The Tattoo
Elmo Keep
October 21
A tattoo can come to stand for many things: the initial of a loved one, a token from a drunken night, a symbol of rebellion or loyalty. In the September issue of Meanjin, Elmo Keep recalls her decision to get two large koi tattooed onto her back, from the early stages of the design process to the painful four hour long procedure, as well as the nostalgia and sense of loss that motivated her. A brief extract is below. Read the full essay one our editions page.
No. No, no. I am lying face down, and gripping the legs of the table beneath me and listening already, to the five hours of meticulously selected music I will be listening to for the duration. It will help me zone out, zone it, go there, man, I’m on it, I’ll find the centre, I am Zen, I am at one, my totem is—
SERIOUSLY! No! FUCK!
This is the worst! God, what are you doing? It is worse than you can ever, ever imagine. It is so bad. I am trying to imagine that I am anywhere else but here. I try very hard. I am at a rock and roll concert, I am there, the music has taken me there, I’m down in front of the stage where the men are dressed like demonic, flying superheroes, with batwings, and the spitting of fire. There, that was a great show! I am right there, can smell again the engine fuel. And then I am yanked unceremoniously back to the immediate, awful present when the needle (which is puncturing like a sewing machine would, only without thread, and much, much faster, and you are the fabric passing beneath) hits my spine and something shoots along it, insanely quick, and ricochets into my skull, like a drilling I can feel through my body, rattling the table under me. But it was only for a second then gone. And I am here again, in the room, on the table, looking very intently at the wall that I see I am hitting with a fist without realising. I can be nowhere but here in this moment, I am perfectly awake, I am wholly alive. It is terrible, terrible pain. It has been three minutes.
It was almost, almost over. A long time had passed, four hours and more. Though I had a few breaks, for cigarettes and a chocolate bar, each of these ill-advised diversions was a false dawn, as the needle going back down was like ripping open a wound each time. Horrible. Still, I had done it. Without fainting—though I was nearly sick at about the forty-nine minute mark. Without whirring into an apoplexy of panic. Without leaving, halfway, never to return, never finishing, one of those idiots in that awful book of unfinished tattoos. Wimps. No. I did not cry, no matter what. Until I did.
I was thinking at that point, when I could just manage to mentally distract myself, really be somewhere else and away, that I was walking with you, in the park where you took me when I was little. Every weekend. And there was a very large clearing bordered by trees, and the sun I remember there, catching on leaves and other tree debris falling softly. And you piling me with leaves, until I was covered and hidden and then pretending to be greatly surprised when I emerged from them seconds later, as if from nowhere. Ah ha! I thought you were so scared of me. Of course you never were…
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