He agreed to let me apprentice at Electric Sting, and I’ve been sneaking off to Bloomington to tattoo for months. As a relative newbie with a limited portfolio, I’ve mostly been relegated to tattooing infinity symbols and angel numbers on sorority girls, but I love it. I love the focus and concentration it requires, the precision. I love that whomever I’m tattooing is usually too focused on themself—their decision, their pain—to pay any attention to me.
It keeps me busy and out of the house, a real bonus after I nearly swallowed my foot while talking to Carson.
Electric Sting is located at the edge of downtown in a shabby little strip of commercial buildings. It looks like your typical tattoo shop: lots of black paint, walls decorated with sheets of colorful flash, and black-and-white checkerboard flooring that looks dingy but is actually clean enough to eat off of. Drake keeps the shop immaculate and sterile while still maintaining a trademark gutter punk look.
It’s so different from the sleek glass high-rise of my former office, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t prefer it.
If only it paid as well as my old job.
I’d prefer to be here for a different reason, but all in all, I could be doing worse. I remember hearing about a whistleblower who ended up working at a call center in Delaware, fielding fraud reports for a consortium of credit unions after he got blacklisted from every bank in New York.
I think I’d sooner work a drive-through window.
Rosie, our front desk attendant, greets me like usual. And by that, I mean very unusually.
“Hey, Dan. I need to learn how to do a Jacob’s ladder. Interested in being my guinea pig?” she asks as soon as I walk in the door.
I’m used to Rosie’s bluntness. She’s a little twenty-two-year-old pixie with green hair and a face full of metal studs. She’s training to be a piercer. She’s on the autism spectrum, which seems to make her particularly adept at it; she’s methodical and works cleaner than anyone I’ve ever seen, and her blunt manner of speaking seems to put clients at ease. Turns out people like knowing exactly what to expect before needles are driven through their faces.
“Someone already beat you to it,” I tell her. An aspiring piercer in Eamon’s shop got to my dick three years ago. I made it to three barbells before I said no more. I like them now, but at the time I was not prepared for the experience of having a needle driven through my cock.
Zero stars. Would not recommend.
Rosie’s eyebrows rise. “Seriously? Tall, dark, and grumpy is packing steel?”
“Rosie, that’s an HR violation,” Drake barks from his office just off the lobby. He leans out the door. “We talked about this.”
“You also told me I need to learn,” Rosie says. “How am I supposed to do that without a volunteer?”
“I’ve got a list of people willing to be guinea pigs in exchange for free body art. I’ll send out an email. You’ll get your chance. Stop harassing the staff,” Drake says.
“Fine.” Rosie turns back to me. “If you ever want to add an apadravya, I need to learn that too.”
“Rose!” Drake barks, but I just laugh. Well, I laugh and wince, because the thought of a needle going through my entire cock, top to bottom, makes my knees feel weak. A Jacob’s ladder is just the skin. The glans? Fuck no.
“It’s okay,” I tell Drake, then turn to Rosie. “But I’ll pass on that.”
“I don’t blame you. Six months out of commission? No thank you,” Drake says.
Rosie’s brow furrows. “The book says eight to twelve months. You risk infection from an incomplete fistula.”
“Some people heal fast,” Drake says, but he’s already bracing himself. Rosie’s best quality as a body mod artist is her adherence to rules, but Drake has been doing this for so long that he tends to operate more on gut instinct.
“Drake, do you know what can happen if you get an infection in your penis? You could lose function, to say nothing of sepsis. You riskdeath.”
“Losing functionisdeath,” Drake grumbles.
“First of all, you just agreed with me, so thank you. And secondly, that’s incredibly gender essentialist of you.”
Drake sighs. He’s old, but I’ve been surprised by his willingness to learn from his younger staff. He takes getting called out like a champ. “Sorry, kid,” he says.
Rosie shrugs. “Thanks for hearing me,” she says. “Doyouwant an apadravya?”
“Fuck no,” Drake replies, then rushes back into his office like he’s scared Rosie might succeed at talking him into it. And knowing her, she might.
“You doing walk-ins?” Rosie asks me.
I nod.
