“Tomorrow night’s the first session. After that, I’ll have a better idea of how long it’ll take. We’ll probably do Fridays three weeks apart to let the skin heal.” She noticed how careful she had been not to say “his skin,” much less, “his prick,” and that added to her uneasiness. She didn’t usually keep things from Terry. “So how was your day?”
“Same old, same old. Tests on that new ceramic stuff. No big bangs for a while.”
Terry was an engineering assistant at one of the university’s research facilities. They did a lot of defense work, developing materials and weapons with high-energy electrical pulses. He loved the huge daisy wheel generator they used for their gigavolt experiments, the “big bangs.”
Once Terry got started on his job, she was off the hook. He wasn’t the type to pester her about a decision she’d already made; she wouldn’t have to talk about her new customer again unless she felt like it.
Claren asked him a question about the materials experiment and took a bite of her salad.
As he answered, she watched the supple movement of the skin of his face, deeply tanned from all his cycling.
He has such beautiful skin, she thought. She daydreamed designs for it, lulled by the rhythm of his voice as they finished dinner.
She was restless all the next day, waiting for six o’clock, and wondering if the man would actually show up. She had come in early that morning to have some uninterrupted time to work on the design she would use to make his penis seem ordinary.
Ordinary. Why did he want to look like everyone else? Most of her customers came to her because they wanted to look special.
But she was pleased with her drawing. Plenty of texture. She would fool the eye into seeing shape where there was none; add definition and color—she’d even included a throbbing vein in the design.
He arrived two minutes before six. She flipped the “Open” sign to “Closed” and locked the door behind him before walking around the two front rooms of the shop to draw the shades. For this job, they needed privacy. The light inside the shop seemed brighter once the outside world was shut out.
The muscles in her calves were tight. Routine, she thought, stick with the routine. She handed him a clipboard and said, “Fill out these forms, please,” then went to get a large white bath towel and a plastic squeeze bottle of liquid antiseptic soap.
He was still writing his name on the release form when she came back, and Claren had to resist the temptation to tell him to finish it later. Routine, she reminded herself.
Her tattoo equipment was already laid out on her worktable, but she sat down on the tall stool in front of it and rearranged everything. She would be using small clusters of needles, for a very subtle effect. Too much intensity of color would be a mistake; it would only look artificial. She was going to make this poor guy’s prick look more normal than Norman Rockwell’s. Lifelike, instead of like some freak, she thought. The prospect was satisfying.
The man brought her the clipboard and said softly, “I have finished it, Missus.”
“Fine,” she said, and pointed at the soap. “There’s a bathroom through that door and to the left. Strip and scrub—and make sure you wash behind your ears, hear?”
He hesitated for a moment, seeming confused by the wisecrack. Then he gave her a tentative smile. “Yes, Missus.”
As she watched him shamble toward the bathroom, Claren had another sharp craving for a cigarette. After he closed the door, she called, “Hey—leave your shirt on so you won’t get cold.”
He was pleased with her drawing, and climbed eagerly into the reclining chair.
The texture of his flesh was stranger than she’d expected. After she folded the towel back from his massive thighs, Claren wondered if he was human.
The skin of his prick was fine-grained and very smooth, like a baby’s. Maybe he was a burn victim? But she’d tattooed people disfigured by burns before; his flesh didn’t have the shiny ruined look of a scar.
Awkwardly, Claren reached over and touched him. His skin was hot and more taut than she’d thought it would be—but it was still skin. Completely human, she assured herself. And then, looking at the pale swollen-cigar shape of him, the unnatural symmetry, she corrected herself. Well, maybe not completely.
About eighteen square inches of skin to be tattooed, she estimated. Though none of it was actually square, of course. Artists who needed a flat canvas to work were pikers. With four sessions, that was about four and a half square inches each time. She hoped he was as tough as he was big.
She swabbed him down with alcohol, applied a topical anesthetic, and sprayed him with green soap and water. Then she picked up the duplicating paper she’d traced the design on and positioned it carefully on his prick. She rubbed a deodorant stick across the paper to transfer the design, then pulled the stencil away. The drawing had transferred clean.
Claren dabbed a glob of petroleum jelly at the base of the shaft—the area she’d be starting on—and smoothed the gel out. It would help the needles run smoother over the skin and make the excess dye easier to wipe off.
For once, she was reluctant to use surgical gloves; she liked the sensation of touching his skin. But it wasn’t safe to work without them.
She selected a three-needle cluster soldered onto a bar, picked a tube, and loaded both into the tattoo machine. She would work in a soft pinkish brown pigment first, outlining the design in a very fine line.
She was used to touching flesh. Very accustomed to it, but this was different; when she touched him, it was as if an electrical connection had been closed. She was no longer herself.
Or, rather, not only herself. Now she was feeling things with his big shaggy body as welclass="underline" his enormous heart thubbing-dubbing in her chest, the slabs of his heavy flesh enfolding her organs, odd layers of muscle rippling as she moved her arm.
Claren applied the cluster of needles as if in a trance, carefully stretching out their textureless skin to ensure the proper application of color. She felt the pressure of the needles entering their flesh, a burning cut in the penis she didn’t have.
In spite of the local, it was excruciating.
Without asking him about the pain, she applied more anesthetic and waited a couple of minutes to let it take effect. She continued the work, but before long a chain of sweat was forming along the line of her upper lip and across her cheekbones. Feeling it from both sides—jabbing the bar and taking the needle—was a strain.
After she had the defining lines laid in, she switched to another bar with a broader cluster of needles soldered at a shallow angle. She used a tawny tint for background shading, then went back over the same area with a pale rosy apricot.
Claren paused and swabbed the sweat off her face. Then she wiped the blood and excess dye from his prick. The tat looked too distinct and dark now, but she knew it would fade to the right tone once the skin healed. Blood welled up on the shaft, and she blotted it off again. He flinched, and moved his thigh against her forearm.
Not a freak. The thought came from nowhere, but carried a note of utter authenticity. It was followed by another, even more startling:—genuine mutation—our kind breed true—
She jerked her arm away. For the first time, she noticed that his eyes weren’t brown. They were an intense dark grey. The narrow web of skin between her fingers was itching furiously.
“That’s enough for now,” she said. Her voice rang strangely in her ears. Her fingers had a fine tremor as she positioned the bandage on his prick. “You can get dressed.”