I should be editing photos from Japan. I have so many still left to go through. Instead there's a story to tell. No, not one from Japan, though I should be telling those here, too. This story does involve a Japanese tattoo artist however, and a secret, midday drive to San Jose.
It was 10:30 and I was working from home. Except, at that moment, I wasn't. I was barreling down the 101, headed south. At 11:30 there was an appointment with a Japanese tattoo artist for a sleeve I'm considering getting. I say considering, because I can't make up my god damned mind. Sure, I already have more than a few tattoos - but none of them take up a whole limb. It's a matter of degree. Somehow it seems more final when you're closing the door on an entire arm. A dozen smaller tattoos covering an arm, fine. But one big one? Anxiety. This would explain why it's my second tattoo artist in less than 30 days. The first one is still drafting up his version of the tattoo, but I wanted to make sure I have a backup in the event I'm not satisfied with the drawing.
So, I was driving.
The weather was gorgeous and I had the windows down. I'd shaved my head earlier in the morning and the wind was pleasantly tickling my scalp. My iPhone was on shuffle and a lovely set of tunes were flowing from the speakers, all arranged by the random beauty of accident. As I often do, I was speeding, weaving in and out of traffic on a highway unfamiliar to me. The 280, a much prettier highway, is etched into my brain after years of commuting south from San Francisco, but I wasn't on the 280 today. Riding in the left lane, once I was about halfway to San Jose, an HOV lane emerged. Because I was already in the left lane, I was automatically put into this lane as a High Occupancy Vehicle. Now, it's a fact that unless it is a clown car or a limousine, it's similarly suited to seat five people and, in fact, not a high occupancy vehicle. So, what is high occupancy?
I didn't get a good read of the sign as I whizzed by it at 199mph, but it looked like it said something about 8AM-9AM. So I waited. Before long, another sign emerged. It said HOV 6AM-10AM and 3PM-7PM. Given it was 11:00, I was in the clear. Except, now, something odd happened. When I glanced in my rearview I noticed a car tailgating me. It's not often that one looks into the rearview while driving at 213mph and spots a tailgater. And, conceivably, even if this were to happen, it's not often that the pursuing vehicle wouldn't be a cop. But here I was looking at a blood-red Mercury Sable. A hideously ugly vehicle, which speed had rendered even uglier. Like an old man, all purple and proud and pulsing from ingesting a hefty dose of Viagra, neither the man nor the car can sustain the illusion for very long, at least not without medical intervention. For the moment, though, its lie was our shared truth. The driver of the vehicle, I think was a man. I use the word think because all I was able to see was a sunglassed and shadowy face nestled between long, greasy locks of hair. When the driver spotted me looking, he/she pulled the car's sun visor down to prevent me from seeing any more. This puzzled me because I couldn't understand how he/she was able to steer without seeing the road. After all, we were driving at 227mph.
All of this time I was so fixated on the driver that I'd completely failed to realize the occupant of the passenger seat. It was a giant puppet. No, a mannequin. It was wearing an expensive looking blouse and had bright blue eyes. The mannequin was black, so the blue eyes really were something. They stood out. I should clarify: the mannequin's color was black, but its features were obviously caucasian. It was a colored mannequin. The blouse was a silken white and gold, semi-translucent, and it glittered in the sun. There was a timeless quality to the blouse, as though it could have been worn by a flapper or a Geisha, or at a Victorian ball, or a Roman court. Or...by a modern day mannequin. It wore a wig, a blonde afro, which had come loose and was sitting slightly lopsided, like a giant earmuff made of pubic hair.
I didn't like what was going on, so I started speeding up to let the person pass me. As soon as I switched lanes, they followed. I switched again, into the middle line, but once more they followed. When I would slow, they would slow. When I would accelerate, they would accelerate. It was as if we were all bound by a few feet of invisible umbilical string. I was getting anxious. My knuckles were white on the steering wheel and I was gripping it with both hands. Usually I only drive with one hand, in a very relaxed posture. But I was on edge. My eyes were frantic. I was checking anywhere for an exit. A passing green sign told me there'd be one in half a mile, which would give me about fifteen seconds (driving at 120mph) to lose my shadow. To escape, I made a dangerous maneuver that resembled a less-than sign ( < ). I cut from the middle to the far left, and then all the way across four lanes of traffic to the exit ramp. Up ahead there was an off-exit stoplight that was still green. I glanced in my mirror and saw the Mercury Sable merging into the exit lane, maybe 100 yards behind me. I floored it to reach the stoplight in time and crossed the intersection as it was turning yellow. The Sable was stuck at the red light. Jesus. I made a quick bunch of random turns and pulled into a Burger King drive through. Not because I was hungry, but because it was at the rear of a building, and it was very public and active - it was lunch time after all.
After a few minutes, the coast seemed clear so I ordered a soda and some chicken nuggets to help get rid of the shakes. Then I drove back through for a strawberry shake. I was rattled. I routed myself the rest of the way using Google Maps and stayed off the highway. Luckily, I was only two-minutes late to my tattoo consult.
