“Tripp…”
“I knew what he would say,” he says. “I was right, and now it’s done. It’s not like he could disown me twice.”
His leg bounces against my hand as he turns to dip his cartridge into one of the small ink pots laid out on the tray next to him. I hiss as the needle pulls across my skin, inching toward the center of my spine. Tripp is gentle with the paper towel as he wipes away blood and ink, and before meeting my skin with the needle again, he offers a soft tap of his finger.
My ‘coming out’ wasn’t much of a coming out at all. Despite the way that everyone else around me seemed to think, my parents had never made it seem like my being straight was the expectation, or that if I wasn’t, I’d need to tell them about it.
I brought home a boyfriend on Superbowl Sunday and introduced him as such. My mom fixed him a plate and my dad asked him which team he was rooting for. When he gave the correct answer, according to my dad, that was the end of the conversation; he’d earned their approval.
I understand that my coming out experience wasn’t the same as every person’s, and that’s something that I consider myself greatly privileged to have experienced. It makes something ache deep inside of me to know that Tripp’s parents are proving once again that they’re not real parents, and that their ‘God’ will always come above their own kids.
“I’m almost wrapped here, so if you’ve got something else to say, get it out now,” Tripp warns.
Careful not to move my body, I meet his eyes.
“I’m just sorry, Riptide,” I tell him sincerely.
“I’m not,” he says with a shake of his head. “It doesn’t change anything for us. People aren’t gonna get it and that’s fine, they don’t have to. It isn’t for them. He doesn’t matter.”
And I don’t believe you.
With another swipe of the paper towel, a splash of cool green soap hits my skin, and he cleans me up before sticking on a large adhesive patch to protect his work.
He’s finished with the tattoo and his parents are now officially off-limits for conversation.
I bring myself to a sitting position on the table as he pulls off his gloves and tosses them into the biohazard bin at his station. When he passes a hand mirror for me to take to the floor-length one and inspect his work, I rest it on my lap, watching him as he rifles through his drawer for supplies.
“Do you want to break something?”
A soft laugh huffs out of him and he turns over his shoulder to look at me, the corner of his mouth pulling into a weak smile.
“Yeah, actually,” he says, “I think I do.”
The second that he’s done bandaging his work and not a moment sooner, I’m off on the hunt for whatever breakables exist in the shop that we can spare or that won’t be missed. The selection is limited, but it should be enough.
Not unlike when he did this for me, I walk with Tripp into the lot behind the shop, my arms loaded down with items that I carefully set onto the ground at our feet.
Picking a stoneware plate from the pile, he hefts it in his hand before raising it above his head. As he brings it down with a strong force, the plate shatters against the asphalt, sending pieces out in a wide spray.
I watch wordlessly as he destroys piece after piece, and as hurt etches itself deep into every one of his features. Hurt from his parents’ repeated rejection, hurt from the older brother that he’s desperate for a connection to, hurt from the wasted worry that he’d given to someone who has never done anything but throw him away.
And I watch him channel every bit of that hurt into every throw and every shard that he creates against the asphalt.
“I’m not angry,” he insists through a white-knuckled grip on a drinking glass that I haven’t seen anyone use since my first day at the shop. “I’m just tired of being fucking right about them.”
A muffled crack sounds from the thin glass as it breaks in his grip, sending a large shard into the palm of his hand. He hisses as he drops the remaining pieces, pulling the shard from its place with a curse to let a streak of crimson spill from the gash that it leaves behind.
“That needs to be cleaned out,” I tell him, taking hold of his hand to press my own against the wound. “That glass has been in that cabinet collecting dust longer than Drumstick’s been alive.”
Humorless, empty laughter bubbles out of him as we walk back into the shop, and he dips his head with a half-amused shake.
“My dad would tell me that was an act of God,” he says. “A punishment from my Father in Heaven for disrespecting my father on Earth.”
“It was an act of physics,” I argue.
Dragging him behind me, I guide him toward one of the leather couches at the front of the shop.
As he settles onto the couch, resting his wounded hand on his thigh, I make for the first aid kit beneath the front desk. It’s probably older than it should be, and it’s fairly basic in its supplies, but it will be enough to get the job done. I’ve fixed up worse with less, and so has he.
