BB, bionic angel BB, and even gutter-punk BB brandishing a pair of brass knuckles and a baseball bat. I couldn’t wait to see which one he picked! My fragile little teenage ego was soaring. This man loved me and my art enough to put both of them on his body forever.
Holy shit!
Ding-Dong was actually working at the time (I know, right?) at some auto body shop a good half an hour from his house, so more often than not, I would wind up being his ride home because…no car. (How a guy with no car gets a job working on cars is still beyond me.) I would come home from school, anxiously pick at my dinner, lie to my parents about where I was going, and then dash back out the door to go take his sorry ass home.
Then, one day, when I called Ding-Dong to see if he needed me to pick him up from work (Actually, I probably paged him because there was no way that motherfucker had a phone.), he snickered and told me I could come get him from the Terminus City tattoo parlor instead.
Oh my God! He’s doing it! He’s actually doing it!
My heart and my Mustang seemed to defy gravity as I sped over to Terminus City. It was like Christmas morning! I was giddy and impatient and effervescent. This is why I loved spending time with Ding-Dong. He was just so dumb and carefree and fun.
When I shoved open the tattoo parlor door, I used so much force that the little silver bell above it swung all the way up into the drop-tile ceiling, sending a chunk of plaster flying. The guy behind the desk casually arched his pierced eyebrows and gazed over at the ripped red vinyl cushion of one of the cheap aluminum waiting area chairs where the dislodged piece of ceiling now rested.
“You lookin’ for the dude with the pecker on his head?”
I beamed and bounced and nodded.
Captain Cheerful shoved a black-tipped thumb adorned with a heavy silver ring, not unlike the ones dangling from every convex place on his face, in the direction of an open door behind him. “He’s back there.”
The tattoo parlor looked like it was probably once a tanning salon. It consisted of a front lobby that bottlenecked into a long hallway with doors lining both sides. As I galloped down the hallway, I saw that only one door was open, and there was a god-awful buzzing sound coming out of it.
Bingo!
I burst into the tiny room and found a shirtless Ding-Dong lounging in what looked like a semi-reclined dentist’s chair, placid as a Hindu cow, while a hulking man sitting on his left side stabbed him repeatedly with tiny, buzzing, needles.
I remember thinking that Ding-Dong was a colossal badass for not even flinching when, in reality, he had probably just taken a fistful of Vicodin and washed it down with a bottle of Listerine.
He gave me a slow, sleepy-eyed smile and announced, “There’s my pretty Lady,” as he unfolded his arms and waited for my hug.
I tried to dial down the gusto to match the somber, humming, Zen-like atmosphere in that little space. After tiptoe-prancing over to Ding-Dong’s right side to give him a quick, obligatory hug, I wriggled loose and gingerly slinked around to the other side of his chair where a serious (and seriously scary-looking) tattoo artist was stooped between me and what I came to see.
Out of my way, asshole!
Having to stifle my excitement was making me feel like a human tea kettle—quiet and calm on the outside but liable to erupt into steaming screams of hysterics at any minute. I was dying to find out which one of my drawings had made the final cut. Trying hard not to disturb the orc, I finally shimmied my way to a place where I could see over the scowling creature’s shoulder, and there, staring back at me with big sad eyes, practically covering half of Ding-Dong’s upper arm, was…
Eeyore.
Mother. Fucking. Eeyore.
The depressed donkey from Winnie-the-Pooh , little pink bow on his ass and all, was gazing up at me from the very spot where my own face should have been—no, shouldn’t have been. No part of me ever belonged on this man, especially not forever.
Eeyore took a bullet for me that day, Journal. And he looked absolutely miserable about it.
I glared at Ding-Dong, who was totally oblivious to my fury.
He just smiled stupidly and slurred at me, “It’s Eeyore. You know, ’cause people