Meatspace (5 page)

‘Well, remember to finalise your tattoo designs. I booked you in.’

‘I don’t think I want a tattoo.’

‘I hate your hangovers, they’re always so full of regret. You’re so boring. This is why I need to get away. This funk. This funky stench. This funkington manor.’

I’m walking down our local high street staring at the gentrified ghetto of vintage shops, hipster bars and pound shops, marvelling at the busyness and bustle of 10 a.m. on an unseasonably chilly early autumn morning. Who are all these people and why aren’t they at work? Part of me realises that the innate nature of the hipster
is
not being in gainful employment but running about sorting out installations, video shoots and drinking coffee and talking about meta-collaborations. None of these have any place in a conventional office.

I tweet: ‘If the innate nature of the hipster is to avoid jobs, what do they do for money when there’s no installations to be done?’

@kitab: ‘They all suck each other off and roll around in piles of their parents money’

@kitab: ‘burn socks’

@kitab: ‘Develop Eating Disorders ;)’

I record constructions of a series of nothings in either chronological or flashback order. I string together a few similes like a hack and I send it to my agent and they will either ‘like’ it and ‘share’ it or unfollow me. Either way, I’m stuck in a rut of nothing. I don’t really appreciate what I do, why should anyone else? I used to read so much. I used to sit in cafés and read. I’d struggle to eat with a knife and fork or with my hands as I navigated sentences on a page. Now that’s all been replaced with thinking of arch things to tweet, twitpic’ing my lunch or making up overheard conversations that might make people laugh.

I tweet: ‘Im in a café & this girls like to her boyfriend “Jamie, I wish you hadn’t fucked me in the arse so hard. I cant stop shitting myself.” ZOMG.’

@kitab: ‘LOLZ’

I get 13 retweets and it didn’t even happen. It gets 4 favourites. Even Hayley tweets me to say:
‘
We’re reading together this week! Haven’t seen you in ages, blud. See you at @welovebooksbitches!’

I think I see someone I know sitting in an internet café. I realise it’s just another Indian guy with an oily side-parting.

It’s inevitable I will get ‘Everyday I write the book’ tattooed on my forearm. Maybe drunk me knows me better than real me.

aZiZWILLKILLYOU episode 3 Aziz vs Ink
[posted 10 September, 00:21]

I got a tattoo of a bow tie on my neck today.

My brother, Kitab. He got a job description on his forearm. He’s a writer so ‘Everyday I write the book’. It’s so analogue. It’s so meatspace, innit.

Anyways, I woke up my man Kit with some Buck’s Fizz. Got the guy proper high so he don’t back out. Then I did some push-ups to really tone up my neck and chest, because if man has a neck tattoo, man needs to rep it proper, seen. So anyways, anyways, anyways, I passed out. Don’t mix alcohol and weightlifting, my friends. It’s a dangerous business. I’m finally getting rid of this ugly stupid thing on my neck. This scar from when I was a kid.

We headed to Sick Charlie’s for the tattoos. This guy is a proper swagatha. I argued with Kit all the way cos the dickhead wanted to pay with a cheque. He’s got some royalties due but still, act like you know, you know? Wear this process with pride.

‘Chequebook?’ I scoffed.

‘Yeah, I need it to clear in 5 days. I get some money in about 5 days.’

‘What money?’

‘I get that 80 quid from the Guardian for the best Asians in fiction article.’

‘Sell-out.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Still? A cheque? You’re so 1997 about things.’

‘1997? That’s the advent of the cheque in your brain?’

‘No, well … you know … chequebooks. It just looks a bit lame. Charlie, the tattoo artist’ll think you’re a mug.’

‘Oh right, so you’re worried about me looking uncool in front of a tattoo artist.’

‘Hey, the cooler you are, the more likely they are to do a good job.’ That right, right? Tattoo artists have to do a lot of work. Imagine if they think you’re cool, they’ll put in the extra 10% to make it 120%.

Sick Charlie’s tattoo parlour is too cool for school, my friends. Picture a tattoo parlour in your head. What you’re imagining resembles the outhouse of a biker gang’s gang hut. Where all the crystal meth and bukkake happens. This place was like a hipster design studio, innit. Everything was angular. There were so many angles, you’d think it was an isosceles triangle. There were iPads to read or watch the iPlayer on while you wait. The magazines in the iPad newsstand were Playboy and GQ. The music playing was loud, up-tempo high-pitched hipster indie … you know the song … nee-nee-nee-nee-nee-noo-noo-noo-noo riffs, thumping kick drums. White boy tunes. There was one chair for the one tattoo artist and the mirror was lit by a floating orb, suspended from the ceiling on a transparent string. The chair itself looked straight off the set of Sweeney Todd. Meat. Meat. Meat. Branding meat.

