I nodded, but I was playing the scene I had just heard over and over in my mind. Christopher had been clear and forceful—which, incidentally, was hot—and Tommy had responded professionally, even if he didn’t like it.
“That happen a lot?” I asked.
“Not too much, but it happens.” He shrugged. “I’m pretty laid-back about it, mostly, but I mean, bagels…in the morning…in a coffee shop…that one’s not okay.”
“Does it usually go like that? Like, that they admit they’re wrong and fix it?”
“Yep, usually. Here.”
He slid a bagel spread with cream cheese toward me and started with the espresso machine, flipping switches, measuring grounds, adding water.
I bit into the bagel, nonplussed. As a small business owner, I’d had similar encounters a number of times. But…they didn’t usually go that smoothly. Either people tried to convince me the mistake had been mine, or they expected me to pay to fix it. Only a couple of times had people responded to me the way Tommy had to Christopher.
“What’s up?” Christopher asked, handing me my coffee.
“Hmm? Oh. Nothing. Thanks.”
I took a sip and he kissed me, making a happy sound in the back of his throat, and I wrapped my legs around his and forgot about everything except his mouth on mine.
✕ ✕ ✕
My birthday was two days later—New Year’s Eve—and when I got to the shop that day, I found that Morgan, Marcus, and Faron had decorated my station with a banner that spelled out Happy Birthday in Sharpie on inflated rubber gloves. Morgan and Marcus hugged me and wished me happy birthday; Faron bent to kiss my cheek. I grinned my thanks at them as my phone rang. “Hey, babycakes!”
“Happy birthday, Ginge!”
“Thanks. Oh my god, you have to see the banner M&M made me—I’ll send you a pic when we hang up.”
“Well I don’t want to keep you if you’re about to work, but I wanted to say that I didn’t get you a birthday present or send you a card.”
“Have you ever sent anyone a card in your life?”
There was a contemplative pause on Daniel’s end. “Uh. No.”
“Anyway, what use is a present that you didn’t find on the street and hand-deliver?”
Daniel and I had long abided by the rule that we weren’t allowed to spend money on each other’s gifts. Mostly because when the rule was established, neither of us had any. But it had quickly become fun to see how we worked within it.
“Soooo.” Daniel’s voice suggested he was trying to sound offhand and casual. “How’s stuff with Christopher?”
“It’s good, actually. We totally won him over to Camp Ginger and Daniel. He adores you and totally gets why I want to hang out with you all the time. And oooh, shit. I just…uh…realized a thing.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s probably considered bad form to forget to tell your, like, boyfriend person that it’s your birthday, huh?
Daniel snorted. “Wow. That’s. Uh. Yeah, I think your boyfriend person will not be impressed by that at all. Plus, what if he has plans for New Year’s?”
“Well, I guess that’ll be my own fault, won’t it. Anyway, clearly I need to go…like, tell him, huh?”
“I think that’s wise. Happy birthday, Ginge! Text me your revolution?”
Since my birthday was also New Year’s Eve, I’d grown up with people asking me what my resolution would be, and around age twenty had decided that since I liked my birthday and didn’t give a shit about New Year’s, I would decide upon a birthday revolution rather than a resolution: a thing in my life that I wanted to overturn.
And this year, I knew what my revolution was. It had been rocketing around my head ever since the conversation with Christopher the other night. I texted Daniel, Revolution: ACTION, NOT REACTION!
I considered just texting Christopher with, It’s my birthday—surprise! I thought about going over to Melt and just casually mentioning it. Like, “Oh hey, what’s my horoscope for today? And oh, look, it’s my birthday.”
But I stood there so long trying to figure it out that my first customer came in—a large back piece that took hours. Then my second. And a third. Phee came in just in time to take a walk-in who’d clearly gotten all her knowledge about tattooing from L.A. Ink, because she kept trying to tell Phee about her childhood and all the things that had led up to her choosing this particular bird for her tattoo. Phee was concentrating, and every now and then would look up, seeming confused that she was talking, and say some version of, “Oh yeah?” as he shot Faron looks that seemed to beg for help. But Faron, who was working meditatively on a large geometric thigh piece, just smiled like a sphinx.
