DOTTIE
Save me a dance…
Why is it that men say things to you, get your hopes up, and then never follow through?
I sigh as I move around my tattoo parlor setting up for my first client of the week. It’s some guy from out of town who booked me based on the work I’ve posted on Instagram. We’ve messaged back and forth a few times throwing around design ideas, but ultimately, we landed on a forest piece that depicts a wolf howling at a moon that’s actually a fortune teller holding her crystal ball. There’ll be some cool additions of crows flying about, and all together, it’s going to look pretty epic.
I’ve been excited about this booking for well over a month because I love working on large, realistic black and gray pieces. But this morning, I’m not as pumped as I hoped to be.
Save me a dance…
With the entire work area sterilized and covered in plastic and tape, I set out my ink pots and get to distributing the various black inks I’ll be using. A lot of people think that black and gray tattoos use gray as a color, but they don’t. It’s all just different shades of black with different levels of pigment. Sure, gray inks do exist, we just don’t use them on this style.
I get about halfway through filling my little pots when I glance up and catch sight of myself in the floor to ceiling mirror I’ve set up so clients can inspect my work. With my long, dark, super-straight hair braided down my back, my pale complexion looks rather severe, despite the roundness of my features.
During my thirty-nine years of life, I’ve run the gamut of emotions when it comes to my body and my looks. I’ve been on every diet imaginable, tried out every exercise fad, learned how to ‘dress appropriately for my shape’, and accentuated my features with bronzer and blending. But at the end of the day, I had to accept what I was, and if I’m honest, I’m a bit of a ball. Everything about me is round and rather bouncy, and after years and years of hating myself for it, I finally did the most audacious thing in my life.
I learned to love myself just as I am.
Most days I honor the strength in my limbs while I work on renovating the old vineyard I bought a while back. I also honor my mind for the creativity that comes naturally to me whenever I design a tattoo. And if I’m totally honest with myself, I think I have a pretty bomb personality. I’m a great family member and friend. When I look in the mirror, I often find myself smiling at my reflection, content in my own peace.Most days…
But then there are days like today. Days when I’ve just spent the weekend wondering why. Why did the best man at my brother’s wedding—a man I remember secretly swooning over when we were kids—act like he wanted to spend time with me at the wedding reception then avoid me all night? The tall man with dark hair and a neat, full beard, stood right in front of me and all my friends, and asked me to save him a dance. I saved him one. Actually, I saved all of them since I didn’t dance with a single other man the entire time. And he didn’t approach me once. Does that mean he sees all the flaws I spent so many years trying to come to terms with, and is turned off by them? Is my round body too much for him, and he only said that to seem kind? Like he ‘thought’ about dancing with the fat girl, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Honestly, I’d just have preferred it if he’d left me alone. Because now I feel let down and embarrassed for getting my hopes up. And if I never hear another mention about the Whisper Valley Soulwink Society again, it’ll be too soon. Soulwinks don’t exist. And right now, I feel I’m living proof of that.
So what if I can smell those damn candles now…
This is why I quit dating.
Adding yet another sigh to my morning, I shake the negative self-talk out of my head and get back to work. My client should be here soon, and I still need to power up my computer so I can print off the stencils. Standing here ruminating over a date-that-never-will-be isn’t getting me anywhere. I’m happily single, and my life is pretty great. I have my work and the vineyard to keep my focus, and besides that, I have my family and friends to keep me company. It’s about high time I realize that no man is ever going to walk in here and sweep me off my feet. I’m just fine on my own.
THEO
Lying down on the trolley, I slide myself underneath the red Mustang to perform an oil change. The last time I worked in a garage was probably a solid decade ago when I left the family farm in Cedarwood Valley to try out life in the city. My father was livid, my brother even more so since it meant a lot of my chores would land on him, but my mother and sister understood. I needed to see if the grass really was greener on the other side.
Growing up and working nowhere but on a sheep farm for my entire life meant that the only things I was good at were animal care, herding, sheering, agriculture in general and mechanical service and repair. It’s a pretty solid list of capabilities if you’re looking for work in a country town. But when you head to the big city where roiling fields are replaced with weed-patched concrete, then you find yourself a little hard up. I was lucky Duke had moved to the city years before me and could pull a few strings to get me a job working alongside him in the garage.
Honestly, it wasn't much different to the work I was doing back on the farm. The only real difference being that I didn't go home smelling like an animal. I smelled like an oil pit instead. At first, I thought that was preferable. But after a while, that homesickness kicked in. I longed to see wide open spaces and sit in a field with nothing but the sound of a herd of sheep bleating in the distance. The city was just… too small for me.
Getting the tray in place, I pick up my wrench and with a few quick turns, watch as dirty oil pours out and flows into the waiting receptacle. While I wait on that, I’m taken back to the first day I returned home. I’d only been gone six months and called home every week, but from the way my father responded to my return, you’d think I’d been gone six years without so much as a postcard. It probably took another six for him to utter his first word to me, and even longer than that to forgive me. Thankfully, the rest of my family wasn’t so hurtful. They welcomed me home with open arms—even if it didn’t feel like that anymore.
With my dad, things between he and I were never the same. And when he eventually passed years later, he left the farm to my younger brother, Josh instead of me. The final punishment for leaving, I guess. But at the end of the day, I get it. My father was a proud man, and my leaving hurt that pride. There wasn’t a thing I could do after making that decision that would change his mind. I was forever the son who didn’t want what I was born into.
The silver lining to that, though, is that even though I didn’t inherit the way the eldest son has for generations of Olivers, I was gifted my freedom.
Over the years, I’ve used that freedom to wander. I’ve visited state after state, and country after country, always returning to the farm in the spring to help with the shearing and spend some time with family. I’m still yet to find a place that feels like home though. Maybe I’m just destined to always wander and never put down roots? I doubt I’ll ever stop looking though.
As the flow of oil slows to a dribble, I ready myself to replace the cap—something I have to do quick, so I don’t get oil all over myself.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” a voice asks moments before a foot kicks my boot with a decent amount of force.
“What the?” I flinch in the wrong direction, sitting up and hitting my head on the engine. “Ow!” The clock to the head precedes my leg kicking out to rebalance myself, and next thing I know, I’m hitting the oil pan. A slosh of black filth covers me like a wave, and the remnants flowing out of the valve I didn’t get to close up are new dripping on my face. “Fuck!”
I dig my heels into the concrete and slide out from under the car, quickly sitting up and assessing the damage. Thank god for coveralls, because if I was wearing my regular clothes they’d be fucked.
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry,” the voice—that I can now see belongs to Duke’s sister, Dottie—says. She covers her mouth and steps back, her eyes wide. “I thought you were Duke.”
“He’s on his honeymoon,” I say, looking around for something to wipe up some of the mess with. She quickly grabs a rag and hands it to me.
“I know. That’s why I gave him—well,you—a kick. I thought he was in here doing work instead of spending quality time with his wife. I really am sorry.”
