Outsider Read online

  Sid was always afraid of intruding, getting tattooed was such an intimate experience for her, something so special. She hadn’t undressed for anyone else in the last few years. There was a touch of absurdity to her reasoning: after all, she wasn’t the only one undressing for Jessie. Even so, the relationship with her tattooist felt as special as a relationship with a lover. This said, Sid had never felt intruded upon whenever Pam had ushered any of Jessie’s friends into the cubicle while Sid was getting inked. Sid loved living with contradictions.

  “What do you think?” Elizabeth’s excited voice enquired.

  “Brilliant!” Sid replied enthusiastically.

  Jessie had added two playful dolphins on an already abundant collection of sea animals, closing the last blank on the left shoulder blade. Now, done with whales and octopuses, Elizabeth was free to design an armful of sea stars, in between songs with blues and jazz tinges.

  “Time for coffee!” Jessie exclaimed after taping a cling film over the dolphins. “Then we’ll get started on your leg!”

  Yes, this was Sid’s plan: coffee and another totem pole.

  * * * * * * *

  Sid, when not plagued by the pain of the needles, enjoyed chatting with Jessie, picking her brain for descriptions, definitions and philosophical quotations. She would generally distinctively articulate the first question crossing her mind. This particular day for this particular tattoo, it turned out to be:

  “How do you define a Goth?”

  Jessie, always the chatty kind, never minded Sid’s queries, never really wondered where her friend and client’s curiosity stemmed from. She would cheerfully answered, basing her observations on her personal experience of squats and pubs, anarchist camps and other alternatives scenes that Sid would never tread upon.

  “They always wear black.”

  “Sounds like me.”

  “No, you’re not Goth. You’re too cheerful. A friend of mine used to go out with a Goth and she dumped him because he was too cheerful.”

  Cheerful, me? Sid thought. Am I really that good at hiding my depression? A lifetime of practice, so ironic.

  “Stacee is a Goth,” Jessie added.

  Stacee had long, black hair, striking black eyeliner and a taste for skulls. Sid always felt impressed and small in her presence, and never really knew what to say, afraid of coming up with the most boring subjects of conversation.

  Ok, Sid kept up with her cogitations, not voicing them out loud, damn, I cannot be Goth; I’ll never use make-up in a million years. She came up with her next enquiry:

  “Ok, how do you define a punk?”

  “You’re a punk! There is a political side to punk that you don’t find with the Goths. Gothic is more like a fashion.”

  Sid had never thought about this detail. The drilling sound of the tattoo machine carving and inking the skin of her right leg with various animals piled up in Haida style, prevented her from expressing her every thought for Jessie’s benefit. Was Jessie a punk? Maybe: she sported a multicolored mohican and her make-up was a colourful version of the gothic one. She had tattoos and piercings aplenty. But Sid, a punk? She felt like laughing, but the buzzing tattoo machine was somewhat restraining her laughing muscles, remembering men coming on to her with the choicy line: “I’m interested in the punk philosophy, too!” Yeah, sure, no future. But politics? Maybe some punks had turned anarchists. Nowadays, she couldn’t view herself as such anymore. She had tried, and failed finding affinities and creating connections with squatters and anarchists. She had seen punks staring at her from afar with a look of wonderment plastered all over their face. Despite her green mohican, Sid was no punk and had never said so, never enlightened anyone about this detail of identity, or non-identity. She wasn’t working-class. She was from a middle-class background. Sure, many punks could identify, but Sid couldn’t. A rush of tension provoked a snake of sharp pain through her attended leg, and she went silent, watching Jessie, focused and precise, cutting through the outer layer of the skin, inking miracles.

  “How are you doing?”

  Sid’s bubble burst with sudden relief. She exhaled a long sigh. The tattoo machine was poised in mid-air.

