There are television shows out there that do competitions what tattoo-artist is the best. You know the kind; we start with 10 contesters, and we will end with one winner, the ultimate tattoo artist. It’s a weird show. Forget about it, the only thing I remember about it was that they called the poor volunteers whose skin the ‘artists’ used was called ‘the canvas’. Every painter and certainly every writer knows intimately and intimidatingly what a blank canvas is. I you sit somewhere on a busy terrace and spend some time people watching, you can’t help but notice the sparse number of blank canvasses out there. Old people, young people, male, female, pretty, ugly, they all have a tattoo somewhere. Some went overboard, bordering on insane. Most of them decided to decorate their body with some ink.
Observing them confidently show off their tattoos, I can’t help but speculate about the secret designs inked on the parts of their bodies concealed from public view.
“We are visiting the tattoo shop in town today”, Jutta told me at breakfast.
“Perhaps you are, but I’m not, so there is no ‘we’ in that sentence.” I resisted.
“Perhaps I should rephrase that. I’m going to the tattoo shop today. I have never visited that place, so I am completely unfamiliar with it. Needles scare me to death, and I need someone at my side that can hold my hand to tell me it makes me beautiful and that all things will be alright again. But if you don’t want to come, I will go alone.”
“Shameless emotional blackmail, little one.”
“I know, Daddy. But if asking is not enough, I have to resort to other methods,” she smiled.
“And so effective as well.”
“Does that mean you will go with me, Daddy?”
“Have you decided on the design and where you want it, little one?”
“Of course.”
“Undress little one.”
“You mean, here?” We were in her office. People that were at the reception desk could look right into her office. No one was at the reception now, not even her own staff. But that could change any minute, of course.
“It feels significantly warmer in your office than in the parking lot.”
She shivered. “I still choose the parking lot, Daddy.”
She walked in front of me to the parking lot and stood behind my van, hidden from public view.