twenty-two
Nov. 25th, 2015 10:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieKona is talking to a client and Maya is inking someone when Kay and I get to the studio. I suggest to Kay that I wait to show him what to do until Maya is finished, and in the meantime, if he wants to he can hang out in the office. I have some paperwork to deal with, because I always have paperwork to deal with, so I can keep him company.
Kona comes into the office after his client leaves, which gives me a great opportunity to tell him that I've decided we could use a shop monkey to do some of the scut work - “Sweeping,” I clarify, when Kona starts to admit that he doesn't mind a lot of the scut work – and it just so happens that I've brought this potential shop monkey to the studio, and he'll be working part-time manning the phone and keeping everything tidy and cleaning the kitchen when necessary.
“Do you want to apprentice here too?” Kona asks, because unless you're looking for a shop manager, which I don't think we're big enough to need, when you hire someone to do the grunt work at your studio, it's usually because they want to apprentice with you and eventually become a working tattoo artist themselves.
Kay shakes his head. “I just need a job,” he says.
“You know we could've found someone to apprentice and do that,” Kona tells me. I just shrug. We could have. Every so often someone comes in and asks if we're taking apprentices, and can they try it out, and I always say no. Jonatha's studio was a pretty big one – there were six tattoo artists rotating in and out, plus the occasional visiting artist, plus a piercer – so there were a lot of people for an apprentice to learn from. Suzume Tattoos just has the three of us, and while I wouldn't mind taking on an apprentice, and I think myself and Maya and Kona combined have some good things to teach them, I just don't think we're big enough. I loved the bustle of Lotus Tattoo, and if one artist was too busy for me I could usually find someone else, and there was always something for me to do and someone to look over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't screwing up. But Suzume Tattoos doesn't have the staff for that.
“I'm not ready for an apprentice,” I say. “I don't think we're a big enough studio.”
“Ok.” Kona looks Kay up and down, nodding as if he passes muster. “Welcome. At least you're already familiar with the place. How are your coffee-making skills?”
“Not bad,” Kay says. “At least people tell me I make decent coffee.”
Kona sighs, put-upon. He thinks that just because he comes from Hawaii, and just because he grew up not far from a coffee farm, and just because he's named after a particular bean, that means he knows a lot about coffee. And to be fair, he's very knowledgeable. He's also a coffee snob. He gave me such a hard time for buying a Keurig that I had to take it back. (I also got grief for how environmentally unfriendly they are, which I thought was a fairer point than the fact that Kona couldn't make coffee from his own fresh-ground beans, couldn't regulate the water, and didn't have any control whatsoever over the process.) Rachael earned a half-hour rant from him once when she brought a canister of instant coffee into the studio to make for herself. She got him to shut up only by dumping the canister out into the trash can while he watched. In payment for that, and because she was now out of coffee, she made him buy her a pound of whatever beans he was into at the time.
“If you're so particular about your caffeine,” I say, interrupting what looks like a lecture, “you can teach him how to do it so you're happy. Or you can just go to a coffeeshop like a normal person.”
“Starbucks burns their beans, and The Drip and Donut, which I know you love, isn't strong enough.”
“I can learn how to make it,” Kay offers.
“Good man. I've got some time. I can show you now.”
He leads Kay out of the office and presumably into the kitchen to demonstrate the proper way to make coffee. I do some quick calculations in my head as to how many hours Kay might need to work, how many hours I can pay him for, and when I should give him his money. Every Friday, or maybe every other Friday, seems like a good enough payday.
I scribble a note to myself - “Try 15 hrs/week & see how it works” - shuffle some invoices, unearth a couple of sketches that don't look like my work, check the clock on the desk, realize my next client is on the way, and go back into the studio. I stick my head in the kitchen on the way and note that Kay looks very intent on Kona's coffee lesson. I haven't had any complaints about Kay's coffee, which he's made for me when he makes breakfast, but I'm not that picky about my caffeine. I want it to be hot, with milk and a little sugar, and other than that, as long as it doesn't taste like the burnt dregs from the bottom of the pot, I'm not too fussed. Half the time I want my hot caffeine fix from tea, anyway.
I set up for my client, run off a stencil, peek over Maya's shoulder to see how she's doing. The middle-aged man in her chair has some beautiful Japanese work on his arms and chest, and it looks like she's filling in a lot of the empty spaces with stylized water and clouds and flowers, to make him absolutely fully sleeved.
“Nice,” I say, to both of them. “Your ink is really consistent. Did just one artist do all this?” And if so, I ask myself, why didn't you go back to them for the fill-in work?
“I've been to a bunch of guys,” he says. “As long as they could match what I already had, I let them go nuts. They didn't cover all the skin, though. I should've asked.”
