#one tiny memory

[karenbaker]

One tiny memory

The B62 bus, every other seat filled with a five or six year old wearing a honey bee yellow YMCA shirt. Their parents standing nearby, scruffy dads and tattooed moms, making small talk about this show, that client. A quiet Polish hum in the background. We arrive at Metropolitan Avenue and the loose group get off. Summer camp begins. 

[onetinymemory]

I had a nightmare last night.

I remember it so vividly. I was in a tattoo parlor, not your typical Brooklyn hipster tattoo parlor but a shady, under the radar Asian Art Museum tattoo parlor. It was a Chinese massage place meets underground cocaine ring. J had just left, I don't know why, and soon I was sitting at a table having something tattooed to my back. I couldn't see the tattoo artist, just her arm and a loose sheaf of papers she was working from. I could tell she was, like the rest, Pacific Islander. She owned her space, a massive presence with long black hair and the attitude of someone in charge. It was getting dark. I stayed in my seat. 

Across from me, resting his tattooed arms on a dingy restaurant table cloth, was a younger Pacific Islander, with characters from a language his ancestors knew (and he wanted to know) marked permanently on his forearms. Silence. I wanted to leave. I had to go, but I couldn't. The woman had an iron grip, there was no protesting. I kept asking what she was tattooing and she wouldn't say. I kept saying that I wanted to leave and was met with only laughs. 'Even if you go, we can still arrest you for not paying your bill.' A police officer stands guard. The hours pass. 

It's 4 a.m. She gets up to change shifts. Someone else is taking a shower in the next room. I stand, tentatively, among sleeping women and soft chatter, and throw cash on the desk so that I don't get arrested. $59. I walk out onto the street and am in midtown. It's winter and I double check to make sure I have my hiking boots on. I start the long trek uptown through the snow, hoping no one sees me. 

[onetinymemory]

The quiet, lazy moments after your hunger's sated, dumplings gone. Sitting and appreciating the feeling of a full belly, good company, comfortable and accepted in an open, airy space. The conversation goes beyond my purview, to tech valuations, the news industry's soulless pursuit of clicks, VCs' pursuit of engagement instead of impact and I wander off, happily cleaning up and listening in the background to a conversation I helped to spark.