Here is a short chapter from Jonathan Shaw’s upcoming memoir Scabvendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist:
“A man becomes like those whose society he loves.” – Hindu proverb
Voices singing, bottles breaking... A ship blows a horn nearby. A rum-soaked, tropical night emerging from yellow shadows. Lively open-aired cantinas click into focus, eyes clicking new images into consciousness. A seedy, crowded Plaza by the booming port. A cheerful whore blinks like a sleepwalker across a table cluttered with bottles. CLICK. Three other whores, two Greek sailors in tailored silk shirts, Pepe, Jonathan. Sitting. Drinking. Talking. You are watching a spinning funhouse carnival of memory. CLICK. White jacketed waiters dodging efficiently through the shifting chaos and clamor of jangling tables and an army of shoeshine boys, gypsy fortune tellers, old ladies in wide, colorful patterns, bright faced children selling trinkets behind shiny black eyes of night, a moving, twinkling tapestry of flowers, huge wooden ships floating by on brown shoulders, peddlers and trays of food and bottles, moving, sailing across a sea of hands and wooden trays and faces and words and song, cigarettes, chicklettes, candy, and crazy drunken life.
Pepe struggles through a joke, drunk enough to sail the rough seas of his broken English, gesturing carefully to bring each word along, like a drunken sailor stumbling home.
“One maing, he go for look de ladies. He tek one lady an dey go hotel…”, he winks to the audience of bright laughing eyes around the table. “Okey, so de nex day he, how ju say… huevos… eggs… BALLS. Yeh, he BALLS so e’scrachy… he e’scrachy balls so e’scrachy BAD, ju know?”, making a frantic gesture, provoking tears of laughter from the whores. “okey, okey… so, de nex’ day now he go back de lady, ju know, an he say…’hey, JU!!! JU GIVE ME DE CRABS!!!” More waves of laughter. “Okey, okey, so she look HIM… an’ she say, ‘pues si, mi amor. What ju wan’ I give ju for only de fifty pesos… de LOBSTERS???’ ”
The table howls with drunken laughter as the sailors call for another round. Machine gun toting soldiers wind their way casually through strolling mariachis and dueling marimba bands… Across the table one of the sailors flexes his forearm muscle to make his tattooed hula girl dance to the delight of the whores.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009
bad-assed, poetic writing… Writing to hold up as a standard; No question about that!
…Talk about ‘lowering one’s standards’…
; )