Jonathan Shaw’s first experience with tattooing. An excerpt from his upcoming novel, “Scabvendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist”

              Vague strains of eerie calloiape music. A twelve-year-old boy standing on his tiptoes, peering into the window of the ancient tattoo parlor.. A thin man, arms covered in fuzzy, blue-green hieroglyphics hunches intently over another man, a sailor…

    “It was like hearing jungle drums. Looking in that window, I was lost in a world I always knew existed. Right down in some deep primal place of me, down deep in my gut… Every inch of those walls covered with haunting little deja-vu images talking to me, calling me from a smoky otherworld place. I could smell the dust on that window ledge…  And somehow I knew, knew what went on inside there. Nobody had ever told me about tattoos. I can’t recall ever having seen one before. But looking in that tattoo shop window I
just knew. And I wanted one, wanted to wear that mark in my flesh. And I wanted to go away. To wherever those sailors sailed to, didn’t matter where to me, sailing in dreams, far, far away over a painted pastel watercolor horizon, far as the spirit could fly on fuzzy tattooed wings…”
  A kid’s nose, pressed up against the cool glass, taking in every detail. His breath fogs at the window glass, adding a misty texture to the surreal memory…
Suddenly a huge, hairy hand grabs his skinny arm in a vice-like grip.
His heart freezes as a booming voice of doom attached to the hand, a red-faced, stocky man, speaks, yelling loudly in his captured ear.
“I SAW YA, YA LITTLE TURD.”
The tattooed bikers and sailors loitering around take notice. A tall biker with a long, grey beard stomps over. “Hey, man, leave the kid alone”, he says.
 ”I saw ya swipe them comics, ya little shit”, the angry shopkeeper says menacingly.
He struggles. As he breaks loose from his grip, a dozen comic books slide out from beneath his shirt, falling to the sidewalk.
As he turns to run, the tall biker extends a casual foot and the kid trips over a huge motorcycle boot. He falls to the ground. The biker turns, laughing, and walks away as the huge, hairy hand of guilt plucks the kid up like a cat snatching up a baby rat..

CHECK BACK MONDAY FOR ANOTHER EXCERPT!

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

We made it out of the subway station without getting arrested and walked over to the sushi place, Narcisa stopping to ask for everything in every store on the way.
A diamond ring, a plastic toothpick holder, a box of Twinkies, a game of battleship, a parakeet, baby formula…
Then we were there and without delay Narcisa immediately began pillaging the buffet table.
I smiled, seeing the mirrors between her and our beloved JS.
Shrimp. Tuna, salmon. Shrimp. More tuna. In her mouth, but none on her plate.
The maitre de scowled at us. Jonathan shrugged and laughed. He was used to that scowl.
“Tempura! Now, go!” She said, bits of rice flying here and there. I wiped a piece off my forehead.
“Make sure you get enough for me.” I added.
“Coca Cola!” She shouted.
At that point everyone in the restaurant was turned around staring at us.
“Narcisa…” Jonathan said. “Relax. Why don’t you sit down with that plate of food?”
“That’s for the old peoples only, Cigano. Old. Got it?” She relented.
“Alright. So keep runnin around like a maniac. Whatever.”
Finally she picked a table right in the center of the restaurant and sat down.
By the time the two of us sat down to join her, maybe 11 seconds later, she was done, belching and moaning.
She hovered one of her knobby hands over my plate for a moment like a starved plucked vulture, and picked off a shrimp.
Then she plopped her head down on the table.
“I am SO full Cigano. I go to e’sleep now.”
“Princess, maybe you can wait a few minutes until I’m done eating then we can all go home and take a nap?”
“Okay Cigano, but hurry it the fuck up.” She put her head back down.
Jonathan finished the rest of the food off of my plate and his and called for the bill.
Narcisa threw herself into the street like a mangy, raggedy sloth and began to hail a cab.
“Maybe she’ll get run over…” Jonathan said, laughing.
Ya never know.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw e Alessandra DeBenedetti. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

When the elevator doors of the hospital opened it was full of plastic doll cookie cutter office workers and fat ladies in their typical conservative 9-5 monkey dresses and suits. There we stood like the three stooges on a bad acid trip, me, Narcisa and my friend Lucia. I was holding Narcisa, who was not “feeling well”, up like a big dead long rat in high heels. Lucia was keeping us company. The doorman said we’d have to wait for the next elevator. Narcisa had other plans. She suddenly pitched a coughing fit that would suggest a mixture of tuberculosis and bubonic plague as she threw herself head first into the crowded elevator, looking like a disheveled elderly vampire with Aids, then she promptly fainted, or pretended to, clutching at some hoity-toity old woman’s blouse and almost ripping it off on her way south to kiss the floor. Boy, you never saw a bunch of old cows scurry out of an elevator car so fast!
 When we started up to the emergency room, we had the elevator all to ourselves. Suddenly Narcisa came back to life and winked, saying, “let THEY waited for the other elevator, e’stupid cow peoples. Better they
walking up the. e’stair an’ losed some of they FAT!!”
 Lucia just laughed. She was enjoying every bit of Narcisa. Having been a troublemaker and a beautiful loser herself all her life, she, like me was getting to relive a day in the life of her own misspent youth vicariously through Narcisa. Narcisa. More fun than a spookhouse acid trip!

