So I had a great idea: I would get a giant tattoo on my back. And ow, my God, the pain! The pain, here it comes! Excruciating! Searing, searing, hot hot hot! Ow! It does not get any better! Ever! You do not ‘get used to it’. At any time during the procedure (which, I have to remember, is voluntary). Help me, please. I’m dying. It burns with the heat of one thousand suns. Like the worst sunburn you ever had in your life, and that sunburn being stung by bees, many bees at once. It is almost, almost unbearable. Jesus, what? Why did I do this? It is exhilarating. Afterwards, I am invincible! But in the mean time, I think I will die before it is finished.

We have few chances in life to face our fears (bears, venomous snakes, tax returns) and, in my case, needles and pain. For instance, when I have to give blood, or worse, when blood is taken from me and spirited away to a facility where it is analysed to be sure it does not contain traces of fatal diseases, say, I cry. Involuntary, embarrassing tears. Sometimes I wear a hat and pull it over my face so the nurse taking my blood won’t see what a pathetic, quivering excuse for a girl I am. ‘Just wait until you give birth!’ This is often thrown at me and I just think: No, no! God, no! Just knock me out and wake me up and present me with my charmed and perfect infant! Instead I smile wanly through the tears and try to laugh about this horrible pain in my arm. And why are you taking my blood? I need that to live!

It’s an hour before I have to be there. I feel as though I am preparing for some great battle. I eat a giant bowl of pasta. It has cheese on it, extra. I am ready? I am not ready. I am filled with both terror and impatience. Okay, shit. This is it. I am going. I am alone. Goodbye. I stop at the bar, conveniently right next door, just about, and swallow a shot of tequila. What? It’s midday on a Monday, yes. Why are you looking at me like that? That reminds me, Get vodka, please. A lot, for afterwards. Thank you. Okay, see you later.

*

I was very specific with things about the fish. The fish are you and me. We are together, entwined, against the current, borne back ceaselessly and all that, only not so fatalistic. At all. This is triumph! The waterfall runs down (well, obviously) my back, cascades down my spine (this part is particularly bad, the pain, you will see), and the fish are swimming upstream. They are striving, you see, constantly. It was important that their facial expressions accurately reflect this inner state of their being, that they are you and me, respectively, though also, interchangeably. Depending.

So the faces of the fish, I had these instructions to give: their faces must appear determined. But not angry. Purposeful, but not aggressive. The look in their eye must signify forging, ever onward. They are happy to be doing this work, it is their choice. Do you see?

There is much mutual furrowing of brows between the tattoo artist and me.

‘But you aren’t really going to do any of that, are you?’

‘No. Not really. I think I understand though.’

‘Okay,’ I say. When I go back a month later to look at the drawing it is perfect.

Why am I doing this? I wonder in knots of anxiety the sleepless night before. Do you not understand, it symbolises X and Y and all that? It will speak of the immutable us-ness of this moment. It will say certain things about me, on my behalf, that I am loath to articulate in case they come out wrong, but you will see them, right there. And it will say these things about me, and occasionally in the future, to me, forever. This body is immaterial, some say. I agree, all is transient. It will wither and die, become (crossing fingers) old and give out, and then I will leave it behind. But until then it is mine and I will adorn it in the manner I see fit. So this is a permanence of some kind, such as we all crave for our lives, and when I put on my jacket no-one will see it. I will never see it except for when craning my neck in the mirror, if I am naked. But I will know it is there.

‘You will regret this,’ you say. I counter perhaps then, you don’t know regret. I regret not seeing my father’s body in the hospital. Not saying goodbye before then. I regret that we have so far not scattered his ashes, five years later, but instead I have carried them with me from house to house. ‘It will hurt!’ you say. Yes it will, it will hurt worse than anything I can imagine. It is molten hot, like lava on my spine: it will hurt. But it will not hurt as much, actually, as the time we said those things to each other, that time after which it was all broken and terrible. No, that was the worst pain, and still, I survived. I am here! Invincible after this pain.

