed at it. Angel-Hair agreed to give me the card, saying, "Our secret, okay?"

I don't do it much anymore, but in those first years I was out, I used to stare at it all the time. Sometimes, I still saw my mom. Sometimes, Letch. Sometimes, though, I didn't see anything, just blackness, outer space, the womb, Damascus.

It was misting now, but because of the wind, the water was like spittle in our faces.

On the next block, a cab pulled over in front of us. A man leaned out the window and threw up. Old lady Rhonda winced, saying, "Happy birthday to you." She still wore the unicorn hat.

We walked into the tattoo shop, Permanent Evidence, and I gave the inkblot design to the tattoo artist, telling him I wanted it from nipple to nipple. He had his whole body covered in work, at least as much of him as was showing. But I figured anyone who had a spider web tattoo on his face had probably run out of empty skin.

The guy gave old lady Rhonda a time estimate, saving he'd be done in about five hours, and she said to me, "I'll be back, birthday boy"

He and I didn't talk much. Just the buzz of the needle. The wiping of blood. I caught him looking at my crooked arm a few times and finally I said, "Motorcycle accident," and he nodded, saying, "Cool."

Old lady Rhonda was back right on time. She walked over to us, didn't say anything, staring at my Rorschach tattoo.

"Tell me what you see," I said.

"Black lungs," she said, leaning down and touching my chest. I still know the pattern her finger traced on my skin. "It's like you've chain-smoked for fifty years and I can see right through vou.

Got a little jumpy after I went in my apartment and stripped naked and stood in the bathroom, looking at my tattoo. I felt weird that there wasn't anyone coming to my phony birthday party, not that I'd invited anyone, but still. Handa would be with Hector. Sure, old lade Rhonda would technically be there, but she'd really be with her husband. The tattoo needle in my good hand torqued to new velocities. Little-Rhonda appeared in the doorway.

"I like the tattoo," he said. "Angel-Hair would dig it."

"You think so?"

"No doubt."

"Hey," I said, wanting to buy my little chum a beer. "I'm going to Damascus to invite some people to my birthday party. Do you want to come?"

"Our birthday's not for a couple weeks."

"We're celebrating early"

"No thanks. Kids in bars. People get weird."

"Not mom," I said, but he still told me he'd pass.

I got to Damascus about three in the afternoon. The place was empty, except for Vern, sitting there with a warm one.

"Do you live here?" I asked him.

"Just the man I was thinking about"

"Me?"

"You and that arm. When we gonna break it?"

"It's my birthday."

"Happy fucking birthday."

"Thanks."

"When we gonna break that arm?"

"Do you want to come to my birthday party?"

He scowled and twirled one of his huge eyebrows. "Birthday party? What, are you ten years old?"

"Forget it," I said to Vern and asked the bartender for a shot of whiskey, who, in turn, asked to see my money first. I patted Vern on the back and said, "My friend here is buying."

Vern rolled his eyes. "Anything for the birthday boy. One for me, too." He shook his empty beer bottle: "Another dead soldier."

The front door opened and Enrique walked in. It turned out he worked at a metal shop around the corner called Meld, and he stopped in to Damascus a few times a day to drink a quick beer when the boss was gone. I looked at his Gloria tattoo and remembered mine.

"Check it out," I said to them and unbuttoned my shirt. My tattoo was supposed to be covered in gauze for the first few hours, but I'd ripped it off. Both Vern and Enrique stared at it. "Tell me what you see."

"I see Bush drinking oil from a martini glass," Vern said.

"Really?" I asked. "You strike me as a republican."

"I may strike you, but I haven't been a republican since this buffoon botched everything."

"No shit?"

"I was a democrat 'til Bobby Kennedy died."

"So what are you now?"

"Morbidly disenchanted." With his hand, Vern imitated an airplane and crashed it into his warm one, knocking it over, suds foaming on the bar. "It's a demented world since 9/11, and old Vern wants no part of it." He picked up his empty bottle, banged it like a gavel. "Another dead soldier!"

The bartender came down, wiped up the mess, asked what had happened, but Vern just grinned at him. "May I have another ale, sir?" he said to the bartender, who begrudgingly obliged.

"What do you see, Enrique?" I said.

He rubbed his tattoo, saying, "I see Gloria, and she still hasn't forgiven me."

I buttoned my shirt back up.

"You guys want to come to my birthday party tonight?"

Vern stuck his little white tongue out again and made a farting noise.

"I'd love to," Enrique said.

"What?" Vern asked him, appalled.

"It's his birthday. Stop being such a prick."

"I am a prick."

"You're a prick who's going to a birthday party," Enrique said.

Around eight, everyone showed up to my apartment. First, Enrique and Vern, then old lady Rhonda and her husband, whose name was Lyle. She carried a chocolate cake with two candles jammed in its top: one said 3; the other said 0.

"Am I really turning thirty?" I said. "I still feel like such a child."

"That feeling never goes away," Lyle said, his teeth sticking out of his lips, like CD cases. "You get old and ugly, but you still feel like a baby on the inside."

I didn't want to talk to him. I took the cake from old lady Rhonda and carried it into the kitchen.

I introduced them to one another.

Vern had a six-pack of warm ones and two bottles of cheap champagne. He had a present, too, something wrapped in pages ripped from a porn magazine. He handed me the gift. "Let's open it after everyone goes home. It's kind of private."

"I didn't have time to wrap mine," Enrique said, as he handed me a bottle of whiskey, "but you seem to like this shit."