Around dinnertime, we got a flurry of walk-ins, like we did every New Year’s, folks looking for small tattoos to commemorate the past year or welcome in the new one. Stars and circles and small words in discreet places. They were quick and easy to do, and the customers always left feeling like you’d been complicit in them making a change in their lives, so they tipped well. It was a good night.
Around nine, I was laughing with a customer I’d just given a recycle symbol tattoo, and didn’t see Christopher until he was right next to me.
“Um, hi!” I tried to sound enthusiastic in the hopes of distracting him from the whole ‘forgetting to tell him about my birthday’ thing.
“Um, hi.” He pointed to the rubber glove banner, now slightly deflated but still quite readable. “Is today your birthday?”
“Uhhh, yeah.” I bit my lip and tried, “Oops?”
He snorted and shook his head at me. He didn’t look angry, really, which either meant he was okay with the fact that I was absentminded about dates, or he’d so completely given up on me that he was resigned.
“You’re ridiculous,” he said, but his voice was tender and he wasn’t looking at me like he wanted to leave and never come back. He slid a warm hand up my back and I leaned into him, nodding. “I guess it’s safe to assume that you’re not super into your birthday, then? Because any fantasies you might have had of an elaborate celebration are now tanked.”
I grinned at him, relieved. “Nah, I like my birthday, but just cuz I take it as an opportunity to do whatever I want. Also because fuck New Year’s and parties and, like, those blowy noisemaker thingies.”
“What, unlike all the other days when you do what other people want?” He winked and threw an arm around my waist, squeezing me tighter.
“Ha ha. Well, on my birthday I extra do what I want.”
“Mmm, okay. Well, what do you extra want to do? And do I get to be included, or are you going to make me spend New Year’s Eve and my own girlfriend’s birthday alone?”
He shot me a look, then seemed to register that he’d called me his girlfriend, and flushed. But then he seemed to decide to just go with it and shrugged, like if I didn’t like the term I could say something about it. And, I mean, the word was silly, but…did I mind the concept? Not really. I squeezed Christopher closer to me as I thought about what I extra wanted to do. Things had been so busy lately that I hadn’t really given it any thought.
I ran through multiple options involving all my favorite things interspersed with Christopher, naked. Finally, all those things coalesced into the vision of waking up with Christopher on a lazy morning and lying in bed, then eating breakfast and having nothing to do all day. It had never happened, because he’d been opening the shop early, and I’d been painting in the mornings. But the second I thought of it, it became a kind of personal goal. I didn’t let myself ruin it by pointing out that it might be rather pathetic to have, as a relationship goal, eating a bowl of cereal with someone. I just went with the version of it that I could have.
“Okay. I want a cereal bar. Breakfast cereals. All of them. So I can mix and match and make different combinations in my bowl. And I want you to eat it with me. If you want.”
“I—that’s all you want for your birthday?”
“That’s exactly what I want for my birthday.
And cereal ain’t cheap, mister. Not the brand-name stuff anyway.”
Christopher chuckled and held his hands up. “Okay, if that’s what you want. What about if you make me a list of cereals you want and I’ll go get them and meet you upstairs?”
I grinned at him and quickly scribbled down every cereal I liked. “Oh, and I don’t know what it is, but there’s some granola in the Whole Foods bulk bins that tastes like pancakes. Or, maple syrup, I guess? Can I have that too?”
Christopher shook his head at me. “Sweetheart, it’s New Year’s Eve. Whole Foods closed—” He looked at his watch. “Five minutes ago. Probably only Acme is open now.”
Oh, right. Time.
I made the list, and then I made eyes at him and pulled him in, hands on his hips. I slid the list into his back pocket, and gave his ass a possessive squeeze while I was there.
