A young girl wandered into the shop one night, looking for her zodiac sign. She had been in the shop before, she said, and had already seen the one she liked. It was a tribal design, she led me to the flash rack, flipped to the sheet and pointed it out. "That one", she said, indicating a sharp-looking bull's head. I pulled the rack out and brought it to the counter. I love jobs like that, no dancing around and holding their hand for them. They know what they want, and they go for it.
As I was running the stencil, she asked, "Could I make a few changes to it?" Curses. I knew it was too easy. I threw out the stencil and took the copy out of the carrier. She looked at it for a moment and then asked if I could make the horns a little shorter.
"Sure," I replied, grabbing a pencil. Well, so she's not into the Longhorn thing, I thought. I traced the bull's head, bringing the horns in shorter, and showed it to her. She looked at it for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. "I don't know...." she began. "Could you maybe make them curvier?"
Shorter and curvier, no prob. I drew it again, curling the tips of the horns up in a dramatic crescendo and showed her the drawing. She studied it carefully and then handed it back. "Could you make his head not so wide?"
I was beginning to wonder why she picked that design in the first place if she didn't like anything about it. I found it even stranger than she had looked at it on a prior occasion and was still sure she wanted it on her return visit. But that's one thing you'll find about tattooing. Most people know exactly what they want. And it is nothing like what they choose to get.
The bull was looking less like a bull and more like a calf after this latest incarnation, and she still screwed up her face and studied the tracing. "I don't know...." she said again. Well, shit, tell me when you do know.
"Can you make the nose a little less....can you take that off?" she asked, pointing to the ring in the bull's nose. Oh, for Pete's sake, if you don't want a tattoo of a bull, why the hell are you getting one? I redrew it again, hastily, and handed it to her. She gazed at it for a moment, and then slowly nodded her head.
"Okay. I like that." She said. Finally! I hustled her into my station before she could change her mind again. I got her prepped and put the stencil on her, right in that little spot inside the hip bone. That's so cute when they have those little flat bellies and that indentation. Twenty years later it's hideous, but, whatever. She lay back on the chair and I put my machine together. "I'm sorry I was being so difficult," she said, as I put my hands on her stomach and stretched the skin.
"It's okay," I replied. "You gotta get what you want. It's going to be on you forever. Well, at least you're not going to outgrow the design. You'll always be a Taurus." I stepped on the pedal and the machine buzzed to life.
"Taurus?" She exclaimed. "I'm an Aries!"
I pulled my hand away, the needle a hair's breadth from her skin. "This design you picked out is a bull's head! If you're an Aries, you want the ram's head!" I spat. I think I was mroe shocked than she was. I told her to stand up and follow me back to the lobby. She shuffled along behind me, shorts pulled down around her hips, the paper towel I had tucked into the band flapping rhythmically. I took her to the flash rack and pointed at the ram's head design. Curled horns, narrow head, no ring in its nose. "This," I said sternly, "is Aries."
"Oh, yeah!" She exclaimed. "That's it! That's exactly what I want!" Good God, I'm glad I said something. And I realized at that moment that it would have saved me a great deal of trouble if I had said what I was thinking earlier; If you don't like the way a bull looks, why are you getting a tattoo of a bull? I'm sure it would have shocked the shit out of her even then, long before I was at the stage of attempting to tattoo her. So, I learned a valuable lesson there. When someone picks out a symbolic representation of their sign, I'll say, "Oh, Pisces (or what have you), when is your birthday?" I saved a Scorpio from geting a Virgo tattoo that way later down the line. Really, kids, do your homework.