Sick Charlie, he was malnourished thin, no arse to speak of, no visible tattoos, a pointed floppy fringe and dead eyes that told you whatever you’re thinking, he was ‘already over it’. Every time I see a white boy like this, I always wonder how he balances on a toilet with no bot-bot. What do the girls have to stare at when he walks away?

I Instagrammed the place and added ‘Double virgin skin with @kitab’.

I went first into the chair and I watched as the bow tie was sketched onto my neck. It itched on my scar. Sick Charlie kept telling me it was going to be fine but there was one bit, the bottom of the gullet that might hurt a bit. I was like, bruv, I don’t care, I’m really drunk, and Sick Charlie laughed because you’re not supposed to get tattoos when you’ve had booze because your decision-making might be impaired and because they tend to bleed more. I told him I’m joking. But the reality was, Aziz had been drinking – we necked 3 bottles of beer from the fridge before leaving – and I’d had 2 Lockets and one packet of Monster Munch to disguise the smell, because Sick Charlie takes himself and his work very seriously. And some onion chutney. There is a lot of onion chutney in our fridge. But that’s another story for another time told by another person, innit.

When Sick Charlie started the actual inking, I looked at poor lost little Kitab, sat there watching me like his master’s voice and I was like, ‘This is gonna be an hour, why don’t you step out for a bit?’

Kit stared at me and I shrugged and close my eyes. Miraculously, 3 pints in, I fell asleep in the chair.

But when I woke up, I looked like a champion. It hurt like a motherfucker, the red of the bow tie and the red where I was bleeding didn’t really mix well together but fuck it, I stood up a champion. I gave Sick Charlie a cuddle and told him he had done fine work. I look like a baller, a pimp, a motherfucking amazing Spider-man or some shit. I look like Teddy Baker. I look the best.

Looked like the wait was too much for little Kit too, so I woke him up. And then I fucked off into the night because there is nothing that can contain this guy right now.

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History:

Should I banter with my tattoo artist? – Google
Girls tattoos nude – Google

When it’s my turn, I stand up and walk over to the chair on autopilot, as if this whole lark isn’t my decision anymore. Sitting in the chair, I feel like I’m halfway between barbershop and dentist’s office. So, somewhere between tensed up and relaxed down. Sick Charlie asks to see the design again so I show him the printout. I found a font online I like, it’s called Bell Gothic, and typed up ‘Everyday I write the book’ in it, printed it out, and now that’s in Sick Charlie’s hands. He inspects it. I’m not sure I like this guy. He does not give 2 shits about me. I wonder what he’s thinking. He’s seen a lot of tattoos in his time. He has an opinion on each one, hot or not. Will he put extra special effort into the ones he likes and just emptily, by the numbers, do the ones he thinks are so-so, okay, and pretty shit? Does he just rush through the really bad ones?

‘What do you think?’

‘Yeah, man. All good.’

‘Do you get it?’ I say. Everyday, I write the book, I think to myself. It’s a political statement. I could pitch this to the
Independent
or the
Guardian
. ‘In a world of digital interactions, endless tweets, Facebook haikus, ebooks, I’m taking a stand for the analogue world. I’m feeling the writing on my arm, my writing arm and that’s how I will write, with the knowledge that I have etched out my statement of intent on my own skin. What’s more meatspace than having something tattooed on the meat of you? Everyday, I write the book. It’s there for ever, it’s permanent. You can’t throw it away. You can’t dispose of it. You can’t delete it. You can’t cache it. It exists. When every word typed on Google is recorded on a server somewhere, this is the most important statement of them all, the physical manifestation.’ I take a breath. ‘Plus my dead mum was a really big fan.’

I stop talking and Charlie stares at me.

‘Right, okay.’

He returns to ghosting out the tattoo on my forearm in marker pen. He’s doing a great job of copying what’s on the paper. I chose the font because it looks futuristic, like some signage from Tron.

‘So,’ I ask. ‘Seriously, what do you think?’

Sick Charlie looks up at me and grimaces. ‘Look, do you want this or not? Because we’re about to be at the point where it’s too late.’

He looks at the clock. It’s nearly office closing time. Maybe he has a hot date tonight.