“Their loss is our gain,” Maya says, intent on the man's inner forearm. He winces. I sympathize. I always want my clients to feel the burn, so to speak, but I don't want them to be in too much pain. And the inner arm is a sensitive spot. Then Maya moves up towards the inside of the elbow and I hear the client hiss. I briefly rest my hand on his leg and concentrate, and because I'm not wearing gloves and I'm getting good at this, I can actually feel him relax.
“I'll leave you to it,” I tell Maya, and go back to my own station.
My next client is actually two – a college student from one of the black fraternities, and one of his friends and fraternity brothers. My tattoo motto is “Love all, ink all”, but black skin, especially when it's very dark, is hard for me to work on. It doesn't take color nearly as easily as lighter skin, and I always feel as if I have to make the lines heavier, so they can be seen. Fortunately this particular client wants something big and heavy – his fraternity letters inside a mandala kind of design, which apparently holds a special magical significance for him.
He tells me he's studying technomancy, but his mother is an artist with a special talent for infusing the perfect amount of light onto her canvases, and she makes her living now producing pieces with magically-influenced auras of prosperity or protection or desire or even just sleep.
“For a while all she was doing were little paintings for babies' rooms,” he says. “All these middle-class folks frustrated that their kids wouldn't sleep.”
“I get that,” I say.
“Yeah, but it's normal for babies to wake up every two or three hours. Mom kept saying she couldn't force these kids to sleep through the night. No one listened. She did a pretty good business from them anyway.”
“White people,” the friend mutters. The client shoots him a look that I interpret as “Don't insult the white woman with the electric needle”, but it could just as easily mean “Shut up, dude.” I'm not offended. I agree that white people can be ridiculous. I also think new parents can be ridiculous, and I believe that holds across the board, no matter what color they are.
My sister told me once that the first one is the hardest because you have no idea what you're doing, and the second one is a piece of cake because now you have some experience. She also admitted in a weak moment that she was a lot more relaxed about her second kid. I could practically hear her husband on the other end of the line shake his head in disagreement. I've never spent a lot of time with my nephews, so I can't really tell. Their lives are very regimented and programmed, because that's what Tristan wants, and I think it makes them both organized (a good thing) and inflexible (a bad thing, which should go without saying). But from my limited exposure to them I don't think they're bad kids, just a little too used to having every moment of every day planned out for them. They're very busy doing all the things their mother (and possibly their grandmother) wants them to do, to prepare them for all the future things she wants them to be. I'm just waiting for one of them to kick back.
My college client is very stoic and doesn't seem to have any problems at all being tattooed. I don't fully understand the people who don't seem to feel the pain, but I'm weirdly grateful for them. It's a lot easier to ink someone when you're not concerned about their pain threshold or whether or not they're going to feel faint and you'll have to stop.
As I'm filling in one of the Greek letters, the lines of the mandala suddenly turn gold, light running along them as if they're on fire, and just as suddenly fade out. It's only years and years of training that keep me from lifting my tattoo machine and stopping work to ask the client if he has any idea what that means. My guess is it has something to do with the specific design and his mother's magical affinity. I assume he has some magic himself, if he's going into technomancy. You don't need it to do well if that's your chosen field, but I've been told it helps a lot, especially in the beginning of your training, when eveything you learn is new and the potential for screwing up and causing a magical glitch is pretty big.
“Hey,” Kona says, appearing on the other side of my chair. He peers down at the emerging design on the client's chest. He must be done showing Kay how to make the perfect cup of coffee. “That's really cool. What does it mean?”
“Brotherhood,” the client says.
“Liberty, egality, fraternity,” his friend adds.
“Egalité.”
“That's what I said.”
The client huffs in vague annoyance.
“French major?” Kona asks.
“Technomancy,” the client says. He manages to point to his friend without having to lift his arm very high. “He's poli sci and sociology.”
“Going into politics,” the friend says proudly. “Gotta fix the system.”
“Good luck,” Kona says sincerely. I've never known him to be much of an active activist, aside from his environmentalist bent, and I make it a policy to not talk about politics in the studio, but I do know that he cares about making sure everyone is treated fairly in every possible way, and that official accommodations sometimes need to be made, and that those with should be helping those without. I also know that he voted absentee for Hawaii even after he moved here, and did so as long as he thought he could get away with it. His girlfriend finally had to point out to him that maybe he should register in the same place he lived, so he could have a say in electing the people who would enact policies that would directly affect him.
“Did you design this?” Kona asks the client, gesturing to the mandala.
“My mom did,” the client says. “She's an artist. I got a couple more that she designed, on my leg” - he lifts his foot - “and the back of my neck. That one's for pride. She doesn't want me to forget who I am and where I come from. It's so I keep my head up.”
