Outsider by W. Freedreamer Tinkanesh Read Free Book Online Page B

Sid
was getting inked. Sid loved living with contradictions.
    “What do you think?” Elizabeth’s excited
voice enquired.
    “Brilliant!” Sid replied
enthusiastically.
    Jessie had added two playful dolphins on an
already abundant collection of sea animals, closing the last blank
on the left shoulder blade. Now, done with whales and octopuses,
Elizabeth was free to design an armful of sea stars, in between
songs with blues and jazz tinges.
    “Time for coffee!” Jessie exclaimed after
taping a cling film over the dolphins. “Then we’ll get started on
your leg!”
    Yes, this was Sid’s plan: coffee and another
totem pole.
     
    * * * * * * *
     
    Sid, when not plagued by the pain of the
needles, enjoyed chatting with Jessie, picking her brain for
descriptions, definitions and philosophical quotations. She would
generally distinctively articulate the first question crossing her
mind. This particular day for this particular tattoo, it turned out
to be:
    “How do you define a Goth?”
    Jessie, always the chatty kind, never minded
Sid’s queries, never really wondered where her friend and client’s
curiosity stemmed from. She would cheerfully answered, basing her
observations on her personal experience of squats and pubs,
anarchist camps and other alternatives scenes that Sid would never
tread upon.
    “They always wear black.”
    “Sounds like me.”
    “No, you’re not Goth. You’re too cheerful. A
friend of mine used to go out with a Goth and she dumped him
because he was too cheerful.”
    Cheerful, me? Sid thought. Am I really that
good at hiding my depression? A lifetime of practice, so
ironic.
    “Stacee is a Goth,” Jessie added.
    Stacee had long, black hair, striking black
eyeliner and a taste for skulls. Sid always felt impressed and
small in her presence, and never really knew what to say, afraid of
coming up with the most boring subjects of conversation.
    Ok, Sid kept up with her cogitations, not
voicing them out loud, damn, I cannot be Goth; I’ll never use
make-up in a million years. She came up with her next
enquiry:
    “Ok, how do you define a punk?”
    “You’re a punk! There is a political side to
punk that you don’t find with the Goths. Gothic is more like a
fashion.”
    Sid had never thought about this detail. The
drilling sound of the tattoo machine carving and inking the skin of
her right leg with various animals piled up in Haida style,
prevented her from expressing her every thought for Jessie’s
benefit. Was Jessie a punk? Maybe: she sported a multicolored
mohican and her make-up was a colourful version of the gothic one.
She had tattoos and piercings aplenty. But Sid, a punk? She felt
like laughing, but the buzzing tattoo machine was somewhat
restraining her laughing muscles, remembering men coming on to her
with the choicy line: “I’m interested in the punk philosophy, too!”
Yeah, sure, no future. But politics? Maybe some punks had turned
anarchists. Nowadays, she couldn’t view herself as such anymore.
She had tried, and failed finding affinities and creating
connections with squatters and anarchists. She had seen punks
staring at her from afar with a look of wonderment plastered all
over their face. Despite her green mohican, Sid was no punk and had
never said so, never enlightened anyone about this detail of
identity, or non-identity. She wasn’t working-class. She was from a
middle-class background. Sure, many punks could identify, but Sid
couldn’t. A rush of tension provoked a snake of sharp pain through
her attended leg, and she went silent, watching Jessie, focused and
precise, cutting through the outer layer of the skin, inking
miracles.
    “How are you doing?”
    Sid’s bubble burst with sudden relief. She
exhaled a long sigh. The tattoo machine was poised in mid-air.
    “Care for a break?” Sid grimaced. She was
brave, but she also liked coffee.
     
     

CHAPTER EIGHT

    Dreams were the stuff Sid’s life was made of.
Every morning she would wake up and before