  “Care for a break?” Sid grimaced. She was brave, but she also liked coffee.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dreams were the stuff Sid’s life was made of. Every morning she would wake up and before getting up, would ritually record the leftover memories in her diary. To wake up and remember three dreams was a usual occurrence. Or used to be, in the times before she got on anti-depressants. Now she felt fortunate when she could remember various snatches of various dreams or even, luck of luck, glory of glory, a whole dream in Technicolor. She treasured them. The Dreamworld was more real to her than the so-called Reality. It was the source and inspiration of her songs, her strength, her creativity, her life.

  She loved it when friends visited her dreams. It was the one sure sign that they were really her friends, no matter the geographical distances, the background differences, the life style circumstances.

  Entries of her diary would often read as follow:

  “Terri visited me in my dream. We talked music.

  Second Look were also in my dreams last night and the night before last.”

  “Dreamed I was at the Second Look gig but the Black Crow was a huge venue. They had finished performing and I was looking for everyone I knew, especially the Second Look virgins I had convinced to come along. I was finding people and losing them in the crowd. First, the woman with the gothic looks [?] then Olivia [who lives in Devon]. I still had to find Angie and Dani. The dream turned into another dream. The dream was partly about confusion. I was flying and I saw Terri standing near-by a building. I waved at her and she waved back. She was there with another woman, maybe Dawn, but I’m not sure, I couldn’t see the woman’s features. They walked into the building.”

  “Loneliness biting deep into my heart any time of the day or night. With all the sharpness of its fangs.”

  “I feel like a bomb, ticking, ready to explode.”

  “I am a tortured artist, an arrogant singer, a writer without scruples.”

  “Dawn was in my dream last night. We were looking out of the doorway of the Blue Moon, looking out. Looking out at my motorbike. She asked: “Is it your bike?” I answered: “Yes.” With pride."

  “In my dream, Second Look had to cancel a gig at the last minute. They left the pub in a whitish, oversized limo.”

  “I lifted a treasure up from a sunken boat and lifted some dynamite down, while Second Look were having a drink in a next-door pub.”

  “I dreamed I was in high school with Hillary [who lives in San Francisco] and Angie. Terri and Dawn were in the background. I wanted to climb the climbing wall of the school. Outside the rain was raging. I could fly.”

  “The Lakota see black as the colour of inspiration for it represents the darkness that gives way to light.”

  One morning, the one dream still fiercely grabbing at her mind had more details than ever –since her getting on anti-depressants– and presented an attachment of good feeling. Picture it out of the dark recesses of her mind:

  Sid is hanging out with her friend Bea, who, these days, lives in Canada. They’ve known each other for a few years. Being both singers, they naturally met on the acoustic scene. By that time Sid was already an oddity, feeling more of an oddity than David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in Italian, having upgraded for an electric guitar and darker than ever songs. Anyway. Sid and Bea are hanging out at a party. It is a huge party and the sun is shining benevolently on the revellers enjoying the small size estate belonging to Terri. If it was not Terri’s party, Sid wouldn’t have bothered, she is no party girl, herself dixit. Sid knows Terri hasn’t arrived yet and she is anxious to catch up with the wild rock singer. The atmosphere is one of summer festival.

  From a distance (Bette Middler and Nancy Griffith chorusing in her ears), she sees a motorbike trailing through the green grass. She doesn’t need keen eyes t
o know it’s Terri’s Bandit, with Terri herself riding it without helmet. She leaves Bea with some chatty women and starts making her way to the house. Well, calling it a bungalow or a shack would be an understatement of mega size. It’s a Victorian mansion.

  She is in no hurry with such sunshine and such gentle breeze. With the booted tip of her left foot she attempts to straighten a poster made out of flimsy paper to examine it leisurely. That’s when the cop turns up and starts shouting abuses at her, attracting punters’ attention. At first, Sid stares at him blankly. He is accusing her of unlawful littering, claims she has to pay a ten-pound fine, on the spot, or get arrested. She sighs at the unimaginative threat and suddenly the wolf in her reacts. She shouts back and loud that he’s just narrow-minded and prejudice, and the only reason he’s asking her to pay a fine is because he knows she hasn’t got a tenner. She briefly considers his bruised ego in need of restoration but decides it unworthy of mention. As suddenly, she walks out on him.

