Student Showcase: Dan McCool

Shocking

In an unexplained fit of hopefulness I’d decided to get “Always walk tall” tattooed on my leg.  A reminder to myself to keep obeying my skin no matter what.  Make it Latin to be even more official, as if proffered from the Vatican or some other ancient institution of truth.

Then I plugged in the axiom to an online and undoubtedly incorrect translator and found out what it was: “Semper ambulantes sublimem.”  I could never have that; everyone would be thinking, “Ambulance?  You kidding?”  I looked at it in all other kinds of classical languages—French, where trying to translate “walk” is an approximation of the most desparate kind, German didn’t fit the sentiment, and Russian and Arabic looked good as artistic imagery but I didn’t want to look like a criminal tattooed in jail, having pledged my body to some illicit outfit.  So, discouraged, I put it off for a year or so.

Everyone I knew, everyone my age, was getting tattooed.  Trashy stars or inspirational quotes, barbed wire, the usual suspects; and then true art, what seemed so real, a part of them and not an artificial stamp.  Maybe it was the cool thing to do, maybe it was a rite of passage into independence.  And here I was, too afraid to go back home to picket-fence parents and gossiping aunts, to stand the seething disapproval.  Either them or Leviticus, one would stop me.  Twenty-one years old and still a chickenshit dependent too scared to finally step out on my own, in my own direction.  To mark myself as I saw myself, marked like a counterfeit bill or a defective playing card.  I knew I could, I knew I wouldn’t take charge of my body, claim myself for myself.

It had to be plain English.  Of all the words I learned in England, “shocking” is my favorite.  It means “terrible” or “awful,” and can be used as an understatement or at face value, a real exclamation.  Forget Latin and stars, flowers and symbols; shocking was my lowest common denominator, something I knew was permanent, something that would always be true of me.  Worthless.

It’s on the inside of my upper thigh, so when you see it, it’s already too late.  I scraped together enough courage to walk into the parlor, using that adolescent shaming that kicked my thick head into going.  I could use a little torture, I’d be thankful afterwards.  Even a teenage girl could sit through an hour or so, to get her butterfly or whatever it was.

I tried to make that standard, I really did.  Plain English, no fancy script or font, just stark, thin, simple letters.  Spare like that endless winter, flurries falling, cars hissing by the building, dry and cold.  The girl who did me tried to be patient and reassuring, but her kind smile grew tired when I got in the way of business.  I bled, I cried, I asked for breathers until finally she said no.  It would be easier to get it over with.  Exceedingly simple and quick, and yet when she finished with the “K” I just aborted it.  I told her to stop, I was done, I couldn’t make it through any more.

To anyone who’d see it, it would make no sense.  SHOCK.  For me, forever, a constant reminder, yet again, of cowardice, inadequacy, reminded of my inability to even finish my snide insult to myself, of a failed accomplishment.  More shocking than shocking.

Article written by Mandy Stango

Mandy Stango is a fiction writer in Penn State's BA/MA program in Creative Writing.

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