One night two guys came into the shop. They were brothers, they said, and they were obviously quite inebriated. No sooner had one picked out his tattoo, the other picked a fight with one of the girls who works with me. Now, she's a tough ol' gal, and I have no doubt she would have gotten up and beat the crap out of him, even if he was sober. She managed to diffuse his ire and I ended up with his obnoxious ass hanging around me while I was trying to work.
"If you fuck up my brother," he slurred, in a heavy Mexican accent, "I keel you"
"Sure thing, Jack, whatever you say, I mumbled, and drilled away. The guy in my chair squirmed and whined like a kid getting a booster shot. "Sit still," I kept telling him, but he wouldn't listen. Jeez, with all the cerveza in his system, I was surprised he could feel a thing. He jerked his arm out of my grasp. "Come on!" I shouted. "Quit acting like a little girl!"
"You call me a girl, I keel you," he blurted, his eyes half-closed, his head rolling on his neck like a loose wheel.
"Only if you can see me," I chortled, and tried my best to finish working. In the meantime, the small children with these unseemly characters and their two women kept barreling in, wanting to see, tugging at my elbow to get a better look. After kicking them out of the room three or four times, I loudly warned them that if they didn't stay the hell out, their friend was leaving with half a tattoo. That seemed to work, but the brother insisted on staying. "Fine, as long as you don't bother me," I growled. He thanked me by reminding me every thirty seconds that if I fucked up his brother, he would keel me.
After several more minutes of struggling with the one in my chair, he made a strange motion with his hand near his face, and pulled his arm away from me again.
"What now?" I snapped.
"He's going to throw up," his brother offered from behind me. Oh, that's all I need. I can sit down and watch an autopsy while eating a plate of spaghetti marinara and think nothing of it. If somebody vomits, though, I'm wrecked for the next three days. I jumped up, shoved the garbage can in front of him and beat a hasty retreat out of the room. Customers were beginning to pile in the front door, and the boss-ette asked if I was open to do another tattoo.
"I'm waiting for that jackass to finish emptying out the contents of his stomach so I can continue," I replied ruefully. That drew a laugh from the few co-workers of mine who were standing nearby. Puking customers are hilarious when they're happening to someone else.
A good thirty minutes went by, and he was still heaving as if he was on pay-per-puke. I didn't even need to go all the way into the room to check, just standing near the door I could hear the retching, splattering, and, of course, smell that ghastly odor that made me run for cover.
When he had finally finished, I went in to inspect the damage. My jaw dropped as I saw what looked to be the aftermath of a food fight. He had missed the can entirely, dousing the wall in booze-scented vomit. It was dripping down the wall, over the baseboard and running into the other puddle where he had hit the floor directly, right next to the garbage can. The base of the barber's chair was half-covered in it, as if he had crawled under the chair to heave some more when the view from his seat got tiring. I was mortified and disgusted and seething, as I was the one who had to clean it up. I grabbed my disinfectant and began blasting everything, the strong chemical odor covering up the stench of gut-juice.
The two brothers were in a heated discussion in Spanish, where they tore into me using some very vile language, as if I had "made" this happen. Only they didn't count on this Gringo understanding them, and when I shot back with a little dirty kitchen Spanish of my own, they insisted they were talking about someone else. Of course.
I got him done, and the tattoo was really beautiful, all things considered. I wish now that I had taken a picture, but I wanted to get them out of there so badly, I passed on my chance. When they left, I set about giving the room a really thorough cleaning. I had to move everything around, including that heavy-ass chair so I could clean and disinfect under it. I was at it for quite a while, and when I got done, you'd never know a human being had been turned inside-out in there only a half hour ago.
I breathed a sigh of relief and went to sit down at the little desk I have in the corner where I work on drawings and keep a few personal effects. I went to reach for my cell phone to make a call--son of a bitch....After all that, those miserable pricks had stolen my phone. I coudn't believe it. I began calling my number from another phone, but, what respectable thief would answer a stolen phone? Well, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt that they might have grabbed it by mistake, but no dice. Serves me right for having faith in humanity and leaving my stuff out in the open. Especially around drunken, stupid, uncouth humanity, I'm much more careful of where I put things now.
But I did decide I need to make a purchase for my room---a way bigger garbage can, like those lawn and leaf ones. And the next puker has to climb in and sit in their own vomit until they're done, and then I will hose them off behind the building so I don't have to scrub walls again.