"You smoke weed?" the tattoo artist immediately asked me.
"What? Uh, yeah. Why?"
"I knew I saw you smoke outside," he said.
"Oh, that wasn't me. I just got here."
"It's okay, I smoke too," he said laughing. I wasn't sure if he was telling me he was stoned, or that he wanted to be.
"Oh."
"You smoke DMT?" he asked with soft eyes and a jovial Japanese smile.
"No. Well, I would - I've wanted to - but I can never find it."
"I can get you some, hahaha," he smiled, "come to L.A."
"Haha, now? I can't, I have.."
"No, not now! Next time," he said.
"Oh," I said, also laughing, "okay, yeah, maybe next time."
"So what you want, for your tattoo. Remind me again."
So over the next twenty minutes I told him about my tattoo and what I wanted. He took some pictures of my arm with his phone and then we set up a loose schedule. As I handed him a $200 deposit, he asked me if I wanted to smoke weed with him. Sure, why not.
We went outside, in front of the tattoo shop and he pulled an expertly rolled joint out of his pocket. I hadn't seen a joint like that since, well, maybe never. It was perfect. Japanese craftsmanship at its finest. Absolutely zero wabi sabi on this bad boy.
"Samurai sword," he said.
I smiled and nodded. He lit it up and took a long drag. The cherry burned bright and a sliver of thick white smoke danced off the end. It smelled lovely. Pungent and sweet. As he exhaled a plume of smoke he handed the joint to me. It was good stuff. It was different than normal weed. Instead of being harsh and heavy it was like vaporized honey. My lungs felt coated in it, and warm. I was still holding it in when tires screeched loudly at the corner. We both turned to look. It was the red Mercury Sable. Holy. Duck. I mean, fuck. I couldn't believe it. What was happening? The car was headed right for us. When I began to exhale, the smoke enveloped us in a thick fog. I heard the car crash into a nearby car. My tattoo artist looked at me and said, assassins.
"Assassins?" I asked.
He nodded.
"One of them is a fucking mannequin!"
He nodded.
"What?!"
"Yes. The mannequin is very forever old. She kill Julius Cesar, Cleopatra, and JFK," he said.
I noticed my friend now had a container of sake tied to his hip. And a samurai sword tied to the other.
"Where did you get that sword?"
"I tell you, before, samurai sword."
The fog started to clear and the mannequin was getting out of the car. The driver's door was open but the driver wasn't inside. Now that I could see the mannequin more closely, I realized it was actually more of a sculpture and less a mannequin. On its face makeup had been crudely applied, giving it a sad, clownish look that was both pathetic and terrifying. The strange thing, about the mannequin, is that it didn't appear to move by locomotion. It kind of just traversed space without doing anything, like a soap bubble.
"DOWN!" my sword-wielding friend screamed.
Without thinking, I dropped down just in time to dodge his throwing star, which had been delivered to the skull of the driver who'd crept behind me and was about to strangle me with razor wire. Did I floss when I woke up this morning? When I turned back toward my buddy, his sword was unsheathed and he was squaring up against the sculpture in the white blouse. The fog was nearly gone now and I could see that the sculpture was hermaphroditic. The daintiness of the blouse made its small and misshapen, dangling penis all the more diabolical. I could also see that a small piece of scotch tape covered a single golden hair sprouting out from its yoni. And its wig had been properly rearranged, but it was unclear by whom. My friend's sword blazed through the air, parting the remaining fog as he performed a roundhouse swing which connected with the assassin's side. But the mannequin didn't fall. Instead, the sword snapped. Broke like a pencil. In a single motion the mannequin had pinned him to the floor in a death choke. I ran to my friend's aid, but the mannequin landed a devastating horse-kick - or was it more like a mule? - to my stomach and sent me reeling over.
"the dick," I rasped, "near the dick; pull off the..." coughs choked me as I tried to say tape. I made a yanking motion, to suggest he pull off the tape. He fingered and fumbled for the tape. He grabbed and groped around trying to catch something sticky to get it off. For what felt like minutes, I watched his hand dance off the things pelvis like piano keys until, finally, his fingers were on it.
"pull it! pull it!"
"What? Oh, no, no gay," he said.
"Wha.." I started to say, as reality seemed to reorganize itself. Suddenly I realized I was upright, standing with the joint still in my hand. Coughing. I handed it back to him.
"You weird," he said. "I maybe not want to tattoo you."
"Oh man, no, you don't get it. I had a weird thing happen to me when I was driving down here," I said.
"It's okay, that's okay, I don't want to know," he said waving his hand.
"I just..."
"It's okay," he interrupted, "I will think about it and let you know. Have good day."
Well, I'd blown my cool and inadvertently committed tattoo seppuku. To top it all off I had to drive all the way back to San Francisco, stoned, with a mannequin in the car that was trying to give me roadhead in the HOV lane.
Have you ever tried explaining that to a police officer?
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