Perseverance

January 19, 2008

After not seeing Virgo Supercluster in a long time, I met her for dinner the other night. Because it was exactly between our two workplaces, I suggested Rodeo Bar on 27th Street and 3rd Avenue. It turned out to be a mistake. Jam-packed with a restless after-work crowd, we had trouble finding each other, and when we finally did, hearing each other. The host seated us in what he called "the quiet section," but it didn't sound any different to me. The dark section, maybe, but not quiet.

We sat down, read each other's lips, and discussed what's new.

"I got a tattoo," said Virgo. "My next-door neighbor is a tattoo artist, and he did it for me. I've never been particularly rebellious, and when I turned 30 last fall, I decided I was going to do the things I've always wanted to do."

"A tattoo? What is it? Where is it?" I said, wondering if it was somewhere I'd be allowed to look.

She pointed to the back of her neck.

"Turn around, let me see."

The tables were cramped, and it was hard for her to twist around, but when she did and tugged at the neck of her sweater, I saw a much bigger design than I imagined. An intricate circular design roughly six inches in diameter in muted shades of henna-like red. Across the top was something written in Arabic.

"Wow, it's big," I said. "I figured it was just a little something on the back of your neck."

"When the tattoo artist first applied the preliminary transfer to my back, and I saw it in the mirror, I was surprised at how big it actually was. You know, when I designed it on a piece of paper, it looked a lot smaller. But I didn't want it to be too small, anyway. It would've felt like a cop out."

"What does it say?" I asked.

"Perseverance."

She assured me that she'd had the translation quadruple checked to make sure it didn't say, "Western Whore" or anything like that. The father of a Lebanese friend of hers did the initial translation, but since he is a doctor, his handwriting was atrocious. She brought it to another friend, someone at work, I think she said, who can read Arabic and who rewrote it with a more precise hand. She took it around to a few more people she knew who could read Arabic -- a surprisingly large number of friends -- and they all assured her that yes, it said what she intended it to say. More or less.

"Has anyone given you a hard time about the Arabic?" I said, picturing misunderstandings at the airport.

"My mother. She loves it, loves the design, but is a little worried. I notice a lot of people checking it out on the subway, though I have no idea what they're thinking. People at work seem a little confused and ask me why I got something in Arabic, and what's the significance. But I just love the way it looks. I think the writing is beautiful. It's so stupid, anyway. People get Chinese tattoos all the time, and no one assumes they're Communists."

"If you're not free to get a tattoo in Arabic, then the terrorists have won."

"Exactly."

Virgo was nervous about the tattoo. Nervous about getting something so permanent scratched into her skin, and nervous about the 3 hours it would take to finish it. "I stressed about it for weeks," she said.

The tattoo artist is a British stoner with long dreadlocks who moved to Brooklyn after spending several years in Trinidad. He has a very laid-back demeanor, Virgo said, and all of her girlfriends are in love with him.

"He made me feel totally at ease. At least I thought so. I guess I didn't realize how nervous I was. About halfway through the tattoo, I started to feel weak and lightheaded. I had to ask him to stop."

I can only assume that the tattoo artist had seen this sort of reaction before, and he fetched her a chocolate mint from a hidden, but handy, stash.

The chocolate only made Virgo feel worse, though. "Like drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth," she told me, and she excused herself so she could go home and puke. She lay in bed with a damp washcloth on her head and debated about going back.

"But I had no choice," she said. "I mean, how stupid would it look to have a half-finished tattoo that said, Perseverance?"