I am looking at the tattoo stencil. It is very big. It will stretch from its upper most point, just below where my head joins my body, and continue down, to just below my coccyx. It is buttressed on one side by the tender ridges of my spine, and on the other by the even more tender troughs of my ribs. It is very beautiful, I look at the fish and am pleased with their expressions of utter serenity/determination/intractable commitment that surely everyone will be able to see. I smile at them. They are swimming elegantly up the waterfall, down which float cherry blossoms over their smiling heads.

It occurs to me at this point, right then, that I will have to be naked from the waist up to get this tattoo, and this fills me with unbidden terror. This is it! I cannot be half naked, here, in public with all these people! That’s crazy! This cannot go forward. Then I look and see the tattooers tattooing the tattooees, who are each as equally absorbed in their tasks of meting out and withstanding the scolding hot pain, and realise that no one will look at me for even a second, and my escape plan is ruined. Don’t punk out, I think, Don’t be afraid. I’m extremely afraid.

I wish very hard for a moment that the tattoo might somehow magically attach itself to my body and be done, and finished and lovely. Or someone will hit me in the head with a shovel and I’ll wake up when it’s perfectly over and done with.

*

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. We were friends.

Then we would walk around, very leisurely, and you would answer all my questions. Like why do planes leave white lines in the sky, like that one up there? And they were vapour trails, you’d say, from where the burning fuel meets the atmosphere. And I asked, how high is the atmosphere? And you said very high, you need to be in a plane to touch it, but you can’t see it, even then. And I asked if we could catch a plane one day so see if maybe we could see it, and you said yes. I was very pleased with this news. And one day we did catch a plane, and I was too amazed by the curve of the Earth to remember to look for the atmosphere.

Then we would keep walking until we came to the house on the grounds, white and huge. A weird place, it had roped-off rooms where you could peer in and see, but you could never touch, you said. It wasn’t allowed, because all the things inside the rooms were very old. And left like that, just how they were. Oh, I said. Okay. But I wanted to so badly. I wanted to jump all over the four-poster bed, and use the plates and bowls for a tea party for you and me.

So we walked through the house, from one end to the other, and we came to the outside again, where there was a pond. Slabs of sandstone ringed its edges and I would sit on them, and they would be cold and smooth. And I would cross my legs and peer down into the murky water, very quietly, not breathing too loudly, until I saw it. The first one. It was shimmering, a deep, burnt orange, and huge, slowly moving the reeds to and fro out of its way. A koi. Then there would be one and then another. And I would count them all and tell you there were twelve this time! And then I would look back down at the water and see your reflection, smiling, looking over me. Not at the fish, but at me, at my delight at seeing the fish. They are very, very old, you’d say. Aren’t they wonderful? And I would ask if we could take one—just one, or maybe two, so they could be friends—and take them home to live in the bath. And you would laugh and say No, they live here. But would you like some goldfish? And I would agree this was a good compromise, though the goldfish would never arrive.

And I was crying, hard and without making much sound, the hot tears slippery between my face and the leather of the bench. But not from the pain, I tried to explain, like I would to the nurse (I just hate needles, you see?) But it was from the pain, in a way I expect that you can see is obvious. Because I realised then, that five years was such a long time to have never done anything proper for you, but that it just wasn’t possible, can you understand? Do you forgive me? I’m changing it now, from now on. This signifies the end, and the start. This was all inside, a (little, maybe not so little) hardness in me, emerging finally because I felt as though my whole back was burning, my flesh was burning. It was so hot.

So though I am sure I will die, I don’t. This is obvious! I am alive! I am unstoppable. I am above humdrum, the petty disagreements and abysmal tiny failures of the day. The bills I keep forgetting to pay, the dishes in the sink, and whatever else! Did I make the wrong choice, once, sometime? A hundred times? I don’t care now. I can withstand anything. I know why I did this. Now, I think. Yes.

— Elmo Keep