dryish in the garage and visit them when they get loud enough to remind you that they exist.
Harley did have a TV out there, so there was that.
But the one thing I never accepted, never failed to be humiliated by, never wanted to acknowledge or admit existed was Harley’s tattoos. Oh my fucking God, the tattoos. Journal, you know I love ink on a man, but these tattoos were an embarrassment to us all. Every time I caught a glimpse of one of Harley’s biceps, I wanted to weep. I don’t even know where to begin. I can still feel the heat rising to my cheeks from just thinking about those crimes against art. I have an actual visceral reaction to their repugnance. That’s how bad these tattoos were—are.
Deep breath…okay, here goes.
Knock, Knock. Who’s There? Ding-Dong.
September 21
Dear Journal,
Of all the god-awful things I’ve confessed so far, these tats make me feel the dirtiest, the most ashamed, and they weren’t even on my body. I mean, I guess technically they were on my body. Ew!
In my defense, I didn’t even know that Harley had tattoos until the first time he parked his wienermobile in my garage. And by wienermobile, I mean, this thing was pretty much exactly the same size and shape as the famous Oscar Mayer hot-dog car.
(After my first run-in with that ten-pound trouser snake, I began calling Harley “Ding-Dong.” He was flattered because he thought it was in reference to his penis size. Bless his heart.)
I had ripped his clothes off in the darkness of his basement abode, so it wasn’t until we were done fooling around and I’d turned on the harsh fluorescent lights that I noticed an odd little word etched on Harley’s chest. It was on his left pectoral muscle but a little too high to be over his heart, like somewhere between his heart and his collarbone. The tat was so faint that it could have been written with pencil or performed in jail. Jailhouse tats always seemed to have that telltale sketchy appearance. (Sketchy in both senses of the word.)
I squinted and slinked closer, trying to covertly make out what it said, while Ding-Dong concentrated on shimmying back into his leather pants, oblivious to my scrutiny. Once I was about five feet away, I was able to make out a three-letter word scrawled in a bizarre block outline—ARM.
That’s it. Just ARM. On his chest. It said fucking arm on his chest, Journal!
Arm…arm…
Surely, there was a pun or a play on words there somewhere. People don’t just ask other people to permanently label one of their body parts with the name of another body part, right?
Searching for some explanation, my brain instantly began tearing through every image, phrase, pun, anagram, song, and associated word in my entire catalog of experiences. I had nothin’.
Once Ding-Dong managed to wrestle his anaconda back into his skintight pants, I asked him about it. And I immediately wished I hadn’t.
A little too happily, Harley explained, “Oh, that? Well, it was gonna say 168 FARM STREET BOYS, but the guy who was doing it skipped town before he could finish.” He shrugged and began searching around for his shirt, surprisingly devoid of embarrassment.
I had so many follow-up questions after that statement that I didn’t know where to begin.
So, does this mean that you’re gang-affiliated? Did the guy skip town fifteen minutes into your tattoo, like, out of the bathroom window, because that piece should have taken forty-five or fifty minutes, tops? Oh, wait, is skipped town a euphemism for got shivved? And why did he start with the middle of the middle word in the phrase? Was he dysgraphic?
Sensing my confusion, Ding-Dong continued as he shoved his bare toes into his unlaced boots, probably landing them on the wrong feet, “When I was living in Atlanta, I was a part of a crew called the One Sixty-Eight Farm Street Boys. We all lived in this shitty fucking house, and that was the address—one sixty-eight Farm Street.” Smiling to himself, as if reminiscing about the good old days, he wistfully added, “They called me Scabie James.”
Okay, I only had one follow-up question to that little gem. I tried to sound as non-judgy as possible when I sputtered, “Why did they call you Scabie James?”
“Oh, because I had scabies. That place was really fucking nasty.”
#$%@&@$#%!
No words. My brain had no words. Just electromagnetic pulses of prickly creeped-out no-feelings and alarm bells and flashing arrows pointing me in the direction of the exit.