  “Way to go, Wasgo!” It’s a tall blonde woman she remembers from another of Terri’s parties.

  Upon waking up, she briefly thought about it with a look at her old-fashion clock, went back to sleep and dreamed another dream. After all, she was about to see Second Look in the evening, and remembering nothing requiring her attention before the afternoon, she could afford the extra rest.

  * * * * * * *

  When she re-opened her eyes later on, her mind struggled to keep them shut and succeeded on not analyzing the memories of her latest trip to the Dreamworld. Oh yes, she so much wanted to stay in bed with this new dream. More exactly the main character of her dream. Well, she meant, blushing scarlet in the solitude of her bedroom, going back to the dream and indulging some more, perhaps forever, in the company of the main character of this dream. Who had said you HAD to get up every morning anyway? The idea instilled her with a subtle mix of grumpiness and rebellion. Now she remembered she had an appointment to reluctantly attend, with the young, but definitely stuffy psychiatrist she disliked because he never listened to what she had to say about anti-depressants, their side effects, and her personal experience of life on legal drugs. The four walls of her bedroom were a thousand times more receptive and friendlier. With the starry ceiling, the dark curtains and the black-carpeted floor, they shaped a box, a box where she could dream any time. As long as the drugs didn’t mislead her brainwaves.

  This new dream had been so sweet, with a peaceful adagio excerpt from Carl Maria Von Weber’s collection. Oh yes, a thousand times yes, the dream would have never been so sweet without the presence of the Second Look musician, the mysterious and talented Dawn Ferndale herself. The simple thought of the memory made Sid melt.

  Imagine…….

  Sid is dreamily asleep in her bed, cozy and naked under the tiger quilt as usual. The heavy, dark velvety drapes clear off the windows let the first sunlight of a new day spread into the room, like a stealthy invader. Not as subtle but definitely more intrusive, a male cop with blonde short hair and a blue suit, the blonde musician with gray eyes, and some other woman Sid cannot identify, burst into her flat. It is 6 am, apparently legal time to arrest criminals. The cop, whose blue eyes are paler than his suit, informs her of her rights while telling her she is under arrest for associating with a controversial political group, whose name gets garbled and fuzzed by her not entirely awake brain transmitters. He steps out of the bedroom to lounge in her living room and wait for her to get decently enough dressed up for a visit to the cop shop. Dawn pushes the door shut behind the others and squats on the bed, a simple mattress on the floor. Sid doesn’t mind Dawn’s presence when she moves the quilt away from her bare chest, because with all her tattoos, Haida totem poles down each limb and a few Navajo symbols on her front and back, she is never naked. She has a brief thought for the several photos of the grey-eyed musician forever scattered in her bed, but they are generally lying safely sheltered by her six tiger-patterned pillows. Looking intently and intensely at Sid, Dawn talks about a bright yellow envelope the writer received a few days ago, and that is now lying on one of the “Death-and-Blood” shelves in the bedroom. The content, a leaflet advertising a benefit in favour of the aforementioned subversive group, could be used as evidence against Sid. Pulling a dark T-shirt over her green mohican and tattooed skin, Sid, her brain now extraordinarily focused, listens to Dawn whose grey eyes have been fascinating her more and more lately. Along with the smile. But Dawn is not smiling. Even so serious, her face is extremely beautiful to Sid’s eyes. If people knew. It is not Terri Harley, mighty rock singer whose powerful voice could raise the long dead, she’s got a crush on. No, never mind this detail right now because the keyboard player is talking. She is saying that she is the one who sent the incriminating leaflet. Under the assumed name of Lindisfarne. Getting more decent by the minute (Sid, still on her bed, willing to keep at Dawn’s level, is now wearing black boxer shorts matching her dark T-shirt, and starts struggling, juggling, with a pair of socks), Sid doesn’t even think non-decent thoughts, she is too spellbound by Dawn’s voice, Dawn’s eyes, Dawn’s everything. Because, as Dawn sometimes sings on stage: “Track number five’s got the voice and the smile, and the matching grey eyes”. Despite her subjugation, one black sock with a red-cobwebby pattern barely on her left foot and the other still in her right hand, Sid exhales a sigh, gets up, keeping her eyes on her dream woman as long as she can, walks to the shelf, tearing herself away from the previous scene, snatches the outstanding item with the now identified and familiar messy handwriting, hands it over to Dawn, who grabs it and stuffs it into an inside pocket of the denim jacket the writer has seen a few times gracing a few stages. But since when does Sid wear blue jeans, too?

