“For five dollars will you draw my first tattoo?” Slurred a voice from above.
I huffed a laugh. “You’d be wasting your five dollars,” before looking up from my spot at the base of My Bradford Pear Tree, stinking and sweating its natural aroma of rotting fish. It was supposed to keep people away so I could sketch in peace and it did, with the exception of one day, a Tuesday perhaps. A day that I would forget.
The man standing too close was nothing of significance to me. Blonde hair, blue eyes with a lanky build wasn’t my type, and neither was timid and drunk on a college campus at Midnight. I glanced at his face with little intention of remembering it, grimacing.
“I’m not kidding,” he whined and I suppressed a sigh.
“But I’m not. Can I see what you’re drawing?” His slender neck strained for a peak and I pulled my sketchbook into my chest, twirling a mechanical in impatient fingers. I regretted, not for the first time, taking Drawing 101 as an elective my final semester at UGA. In the distance, frat boys hooted and hollered. Nothing new or exciting or different. Same old.
“I’m sure your tattoo artist will come up with something great, but I really don’t have time for this and I’m not an art major, so I promise you’re better off spending that five dollars on a coffee or... Something. I don’t know.” I sighed through my words.
“But I want your drawing,” said the stubborn, arm-crossed barely-man in an Orientation t-shirt, only slightly faded. How he thought he had a chance, I would never understand.
“Why?” Exasperated and annoyed, I threw my back against the bark of the stink tree, white-bloomed and sharp as urine. Short, tight hair framed a slender face and street-lit pale eyes stared at me; I shuffled in discomfort upon my itchy chair of mulch, poking.
“What does it matter to you? I won’t ask for your number or anything… unless you want me to, that is.” Eyes darted; he was new to this.
“Oh. Sorry for bothering you,” whispered the deflating balloon of a man and I realized that I was crushing his confidence, sucking his helium through an inflicted hole. He turned to leave.
“Fine.” Stiff legs and shoulders; he’d been struck by a freeze ray. “It’s still a no to the number but you can take a look. You just have to promise that you won’t get it drunk. And you getting it done will not earn you my number, so don’t do anything on my behalf. Okay? Sober up and you probably won’t want it, anyways.”
His heels pivoted in place and I almost gagged at how happy he looked, how intoxicated he looked. Alcohol had not yet lost its novelty to his red-rimmed eyes and I sighed again.
“Take it before I change my mind,” and my sketchbook learned to fly, flapping through the barely stirred air with fluttering pages. A passing group of girls giggled as they passed us.
His hands trembled as he flipped through, a downturned suppressed smile on his lips and flashing from an IPhone camera. I was looking forward to him leaving.
“Well, uh see ya around then?” Said he as he walked back over to me with an unnaturally small gait, his cargo shorts rustling against themselves and holding out a trembling sketchbook. I took it back, a five dollar bill sticking half out the front cover; I would buy a coffee with it.
“Probably not, but maybe.”
“Fair enough,” softly and with a nod.
And so he left and I didn’t watch him leave, instead returning to my third attempt at free-handing a circle.
It’s so much harder than it looks…
I didn’t wonder which tattoo he got, because I figured that he wouldn’t. All of the tattoo artists that I’d come into contact with in my almost four years in Athens were too professional to consider tattooing a slinky Freshman bordering on blackout, and I’d come into contact with several, being nearly covered myself. It made sense that he thought that I was an artist, because I looked the part. Grown out brunette roots faded into blue space-buns and my ripped skinny jeans had come covered in paint, but I had a tremor that I couldn’t shake and a knack for getting distracted so no, art really wasn’t my thing. I preferred instead music and film, and psychology documentaries since that was my area of study.
I checked my watch. It was getting late, so with a stretch and a yawn, I threw my sketchbook into an unruly mess of a backpack - loose papers and Clif bars - and headed back to my dorm on the other side of campus.
By the time I went to sleep that night, I’d already forgotten his face and I hadn’t bothered to ask for a name.
wrote this for fun tonight to take a break from my WIP and might consider it for my next book. the first chapter would begin with a 5 year time skip or so, and two very different people than who we see here. lmk if you're interested!
wannabebumblebee on wattpad
