The Magic Tattoo
With thanks to The Who for their music.

My brother Zack was two years older than me and a universe away in body. That is to say that he had a body like Mr Universe and I didn’t. I looked up to him as a role model and he made sure I, as a runt, didn’t get bothered much.

Me and my brother were talking to each other
'Bout what makes a man a man
Was it brain or brawn, or the month you were born
We just couldn't understand

One day we were talking about life and things in general and he was bitching about how our father kept on about the younger generation and especially how we looked.

Our old man didn't like our appearance
He said that only women wear long hair

My brother, who had some very dubious friends, suggested that we both needed to exert our manliness and get a tattoo each, he said that he would pay as he had got some money from our mother. We went off to the parlour where there were two tattooists who worked in separate cubicles and he paid for the two tattoos and we each went into a cubicle and sat in the chair provided.

So me and my brother borrowed money from Mother
We knew what we had to do
We went downstairs, past the barber and gymnasium
And got our arms tattooed

I was not altogether happy about this and was very conservative but did pay the guy to do an extra one for me on my hip which no-one would see.

Welcome to my life, tattoo
I'm a man now, thanks to you
I expect I'll regret you but the skin graft man won't get you
You'll be there when I die

Of course, one never gets things totally right. The money was for new shoes and the ruckus when we got home was something to behold.

My dad beat me 'cause mine said "Mother"
But my mother naturally liked it and beat my brother
'Cause his tattoo was of a lady in the nude
And my mother thought that was extremely rude

I said nothing about my secret tattoo, a small blue butterfly near my bum crack. It did, however influence my life as I got older. I seemed to miss puberty and became a very gentle person, always helping my mother, much to her joy.

My brother, on the other hand, went off with his bad friends and somehow collected enough money to get more tattoos. By the time he was twenty he was a skinhead and looked like a moving picture show. The eyes of the police were on him and it was inevitable that he got caught in a smash and grab raid and was sent away for a long time. It was a time foreshortened by his dying of blood poisoning after trying to put yet another tattoo into the only place there was still room with a piece of broken bedspring and some cigarette ash mixed with spit.

I kept my long hair and smooth skin and fell into wearing panties that did, finally, allow my butterfly some air and after I started wearing womens jeans and tops I had the tattooist add a couple more words to the one on my arm.

It now says ‘I’ll be Mother.’

Marianne G 2020