Coming out May 12th, my novel of queer community conflict, surreal architecture, and intense roommate drama is available for pre-order on Amazon and Itch. I’m such an emerging writer right now; I’m emerging so hard.
Below is an excerpt! I believe this novel is the finest thing I have ever written, and hope you’ll check it out.
The walls were Lily’s favorite thing about the tattoo parlor. Thin cracks of paint the same color as classic red lipstick peeked out from between the dense arrangement of frames and posters and signs and mirrors, drawings of sailors and naked women riding dragons and backs covered in sweeping lines. The history of tattooing wrapped close around her, welcoming her to its lineage despite her recent entry. She’d only been at it for a year, but she’d managed to learn under the best tattoo artist in Pittsburgh: Sveta Kosolov. For as long as Lily had been in the city, she’d seen people show off intricate sleeves covered in foliage, or knives, or abstract shapes that made their arms look like the future. New limbs, faces with subtly enhanced features or transformed into perfect cubes, bodies full of bloodless holes that, when the wind blew through them, whistled one of Ke$ha’s minor works. All of it led back to Sveta. And one day, while Lily was getting a tattoo of a chain link fence on her thigh, she looked up at those walls and at Sveta and asked if she was taking on apprentices. After a short but intense stare into Lily’s eyes, Sveta hired her.
In the subsequent year, Lily had come to appreciate more than just the walls. She loved the tables designed to adjust to a hundred different bodily configurations, the cabinets full of bandages and towels, and especially the tattoo guns. Before her apprenticeship, she was a stick and poke specialist. A hundred Bart Simpsons saying “Shit” flowed from her fingers to the skin of friends and lovers, the last fifty perfectly on model. There was an intimacy in tattooing that way, but the gun felt special in her hands. A thick barrel gripped in her fingers, shooting delicacy into a client’s skin, demanding of her only that she guide its power along the correct path.
Most of those paths were very simple: a little star on a girl’s wrist, a circle on a shoulder, a simple penis on the back of a guy’s calf, while the guy kept asking, “Bet you’ve never done a tattoo like this, right?”. Lily didn’t have the heart to tell him he was the second guy who had come in for a calf dick just that week. She wanted to use the gun to impose her vision on the world; bold lines etched in permanence. Ugly new buildings morphed with a wave of her gun, the wire coiling into the distance behind her. A different set of lines could turn the ugly patchwork textures into a tasteful brick wall. But she wasn’t even allowed to use it to change her customer’s face or fingers or knees or anything. Just lines on skin.
Several of the pictures on the wall were of her boss, but all of them merited display: one of her suspended by hooks, another of her submerged in ink so that she was invisible except for her bright green eyes, another one of her body sliced into thin segments and displayed all around the room. Lily didn’t know if that one was real, but the magazine said “Sveta Kosolov, Spread Thin” and when Lily leaned in close, she could see tiny horizontal lines running across Sveta’s face and body where the slices would have been. The tattoo parlor itself felt like Sveta had cut from her body and extended herself across the walls. Every decoration, every shelf, every chair felt like it had emerged whole from Sveta. Maybe it all did, by way of the special tattoo gun that buzzed in her left hand.
Between customers, Lily looked over Sveta’s shoulder while she worked on someone’s face. Sveta kept her wrist and elbow as rigid as if they were in a cast and guided her arm with her shoulder. The gun pulled the client’s nose into a sharp point, then spun a section of their forehead into a green ribbon fluttering infinitely far back into the distance. With each flourish, another section of their face flattened and spiraled, until there was nothing above their neck but a rainbow whirl that flared in its endless colors that could not be contained by space. Colors that were all well-contained within the parlor’s four solid walls, and wound together into a white tip so bright it looked like a star. As they paid Sveta, the various ribbons of color moved and twirled. The door opened and Lily’s eyes couldn’t quite register the tangle of colors and folding space which allowed them to exit, but when it closed, the parlor was empty again. Sveta tucked the money into her back pocket. “They tipped two hundred, that’s sweet. See that, Lily? It’s what you get when you see what someone wants more clearly than they do.” An accent gently touched Sveta’s vowels. A small spin on each one, though they still got to their destination precisely.
The two of them spent a little time discussing technical questions about how Sveta had gotten the point on the front of the customer’s face so sharp. As they talked and Sveta drew a diagram, Lily noticed light scars and gnarled muscle on the back of Sveta’s hand. The subtle bumps which may have once been slices interrupted the elegant line of her wrist and arm leading up to her body, a brutality where grace should be. With one stroke of that tattoo gun, it could be fixed. Once, Lily had asked why Sveta hadn’t bothered to do so. Sveta held up her hand, and softly dragged her fingers over the little ridges with wistfulness in her eyes. She said, “You’re here to learn how, not why,” and that was the end of it.
That afternoon, Sveta gave her an exercise: to tattoo a grapefruit. The goal was to turn it into an apple, then a pear, then a handful of strawberries, and finally into orange juice. Lily turned on the gun. She held her breath and kept still, the only motion in her body the reverberations from the gun’s reality-bending power. Careful, careful. Start with a straight line down the middle of the grapefruit, to warp its shape. But as soon as she moved the needle, juice splattered on her face and she flinched, tossing the gun aside. Its vibration stopped when her thumb fled the button. What had gone wrong?
The sting in her eyes affirmed that it was still grapefruit juice. As she cried the acid out of her eyes, Lily discovered two halves of a human heart, coated in rind. One half was still, while the other flinched and pumped weak spurts of grapefruit juice onto the table. Lily couldn’t contain her revulsion and crawled across the floor to puke into the nearest trash can. As nausea heaved her body, Sveta’s delicate laugh rang out.
“Ah, you pulled too hard. It hooks the flesh and then, boom, a nightmare. Remember, the gun understands your mind as it beholds the potential of the object.” The buzzing sounded again. “So keep your mind empty. Want an apple? Feel its potential to be an apple. No other thoughts.”
Lily’s body continued to retch, far beyond her control. Sveta crouched beside her. They both waited a few minutes until the image of the heart lost its immediacy, and Lily could retreat from the trash can. Sveta handed her the grapefruit. “Your schedule is clear. This afternoon, meditate. Hold this grapefruit. Empty thoughts, except for breath, and except for grapefruit.”
Lily wouldn’t get any more of Sveta’s patience that day; as much as sitting quiet in a corner was a useful exercise, it was also a way to make sure Lily didn’t cause a distraction. Sveta would forgive her error once Lily progressed. Nothing flatters the teacher like learning a lesson. Until then, meditation. She rolled the grapefruit around in her palms. Tough rind against soft skin, but the rind felt wet, and her hand too dry. Had Sveta returned it to a normal grapefruit? Or did it contain a secret for her to discover? Lily pushed her thumbs into the rind and the sensation of gouging out someone’s eyes burst to the forefront of her mind. She dropped the grapefruit. It was eyes. Of course it was eyes. Some juice dribbled from the cracked rind. A normal grapefruit returned the eyes to Lily’s imagination, but peace and focus would have to wait until tomorrow.
For the rest of her shift, Lily pretended to meditate, nestling the grapefruit’s crack in her palm. At five, she hustled out the door, hoping to conceal her failure. With the grapefruit safely thrown away, she could breathe again. Had it been a trick? Sveta wasn’t one for tests or obscure lessons. There would be more grapefruits, more lessons, and for another day, Lily would try to climb the sheer wall to mastery.