  And the tattooed writer woke up in her darken bedroom, cozy and naked, but never naked with all her Native American tattoos, under the tiger quilt, her eyes grasping at the empty air, wondering which of her Two Spirits - whale or wolf – she was.

  She was alone, all alone as every morning. The hold of the dream was so strong over her split personality, it didn’t let her drift into the daily loneliness, not yet. She sighed, swooning, willing herself back to the dreaming, trying to reinsert herself into this parallel universe, wishing to spend more time listening to Dawn Ferndale’s captivating voice and lose herself deep into the grey eyes.

  Before the aspic of morning loneliness get another bite of her vulnerable heart again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sid had arrived late because of the rain. Definitely reality for her small Kawasaki when she had to restrain its speed, in the name of caution.

  It was a gay club, charging club prices at the door and at the bar, women only, but with men as guests (Sid would shake her head muttering under her breath what kind of joke is that) and they had given Second Look only thirty minutes. The venue was middle class and Sid felt out of place, like everywhere, like every day, with or without the drugs. She was in a manic mood and full of good intentions to well behave.

  Music was rocking full swing but the audience looked frozen, a few feet away from the stage where Terri and Dawn were giving away their best, tension running up and down their raw nerves.

  What’s wrong, Sid wondered. Have I done something wrong? Should I dance or should I freeze?

  She wanted to dance but the musicians’ tension freaked her out, while the music gnawed away at her feet, harassing her tight skin, like a tickle too hard to make her laugh. But the music’s pull was too strong for Sid to resist. Without thinking more, she gave in to her standard behavior, shedding helmet and jacket, and letting the fast rhythm of the moment guide her feet. A wave of relief washed immediately across the stage and Sid’s skin automatically relaxed. She temporarily forgot about her fresh tattoo still itching under her black combats, and her latest short story.

  After the too short set, some canned music started to spell out pop tunes in fashion and Sid caught up with a few known faces, regular Second Look fans like the heavily tattooed and pierced woman who only danced wh
en no one else would, but that evening was on paraphernalia-stall duty, and a few women who had eventually relented to Sid’s insistence. Yes, Second Look was a band to check out, definitely. Jessie had come, too and requested from Sid:

  “Show me your leg!”

  Sid had obliged and rolled up a trouser leg to expose the shiny totem pole, coloured with the traditional Haida black, red, blue and white.

  Talking about the musicians. In between two chats, the singer spotted the writer and grabbed her for one of her famed bear hugs. Swiftly moving on, Terri introduced her girlfriend Justine to Sid, and next found herself entranced in an enthusiastic chat with a tall, skinny woman with long, auburn hair, bright smile and red roses tattooed on her upper arms. Sid exchanged a few words with Justine who, incidentally, had read “Tequila After Dark” and “The Beast(s)” and reported Terri’s enthusiasm to Sid in between puffs of cigarette. Sid remembered Justine from the Black Crow, one of the many silhouettes in the audience. Somehow, not someone she would notice, but it didn’t matter since Justine was with Terri and Sid had someone else squatting her mind and her dreams.

  After an acquaintance grabbed Justine away, Sid’s eyes found themselves drifting around the venue. Not interested in the alcoholic offerings of the bar or any eyes meeting hers, she searched towards the stage.