I make a mental note to ask if I can see it when I'm done with his chest. His mother sounds like a neat woman, and a good mother.
words: 2137
total words: 44,480
Kona comes into the office after his client leaves, which gives me a great opportunity to tell him that I've decided we could use a shop monkey to do some of the scut work - “Sweeping,” I clarify, when Kona starts to admit that he doesn't mind a lot of the scut work – and it just so happens that I've brought this potential shop monkey to the studio, and he'll be working part-time manning the phone and keeping everything tidy and cleaning the kitchen when necessary.
“Do you want to apprentice here too?” Kona asks, because unless you're looking for a shop manager, which I don't think we're big enough to need, when you hire someone to do the grunt work at your studio, it's usually because they want to apprentice with you and eventually become a working tattoo artist themselves.
Kay shakes his head. “I just need a job,” he says.
“You know we could've found someone to apprentice and do that,” Kona tells me. I just shrug. We could have. Every so often someone comes in and asks if we're taking apprentices, and can they try it out, and I always say no. Jonatha's studio was a pretty big one – there were six tattoo artists rotating in and out, plus the occasional visiting artist, plus a piercer – so there were a lot of people for an apprentice to learn from. Suzume Tattoos just has the three of us, and while I wouldn't mind taking on an apprentice, and I think myself and Maya and Kona combined have some good things to teach them, I just don't think we're big enough. I loved the bustle of Lotus Tattoo, and if one artist was too busy for me I could usually find someone else, and there was always something for me to do and someone to look over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't screwing up. But Suzume Tattoos doesn't have the staff for that.
“I'm not ready for an apprentice,” I say. “I don't think we're a big enough studio.”
“Ok.” Kona looks Kay up and down, nodding as if he passes muster. “Welcome. At least you're already familiar with the place. How are your coffee-making skills?”
“Not bad,” Kay says. “At least people tell me I make decent coffee.”
Kona sighs, put-upon. He thinks that just because he comes from Hawaii, and just because he grew up not far from a coffee farm, and just because he's named after a particular bean, that means he knows a lot about coffee. And to be fair, he's very knowledgeable. He's also a coffee snob. He gave me such a hard time for buying a Keurig that I had to take it back. (I also got grief for how environmentally unfriendly they are, which I thought was a fairer point than the fact that Kona couldn't make coffee from his own fresh-ground beans, couldn't regulate the water, and didn't have any control whatsoever over the process.) Rachael earned a half-hour rant from him once when she brought a canister of instant coffee into the studio to make for herself. She got him to shut up only by dumping the canister out into the trash can while he watched. In payment for that, and because she was now out of coffee, she made him buy her a pound of whatever beans he was into at the time.
“If you're so particular about your caffeine,” I say, interrupting what looks like a lecture, “you can teach him how to do it so you're happy. Or you can just go to a coffeeshop like a normal person.”
“Starbucks burns their beans, and The Drip and Donut, which I know you love, isn't strong enough.”
“I can learn how to make it,” Kay offers.
“Good man. I've got some time. I can show you now.”
He leads Kay out of the office and presumably into the kitchen to demonstrate the proper way to make coffee. I do some quick calculations in my head as to how many hours Kay might need to work, how many hours I can pay him for, and when I should give him his money. Every Friday, or maybe every other Friday, seems like a good enough payday.
I scribble a note to myself - “Try 15 hrs/week & see how it works” - shuffle some invoices, unearth a couple of sketches that don't look like my work, check the clock on the desk, realize my next client is on the way, and go back into the studio. I stick my head in the kitchen on the way and note that Kay looks very intent on Kona's coffee lesson. I haven't had any complaints about Kay's coffee, which he's made for me when he makes breakfast, but I'm not that picky about my caffeine. I want it to be hot, with milk and a little sugar, and other than that, as long as it doesn't taste like the burnt dregs from the bottom of the pot, I'm not too fussed. Half the time I want my hot caffeine fix from tea, anyway.
I set up for my client, run off a stencil, peek over Maya's shoulder to see how she's doing. The middle-aged man in her chair has some beautiful Japanese work on his arms and chest, and it looks like she's filling in a lot of the empty spaces with stylized water and clouds and flowers, to make him absolutely fully sleeved.
“Nice,” I say, to both of them. “Your ink is really consistent. Did just one artist do all this?” And if so, I ask myself, why didn't you go back to them for the fill-in work?
“I've been to a bunch of guys,” he says. “As long as they could match what I already had, I let them go nuts. They didn't cover all the skin, though. I should've asked.”