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

We want to wish a happy 21st birthday to our dear friend, writer Mayra Dias Gomes!

You are beautiful, we love you, Happy birthday!!!

http://www.myspace.com/mayradiasgomes

http://www.fotolog.com/sensationslave

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.
-Henry Miller

  Somehow I managed to keep my dick in my pants. Probably cuz I knew it was no use. I vaguely wondered if post-recovery sex trauma frigidity applied to blow jobs and how I would breach such a delicate subject at such a crucial moment. What would they say at the 12-step meeting? I remembered that even though I’d only had my dick in Narcisa’s mouth once, probably cuz I was too busy plugging up her supersonic pussy with it, it had been a singularly memorable experience, just like every other sensory detail of Narcisa. Supersonic fellatio!
  Finally, my mind spinning in a libido-drunken fevered waltz with the dakini, I just blurted it out.
  ”Do you think we’ll ever be able to have sex again if you stay clean, baby?”
  ”Not now, Cigano, and not EVER under pressure” she said dismissively.
  ”I’m not giving you any pressure, princess,” I said sweetly, even as my dick screamed, ‘quit yer grinnin’ and drop yer fuckin’ linen, bitch!’
 ”I’m just talking is all, just bringing it up, trying to communicate…” I explained, ever so patiently.
 ”I don’ wanna talk ’bout it these thing now!’”  She said.
 ”Ok baby, that’s cool…” I said, pushing it. “I just would like to know, ya know. I mean we been making all these plans to get married and all that, and, I dunno, I’m just thinking it seems like you don’t really have any attraction to me unless you’re high and, well, I’m still attracted to you and that just makes it kinda funny, ya know? I mean, its cool with me and all. But I’m just thinking if there’s not gonna be any sex anymore, well maybe we should just be friends. Something like that. I’ll still love you…”
 ”Just shut the fuck up about these shit now, Cigano. I tol’ you I don’ to wanna talk ’bout it now,” she said, even as she primped and preened in front of the mirror as if she was getting ready for a date with Paris Hilton or whoever the fuck she’s attracted to. All I knew was it wasn’t me.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

No, it’s not over yet…

The pilot took us around the behemoth statue of Christ a few times and even over the ocean.

Narcisa squeezed my hand. I didn’t mind, I was a little afraid of the whole situation too. Jonathan just laughed as he looked back at our aghast faces. Narcisa continued to squeal and bleat like some young, tender farm animal. Like the odd duck that she is.
Finally, we began to descend back to down to the platform, which was basically just a flat cement block on top of one of the giant rocks that juts out of the city, adjacent to the Sugarloaf Mountain.
As soon as we landed Narcisa ripped her seatbelt off and jumped out.
Jonathan and I followed suit, a little slower though. I had a couple years on Narcisa in terms of learning the art of patience, and Jonathan had what seemed like lifetimes experience on it compared to me. We were a fine bunch.
“What now?” Jonathan yelled over the wshhhh wshhhhhh wshhhh of the spinning propellor.
“Now we get sushi!” Narcisa announced, acting as “benevolent dictator” today.
Yep, sure, why not and just like that we were on our way back down the hill, Narcisa and I the Peanut Gallery on the back of the bike while Jonathan yelled at us to stop squirming.
We parked in front of the Paderia and Jonathan told us to get off.
“We can’t ride into Copacabana like this, so we’re gonna have to take the train”, he told us as he bought some chocolates off of a girl on the corner. He handed one to me and one to Narcisa, and we walked down the steps into the subway.
We hardly made it past a souvenir shop in the station when the nagging began. ”I want this! And this! Oh and this Cigano…”
“On the way back,” he said, placating her majesty, pulling her by the hand onto the train platform.
We got on the train and I pulled out my piece of chocolate and began biting off the corners.
Narcisa wanted to do the same, so she pulled hers out of her “pocket”, which most people would probably call their “underwear”.
She began biting the plastic wrapping off of the corners. A few people stared at her, mouths agape.
“Why people always looking on me like I am the freak!” She asked me, laughing.
“What are you DOING!?!?” Jonathan nudged her.
I looked at the bag of weed she was gnawing on and started laughing.
“I’m SORRY Cigano. These thing all look like the same!”
She put the weed back in her pants as casually as she whipped it out and pulled out the chocolate.
“WHAT?!” She said, addressing all the other passengers as we stepped off the train.
Narcisa. What a fucking freak. Takes one to know one.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw e Alessandra DeBenedetti. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos, foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência. As várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.