His touch on my thigh was in many ways more intimate than any touch I’ve ever known—before and after that hot August afternoon on the outskirts of Atlanta. It was no gentle lover’s touch, no frenzied groping in a dorm room, no steady weight throughout the night. His touch brought acute pain as I lay contorted on the table, feeling awkward and exposed as he imparted a part of his soul into my flesh. Over the course of three hours, a finch the size of my hand, sitting curiously on a branch, was painted just below the surface of my skin.
When I moved to get up off the table, my body covered in a sweat made unnaturally cold by the manufactured cool air, I looked to my mom and smiled. She was sitting in a black plastic chair against a green wall, below pictures of people tattooed from head to foot. Fifty-one and conservatively dressed, my mom looked out of place in one of the back rooms of Psycho Tattoos.
“Not too bad, right?” She asked, smiling, while Chris meticulously bandaged my hypertender thigh.
“Nah,” I said, fighting the urge to drop into a Southern accent, picking at the hem of my brown shorts. It fucking hurt like hell, in truth, like someone was burning away my skin, one cell at a time. But I had to be strong in front of my mom. In all my life, I had never heard her complain about something hurting.
We switched places somewhat ungracefully, preparing for another three hours of sitting. Chris moved silently through his work station, carefully prepping for my mom’s tattoo of an eagle soaring before a full moon.
Later, when we stood in the parking lot, I asked her if it hurt. She said it felt like Baby, our cat, scratching her. It was easy, nearly pain-free, in her words.
My thigh was burning.
Savannah’s sticky wetness permeated everything in its grasp. From River Street to Chippewa Square to our hotel room, everything was disgustingly moist to the touch. Although I hadn’t lived in Atlanta for going on two years, I still considered myself used to the humidity, and surely my mother was used to the sticky sweetness of the Georgia air. But both of us were struggling in the thick wetness of Savannah.
My mom and I were sitting in a small Starbucks in Forsyth Park—a 30 acre strip of green in the middle of downtown—sipping on bottled water and flicking through pictures on our cameras. We were both wearing shorts, and as is wont to happen, shirts of a similar green. Even when the space of a continent divides us, we still somehow manage to decide to wear the same color.
“Why a finch?” My mom asks. She glances up from her camera screen to make sure I’m about to answer.
“Well, I’m Finch.”
“Right…”
“I mean, after…” I pause, not willing to even say his name, “After we broke up, I sort of got wrapped up in this creation of myself…”
My mom puts her camera down and looks at me. The child who is almost her clone—but just almost. I don’t know if I can explain my thoughts to her. I honestly try, but it inevitably fails.
“Then why get it on your thigh?”
I pause a minute to take a drink from my water bottle. What can I say? That my recent break up has degraded my sexuality so much that I wanted something that reminded me that I am, in fact, a sexual creature? That I found the image of a classically beautiful woman, hiking her dress up to reveal a tattoo on her thigh to be terribly erotic? That I wanted so badly to connect with my own sexuality, with my own body, that I had decided to create a permanent reminder?
“It’s easy to hide,” I put my water bottle down. I could try to turn the tables on her, make her uncomfortable in retaliation, but I would fail. I know why she got an eagle. Her father who passed away two Septembers before had a huge eagle on his chest from his time in the navy. She missed him, loved him, and wanted a tattoo in tribute. I had never heard her say as much, but I knew that she still cried about his passing when no one was looking.
And this is how it always would be between us—this awkward half-truth from me that, for the first time since I was conceived, brought dishonesty into our relationship. It was a problem I had created in the process of growing up and I had no idea how to cope with the slow distance growing between us.
“Mom, can we go down to River Street again tonight and feed the birds?” I forfeit. I am unable to face the possibility that I might have become the sort of person who lies to feel comfortable and adequate.
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