“Their loss is our gain,” Maya says, intent on the man's inner forearm. He winces. I sympathize. I always want my clients to feel the burn, so to speak, but I don't want them to be in too much pain. And the inner arm is a sensitive spot. Then Maya moves up towards the inside of the elbow and I hear the client hiss. I briefly rest my hand on his leg and concentrate, and because I'm not wearing gloves and I'm getting good at this, I can actually feel him relax.
“I'll leave you to it,” I tell Maya, and go back to my own station.
My next client is actually two – a college student from one of the black fraternities, and one of his friends and fraternity brothers. My tattoo motto is “Love all, ink all”, but black skin, especially when it's very dark, is hard for me to work on. It doesn't take color nearly as easily as lighter skin, and I always feel as if I have to make the lines heavier, so they can be seen. Fortunately this particular client wants something big and heavy – his fraternity letters inside a mandala kind of design, which apparently holds a special magical significance for him.
He tells me he's studying technomancy, but his mother is an artist with a special talent for infusing the perfect amount of light onto her canvases, and she makes her living now producing pieces with magically-influenced auras of prosperity or protection or desire or even just sleep.
“For a while all she was doing were little paintings for babies' rooms,” he says. “All these middle-class folks frustrated that their kids wouldn't sleep.”
“I get that,” I say.
“Yeah, but it's normal for babies to wake up every two or three hours. Mom kept saying she couldn't force these kids to sleep through the night. No one listened. She did a pretty good business from them anyway.”
“White people,” the friend mutters. The client shoots him a look that I interpret as “Don't insult the white woman with the electric needle”, but it could just as easily mean “Shut up, dude.” I'm not offended. I agree that white people can be ridiculous. I also think new parents can be ridiculous, and I believe that holds across the board, no matter what color they are.
My sister told me once that the first one is the hardest because you have no idea what you're doing, and the second one is a piece of cake because now you have some experience. She also admitted in a weak moment that she was a lot more relaxed about her second kid. I could practically hear her husband on the other end of the line shake his head in disagreement. I've never spent a lot of time with my nephews, so I can't really tell. Their lives are very regimented and programmed, because that's what Tristan wants, and I think it makes them both organized (a good thing) and inflexible (a bad thing, which should go without saying). But from my limited exposure to them I don't think they're bad kids, just a little too used to having every moment of every day planned out for them. They're very busy doing all the things their mother (and possibly their grandmother) wants them to do, to prepare them for all the future things she wants them to be. I'm just waiting for one of them to kick back.
My college client is very stoic and doesn't seem to have any problems at all being tattooed. I don't fully understand the people who don't seem to feel the pain, but I'm weirdly grateful for them. It's a lot easier to ink someone when you're not concerned about their pain threshold or whether or not they're going to feel faint and you'll have to stop.
As I'm filling in one of the Greek letters, the lines of the mandala suddenly turn gold, light running along them as if they're on fire, and just as suddenly fade out. It's only years and years of training that keep me from lifting my tattoo machine and stopping work to ask the client if he has any idea what that means. My guess is it has something to do with the specific design and his mother's magical affinity. I assume he has some magic himself, if he's going into technomancy. You don't need it to do well if that's your chosen field, but I've been told it helps a lot, especially in the beginning of your training, when eveything you learn is new and the potential for screwing up and causing a magical glitch is pretty big.
“Hey,” Kona says, appearing on the other side of my chair. He peers down at the emerging design on the client's chest. He must be done showing Kay how to make the perfect cup of coffee. “That's really cool. What does it mean?”
“Brotherhood,” the client says.
“Liberty, egality, fraternity,” his friend adds.
“Egalité.”
“That's what I said.”
The client huffs in vague annoyance.
“French major?” Kona asks.
“Technomancy,” the client says. He manages to point to his friend without having to lift his arm very high. “He's poli sci and sociology.”
“Going into politics,” the friend says proudly. “Gotta fix the system.”
“Good luck,” Kona says sincerely. I've never known him to be much of an active activist, aside from his environmentalist bent, and I make it a policy to not talk about politics in the studio, but I do know that he cares about making sure everyone is treated fairly in every possible way, and that official accommodations sometimes need to be made, and that those with should be helping those without. I also know that he voted absentee for Hawaii even after he moved here, and did so as long as he thought he could get away with it. His girlfriend finally had to point out to him that maybe he should register in the same place he lived, so he could have a say in electing the people who would enact policies that would directly affect him.
“Did you design this?” Kona asks the client, gesturing to the mandala.
“My mom did,” the client says. “She's an artist. I got a couple more that she designed, on my leg” - he lifts his foot - “and the back of my neck. That one's for pride. She doesn't want me to forget who I am and where I come from. It's so I keep my head up.”
I make a mental note to ask if I can see it when I'm done with his chest. His mother sounds like a neat woman, and a good mother.
words: 2137
total words: 44,480