“I assume you have no milk,” he said, leaning in to me.
“You assume correctly.”
He kissed me, deeper than he usually did in public, and snuck a hand around for a little grope of his own. “Your wish is my command,” he murmured against my lips, but I didn’t have to die of cheesiness because he gave me a dark, filthy look that clearly said I should start thinking about all the other things I wanted to demand.
When I got upstairs an hour later, Christopher had lined up the boxes of cereal on the coffee table.
“Wow!” It was more cereal than I had ever seen outside a grocery store, and he’d gotten regular milk and almond milk, which I sometimes liked better because it had that nutty taste.
“I may have added a few to the mix.” He handed me a spoon and a bowl that wasn’t mine. “I also bought cereal bowls because if you want to mix, your bowls are useless. Way too shallow.”
I kissed him. “Damn, you’re an expert.”
“Oh, of course. I attended culinary school.” He winked.
I put on music and we talked as we tried out different cereal combinations.
“I think I stand by my combo of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Peanut Butter Panda Puffs, and a sprinkling of Honey Nut Cheerios with almond milk,” I said later, collapsing on the bed in exhaustion, in a position where I still had a good view of Christopher and all the cereal boxes. Because it seemed hard to be anything but pretty damn satisfied with those as my view.
“I still can’t believe you love cereal but you don’t like Lucky Charms.”
“Lucky Charms taste like that space ice cream. And I don’t like fruity stuff.”
He shook his head at me, and closed up all the boxes, taking our bowls to the kitchen. When he slid into bed beside me I was already half unconscious, lulled into a stupor by the twin forces of a busy day and a metric ton of cereal.
“Hey, midnight happened and we didn’t even notice,” he said. “Happy New Year.”
“Hppynwyr,” I mumbled. “Thnksfrthecrl.”
“You’re welcome. Happy birthday.” He kissed the back of my neck until I moaned, and I tangled our legs together. He pushed up on one elbow, as if he were going to say something else, but lay down and gathered me close without saying a word.
I drifted off in his arms after we’d eaten cereal together, like I was living a perfect day in reverse.
⌃ ⌃ ⌃
Christopher: Bro, I’m so fucking in love, it’s not funny. She’s it for me, I swear. You like her, right?
Christopher: J? You ok?
Christopher: Hey, everything cool?
Christopher: Jude, you still here???
Chapter 18
Two days after my cereal birthday party I jolted out of a deep sleep as if to a loud noise, but there was nothing. It was still dark, about an hour before sunrise, but I was totally awake. It happened sometimes, if I was really busy or needed to finish a project, my body taking on a kind of hyper-vigilance. My art show was in a week and a half. I forced myself to breath slowly at the thought.
I flicked on my phone to see the time, and was greeted by an endless scroll of notifications—far more than usual, even lately with United Ink going strong.
And these were…not good. It all seemed to trace back to a rant that Eddie Sparks had posted last night. It was littered with all caps, bad grammar, and a lot of emojis, and it essentially accused Etta Blake and me of being melodramatic man-haters with no sense of humor who clearly only got where we were in the business by sleeping with people, since we were talentless hacks who should probably just hide away with other women if we couldn’t take a little healthy competition.
My blood pressure rose with each garbled sentence, and I was shouting at the internet before I was even halfway done. Then I got mad all over again with each comment I read that agreed with him. Each male tattoo artist who confirmed that, yeah, he didn’t like to hire women because they were too moody and sensitive, and it made the vibe in the shop no fun because you always had to tiptoe around them. Or yeah, in his experience, men gave jobs to female tattooists because they were fucking and they didn’t want to miss out on getting laid, then the industry was stuck with them. Yup, it sucked to have to be politically correct and hire women even though they weren’t as good and got upset if you tried to correct them.
It was all shit I’d heard a thousand times before, both within the industry and without. But seeing such a concentrated stew of hatred was like sandpaper over a wound that never truly healed.
