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| Face Value | |
| By Leo | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 09 December 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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You're a Muslim or a Jew, you're black or gay, she's a career women or he wears a hoody. All these labels. What way is it to qualify the sum total of a human being by using such clumsy terms. Labels maybe say more about the person using them than the person being branded like a tin of soup. You're different in one way or another.. so what? Apart from that, condiments of the season. It was her tattoo… She loved it. It was Dee’s way of signifying she was unique. A one off. Never to be repeated. ‘When they had made you they had broken the mould’, Her mum had always told her. It was a sleek, electric pink kitten with big aqua blue doe eyes. Standing on its back legs playing with a ball of wool. On closer inspection you could see claws, like thorns, streaked with cerise blood. Dee felt is captured her personality perfectly. She was fun loving and playful, but when backed into a corner she would stand her ground. Not in a violent sort of way. Of course not – she was a fully paid up members of the pacifists club. She deplored violence. No, she just wouldn’t allow people to throw their weight about, or walk over her. She came across so many men who thought women should be seen and not heard. Well not this one. After drawing it in her sketchbook, she had taken down to the tattooists in Shoreditch and made an appointment to get it done. The girl who tattooed her was wicked. She never stopped smiling and chatting as she ran the needles first around, and then through the image as she delicately coloured it. It sat pride of place on the top of her left breast. There was no other place for it. Prowling like a neon lion; queen of the urban jungle; guardian of her heart… It was her tattoo… More specifically when she got it that Danny felt he’d lost her. He’d always respected her free spirit and independence. But there comes a time when people change, and do things that equate to them stepping outside of a relationships established boundaries. This had been it. There hadn’t been consultation. Not that she was in any way beholden to him. Of course it was her life. Her body. It was just.. just.. that she didn’t need him to make the decision. Which made him feel like she didn’t need him any more. Tonight she was going out pubbing it and clubbing it. That was fine they had different social circles. It just felt as if the circles in which they moved were growing ever wider apart…. It was her tattoo… It caught his eye. Daryl first saw it as she stood by the bar and creased with laughter. Sheena was telling her a joke. She smiled with her eyes, which just added radiance to her pure white, unblemished smile. And that tattoo said she was a fun loving girl. Someone who loved to have fun. Someone who he would like to get to know. And so he and his pal challenged her and her girlfriend to a game of pool. Winner buys the next round. This was after all, the age of sexual enlightenment. She never stopped smiling. And as she leant over and potted the black he knew she was the sort of girl that any man could fall in love with. Be totally besotted by. In an instant. Forever. “I suppose you’ll want me to be your escort for the evening” he ventured more in hope that conviction. His best cheeky grin, thrown in for good measure. “In your dreams sweet heart” she replied with that electric smile that illuminated her face. She had a boyfriend at home, and she loved him. He was high maintenance; he needed constant reassurance, but she loved him with all her heart. She leaned over to her beaten foe, pinched his cheek playfully, and winked, “in your dreams..” With that she turned and walked off the loo with her girlfriend. Laughing and giggling as they went… It was her tattoo… ‘You can’t miss it…’, Tracey had told her friend over the mobile. ‘It’s on er tit. A proper fuckin’ whore. Ere Sheryl, she’s all over your Daryl. They’re playing pool…’. That’s right, her Daryl, not anybody else’s. She was going fix this little slag once and for all. Ten minutes later, she marched into the bar. She saw Daryl’s face change in an instant. ‘Babe.. Babe…’ he implored. But it was no use. She was consumed by rage. Without stopping she stormed over to the shocked girl, who had just come out of the toilets, still smiling and laughing. The tattoo visible for all to see. ‘Bitch!’ she screamed as she hit her full and hard across the face with an open hand. Before Dee had chance to recover, Sheryl picked up a wine glass and drove it into the side of her neck. A thick, liquid slab of deep red blood smashed over her breast, spraying scarlet debris into the smoky pub atmosphere. Something like a look of horror, panic and disbelief hijacked her beautiful, delicate features. So much blood. She staggered back stunned, losing her footing. Her legs buckled, like new born calf. Weak and vulnerable. Other people sat transfixed and shocked. ‘Get me an ambulance! Quick! She’s bleeding! Please somebody get an ambulance!’, Sheena screamed out Spurred on by the screams for help, a barmaid ran for the phone. Another customer ran over and clamped a towelling beermat to the side of her neck. ‘Sit her down! Sit her down! I’ve done first aid. Sit her down!’, she screamed. Slowly, her lifeblood poured out onto the filthy pub floor… It was her tattoo… The first thing the paramedic noticed as he dropped to his knees and looked frantically for signs of life. Bystanders were clamping blood sodden rags desperately to her porcelain throat. The tattoo told him she was probably one of silly young girls that got out on a Friday and got wasted. Probably acted like an idiot, and started trouble because she was pissed. Maybe she picked on the wrong person, and got a taste of her own medicine. What goes around comes around. The tattoo was streaked with congealing blood. What sort of idiot had a tattoo anyway? He loathed wasting his valuable time and skills cleaning up behind such pond life. He focused on the job at hand. She was losing a huge amount of blood. She was shaking as she went rapidly into deep shock. He had already clamped a dressing to the wound as he leant forward and checked her breathing. Her eyes showed fear. Her breathing was shallow and fast. Too shallow. He grabbed and ambi bag and tried to increase the amount of oxygen he was getting into her bloodstream. She was in serious trouble. And then without warning, her breathing stopped, and she became still. Without hesitation or emotion he started compressing her chest with the flats of his latex gloved hands. Her complexion was already a pale blue. He pumped frantically. They needed to get her to the hospital urgently. She was in the ambulance within moments. Still he pumped furiously. She was receiving fluid as the speeding vehicle screamed through the night with lights flashing and siren howling… It was her tattoo… That her mother saw for the first time when she was asked by the police officer to identify the body. Its presence immediately compounded the sense of distance and loss. Her thoughts were disjointed and out of sync. Why didn’t she tell me she was getting a tattoo? Maybe it slipped her mind. Oh well… At the end of the day it was just a few micrograms of ink, it didn’t change her one iota. She was still a beautiful person beneath. I hope it didn’t hurt. She touched it delicately with her trembling finger. Her cold skin, shocking to the touch. My baby. My beautiful, pretty baby. She looked so still. She was normally so vibrant and full of energy. She loved life, and lived every minute. No mother should ever see her daughter laid out cold and lifeless. Just then the veneer of composure collapsed, as the last vestiges of psychic energy that were holding her together were finally expended. Before she knew it she was sobbing inconsolably. Her tears mingling with the saliva that trailed out of the corner of her twisted and quivering mouth. The police officer closed his eyes, swallowed hard and placed his head in his own hand as tears stung at the back of eyes. The grieving mother collapsed forward on to the inert form and kissed her beloved daughter for the last time… It was only a tattoo.. but she had loved it. It had been her way of signifying she was unique. A one off. Never to be repeated.
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