Omar Musa - Here Come the Dogs

‘Ah. What?’

‘I don’t do face or hand tatts if you can’t prove you’re not gonna lose your job if you get one.’

‘Nah. I mean, I can pay.’

‘I’m sure you can, babe. I just don’t do it. Sebastien should have told you.’

‘Orright.’

He sits back down with his mates. They talk among themselves.

‘It says Johnno’s next.’

‘How much longer till me?’

‘You Solomon?’

‘Yeh.’

‘Ah, shouldn’t be long. Maybe twenty minutes. Sorry, babe, Seb called in sick. Probably hungover. Fucked everything up.’

‘No worries. I’ll be back.’

A joint

I duck out the back and roll up a joint.

This weed is wet.

That dodgy fucker Grunt

flysprays his weed

to make it heavier, I heard.

Gotta be careful.

The main street is changing.

It even has a coffee shop. With a barista.

Fucken sacrilege.

I think of some mad lines from a Horrorshow song:

‘Every day, the heritage fades/

Gentrification, nothing’s gonna get in the way.’

Change is a nest of white ants in the wall,

acid to the face.

Sudden or slow,

it terrifies me.

Today’s heat like a fillet blade,

taking strips off me.

I blow smoke,

mouth tasting ashy but the weed working nicely.

Someone joins me. It’s the tatt artist.

She has a smooth, pale throat.

‘Finished already?’

‘Yeh. Those fellas chucked a tantrum cos I wouldn’t do hand tatts.’

‘Ah.’

‘Idiots. I’m not gonna take responsibility if they wanna fuck their lives up.’

‘You gave that guy a neck tatt, though. What’s the difference?’

‘Dunno. Gotta draw the line somewhere, I guess.’

‘You want some of this?’

‘Don’t smoke. Thanks, though. Come in, babe.’

Skin

I point at an elephant in an art book I brought with me.

It’s stylised, with swirling designs on its hide.

An Albanian king had it on his chest,

supposedly.

Suddenly Aleks’ voice comes into my head.

Anytime you hear of someone getting clipped in Melbourne,

it was probably an Albo that done it.

‘Nice piece. Why this one?’ she says.

‘My mum’s favourite animal.’

‘Aww, a mama’s boy.’

Truth is,

I don’t spend enough time with Mum,

even though I still live with her,

but I say, ‘Yep. Heaven lies at the feet of the mother.’

She looks up, her eyes a startling green. ‘I like that.’

‘Yeh. It’s in the Qur’an. I think.’

‘You Muslim?’

‘Once upon a time.’

‘Well, it’s nice. Problem with most hip hop guys is that they all think their mum’s a queen but every other woman’s a whore.’

‘True.’

‘And you?’

‘I got a girlfriend.’

‘And?’ Her cat eyes shine.

‘I treat her very well, thank you very much. You worked here long?’

‘A while. Moved from Auckland a few years back. Hey, you’ve got nice skin. You must eat well.’

‘Dunno.’

‘You get all types. If you’re lucky, it’s lovely and buttery. You should thank your parents.’ She wipes some ink and blood away.

‘I’ll try to remember.’

‘You a coconut?’

‘Samoan.’

‘ Afakasi ?’

‘I’m Samoan.’

‘Woah. Calm down. Just asking. When was the last time you went?’

‘Never been.’

‘Well, I like those,’ she gestures at my sleeve tatts.

‘Cheers.’

‘What do they represent?’

‘Oh, you know. Power, money, respect,’ I say nonchalantly, trying to throw her off the scent.

She looks up again. ‘Tatts like that are a pretty modern thing. Based on tapa designs.’

‘Ah, okay.’ I didn’t know that.

The zzzzz of the tattoo machine.

After a while she says, ‘Sometimes you get skin that’s coarse and dotted with pores as big as bullet holes. People who’ve been eating chips and gravy every day since they were ten. Two-minute noodles and toast. Drinking beer and smoking bongs twenty-four seven, getting psoriasis. But whatever the case, skin’s the best canvas. Bleeds, fights, fucks. Skin tells a story like nothing else.’

‘But not the whole story,’ I say, thinking of Jimmy.

She doesn’t reply. The outline is nearly complete.

‘You got a boyfriend?’ I ask.

‘Used to. Now I date women. Mostly.’

‘Sweet. We got something in common then.’

She laughs, showing very white teeth.

She’s the least-inked tattoo artist

I’ve ever seen.

Her skin is perfectly bare

but for one teardrop

tatted under her right eye.

She has messy black hair piled on her head

and is wearing a loose white singlet

with a black bra visible from the side.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Scarlett.’

‘Scarlett what?’

‘Planning to look me up?’

‘Nah, just wondering.’

‘Snow. Scarlett Snow.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeh, yeh, I know. Sounds like a porn name. Or a metal band.’

‘Nah, I think it’s cool. It’s. evocative. You should thank your parents.’

She laughs again.

When I leave, I call Georgie

but she doesn’t answer.

Broke as, now

At the paint shop looking at Beltons and Montanas.

Good paints.

Can’t afford em, but.

I momentarily think of racking them

but there are people everywhere.

Racking paint

The rush of theft

turned into a part-time occupation,

back in the day.

Stash the tins in an anorak.

Wheel a bin full of paint

out the back of a hardware store.

Whatever.

Jimmy, Aleks and me kept our spots secret,

guarded them viciously.

It was like a game to see who

could get the best paints.

Back then,

Bunnings was good for Dulux and Wattyl.

Autobahn for Krylon.

Magnet Mart for PlastiKote.

Shoe stores for Tuxan.

Horse saddle places for raven oil to make stainer.

Art stores always

cottoned on quickly

and stopped stocking cans.

Fuck those were good times.

There is one thing I could do

I walk to the basketball courts with Mercury Fire on a leash.

I chain him up and he stands stock-still,

staring far off,

a muscle in his shoulder twitching.

The afternoon’s cooling down at last,

the sky as pink as a cat’s mouth,

spires of smoke on the hills.

I do some lazy stretches and

my hamstrings scream.

I almost feel like crying at the pain.

Mercury starts barking

at a bunch of colourful parrots sitting in the bending fennel.

I let him off the leash,

and they twitter and fly away,

points

in a

moving constellation.

Dad used to say Aussie birds reminded him

of fish in the reef near his village,

Free, multicoloured, dreamlike.

This court’s been here ages,

blacktop crumbling around the edges.

Beneath the hoop is a hopscotch grid in yellow chalk.

Common’s ‘Be’ playing from my phone.

I pound the ball on the ground a few times,

the ring alien at first,

but soon I’m sweating,

getting my range back.

I take my shirt off to feel the dying sun,

being careful of the cling wrap over my new tatt.

Bounce, bounce,

fingertips, rhythm,

limbs turn to fire,

Bounce, bounce,

my body an instrument

of knowing,

of knowledge,

of concentration,

Bounce, bounce,

the flick of the wrist,

the release,

swish.

Just like before the injury.

A scar the size of a caterpillar