‘Hot date?’ I ask.

‘You don’t even know the half of it,’ he says, not looking up from the copy job he is mimicking on my forearm.

Great, I think. I’m a rush job before he goes to get his end away. He doesn’t care about this tattoo, whether its kerning looks good or whether its execution is considered and thought out. I’m in the punter zone. I am to shut up and be inked. I look around the room. Aziz is nowhere to be seen.

‘Did you see where my brother went?’ I ask Sick Charlie.

‘What?’ He just looks at me and shakes his head.

Then I see Aziz at the door. He’s outside, looking for a light for a cigarette. A girl walks past and he mimes to me that he’s going to get a light off her. He winks as if the light is just starters for what he has in mind. He throws me a thumbs up and disappears.

‘Ready?’ Sick Charlie says to me. He holds up his machine and suddenly it occurs to me – I can’t do needles. They freak me out. They make me pass out. They make me sweat. They make my skin slick with worry and anxiety. How did I not remember that needles were part of this whole thing? What was I thinking? I’m an idiot. I turn to the other side of the room and nod furiously, tensing my arms. Sick Charlie pats the area he’s working on, strokes it and pulls at it. Which might be comforting but he’s wearing rubber gloves. So the whole thing feels like a medical procedure. And the drill-drill buzz of the machine is whirring away, banging and banging and I can feel it, without looking at it, approach my skin. I can feel it hone in on the spot it’s to attack and reconfigure for ever. I can feel it approach me quickly. Heat all up and down my arm. I can hear it pound and pound in its grooves and then connection – impulse, pow. It scratches furiously from side to side and I hazard a look. I take a peek, just a quick peek. I see it happening, all in reddening, dampening close-up. So I close my eyes. This only focuses the scratching. I open my eyes and I see the apex of Sick Charlie’s head as he squints and bends over my arm, working away. I’m nearly straddling him. I try to make my arm as loose and goose-like as I can. But all I can feel is the scratch-scratch-pinch of the gun and it’s hard to concentrate.

Do we talk? I’m not sure of the etiquette. My dentist is monologue-happy, meaning he’ll natter away with his fingers in my face. My barber, the sexy Swedish girl or her colleague, who is very tactile with the backs of other customers’ necks, they can’t shut up with their other clients, but me, I don’t know what it is. As soon as I get in the chair, they clam up. They ask me a few awkward questions about how my week has been and I answer them amiably and ask about their weeks and they monosyllable me. Why don’t they want to talk to me? Maybe they can sense that I just want them to ask me what I do for a living, so I can say ‘Oh, I’m an author’ coyly and await their being impressed. Because that’s part of the whole doing something creatively full-time and semi-successfully, you get to tell people that’s what you do, and never qualify it with ‘Oh, and I have a day job at the council, reconciling council tax receipts’. Nope, you’re the creative thing and that’s all. Barbers don’t seem to care about that. God, it vexes me. I just want to show off. Why won’t they let me show off?

I look down at my arm. He’s not even finished the first ‘E’. We’re in it for the long haul.

There’s not much you can do to inspire banter in a tattoo artist’s chair, because you don’t want to break their concentration. Eventually, the scratching becomes an uncomfortable irritant, rather than a painful blat-blat of needles. The thumping indie’s more irritating than the irritating scratching on my arm. It’s jolly. It’s up-tempo. They sound young and happy. What the hell am I doing? Who gets their first tattoo at age 30? A guy who thinks he’s younger than he is. That’s who. It’s okay for Aziz because it’s just the sort of behaviour you’d expect from him. But squeaky ol’ me? Nope. I barely stay up past 2 a.m. I’ve never done drugs except for the odd doobie toke that didn’t take. I worry that this is a slip towards something more serious. I’ll end up trying crystal meth. I’ll buy skinny jeans. I’ll start taking my fashionable self seriously, ditching my uniform of jeans and t-shirt for something more transient, like espadrilles. This is all wrong and it’s too late. Because if I back out now, I’ve got the start etching of an unfinished tattoo and if there is one thing I’m consistent at, it’s seeing shit through to the bitter end, even if I’ve decided it’s a stupid idea since. What a complete tool. The scratching on the arm is constant until he has to move to a new area, which hurts because these new parts of skin have to get used to the procedure that’s taking place. He never looks up at me. It seems like he’s rushing. Is he rushing? I don’t think he’s rushing. Probably. How do you know? What is an appropriate amount of time to spend on a lowercase ‘v’?