There were comments that disagreed with him too. But the shitty ones seemed to yell a hundred times louder and cut a hundred times deeper.
I fumed for a while, ranting and saying What the fuck is wrong with people? about sixty thousand times, and when none of that made me feel any better, putting on Tom Waits, who never failed to soothe, amuse, and depress me in equal measure. Then I put on a double-strength pot of coffee, sat down on the floor, and started to compose my reply as the sun rose.
Because I was done with playing nice. I was done with positive spin. I was done taking the fucking high road when the stink of shit rose to meet it. I didn’t care if it cost me public opinion, or customers, or even the money I needed to buy the shop. I had a piece to say and I wasn’t going anywhere until I’d said it.
✕ ✕ ✕
The shop was a madhouse. We were trying to see clients, but Lindsey was giving us real-time updates from her station behind the computer at the front desk as Tara gave parallel updates from her phone.
My comments in response to Eddie Sparks had been things I’d talked about with Tara, and Daniel, and Etta, and with those who’d shared their stories through United Ink. They’d been things most women in the industry already knew, intuitively if not explicitly. That in an industry run by men, women were set up to compete with each other for a place at the table. That this culture of competition framed women artists as adversaries rather than allies, and put us in positions where we were at risk of losing our livelihoods and our communities if we challenged the status quo. That especially for young women new to the business, like the artist Eddie Sparks sexually harassed, the industry was a place where we sometimes had to choose between doing what we loved and getting to feel comfortable and safe. That unless the industry took it upon itself to change, to hold people like Eddie Sparks accountable, it was as good as condoning discrimination and sexual violence.
Okay, sure, then I called Eddie Sparks out directly for leveraging his power to keep women too intimidated to report him for his disgusting and illegal behavior. And I called him a pathetic dinosaur so afraid of actually being judged for his art that he hid behind starting drama among actual artists. Then I called him a douchebag. And a creep.
And I didn’t regret any of it.
My comments had made the rounds unbelievably fast, and I figured that Etta Blake’d had something to do with that. I’d emailed her right after I’d posted. I was anxious and angry and elated by turns, depending on the updates, and I hated the feeling that strangers on the internet had the power to change my mood so completely with one comment.
After a few hours, when I took a break to
pee and grab a drink, I checked my notifications to see all the things Lindsey and Tara hadn’t updated us about. Unsurprisingly, it was all the epically filthy and aggressive things that people were saying, with comments ranging from how I probably just wanted to do tattoos so I could get fucked by a bunch of men, to how I was hideous and disgusting and I was just bitter because no one wanted to fuck me.
I powered my phone off and dumped it in the drawer of my tattoo station, determined not to look at it until I’d finished up for the night. The last thing I wanted was to be distracted while I was putting permanent art on someone’s body.
An hour later, when Lindsey and Tara were about to leave for the day, Lindsey took a phone call and was clearly agitated.
“Ginger, can you deal with this?” she called, putting the call on hold. “It’s the fu-freaking sharps pick-up again.”
I rolled my eyes, and took the phone, waving goodbye to her and Tara and sticking a folded drawing I didn’t want to lose in the front pocket of my overalls.
After about five minutes of me politely explaining things to this jackass on the phone, Christopher came in, cheeks pink from the cold, and waved when he saw I was on the phone.
“Yes, I’m aware of that,” I said into the phone, blowing Christopher a kiss. “As I told you guys last month, that rate should stay the same for the shop because I negotiated it with Darren to remain fixed. This has already been discussed with Darren, so the price increase doesn’t affect me. You just need to talk to Darren about it.”
“Well, Darren’s out of the country and he didn’t leave a note about it or anything.”
“Listen, dude, I’ve said the same thing to you four times now and you don’t seem to be hearing me. Check the actual billing software, and you’ll see that what I paid was what I owed.”
“Lady, the price went up for everyone. Is your boss there? Maybe he knows.”