The Lepidopterist
At 35, or what she reckoned to be precisely middle age, Elaine decided to get an intimate tattoo. She reached this decision quite emphatically one night, sitting alone in her darkened, corner office. She ditched Marc for good, her third long-term relationship with a man who had tolerated her for a few years and then demanded commitment. She finally realized that it would be impossible to find a man unthreatened by her success, one who didn’t require the same level of attention as her career. Given this fate, she decided the time had come for her to live her personal life like her professional life. It’s all business, she reasoned. The business of me.
For the next few days, Elaine threw herself into tattoo research as if it were a financial proposition, where critical precision and a strong measure of gut reaction would produce the desired return. She wanted just one small design, something pretty that would help contrast her boyish torso and dark masculine features, something that would make her feel, if not look, more feminine. As a prominent local executive, she did not want to go to one of the nearby parlors where she would be recognized, nor did she want to reveal her pelvis or breasts to someone she might later meet at a local bar. At work, she closed her door and abandoned the financial and news service reports in order to Google tattoos, to read about their history, the pigments, the machine, the hygiene, the pain. By all accounts, the best place to go would be the tattoo festival at the South Dakota state fair, 1200 miles away and populated for two weeks by the finest tattoo artists in the country.
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Later that month, Elaine drank a warm lemonade on the midway, eavesdropping on those around her, enveloped in carnival rides and screaming children bemoaning puddles of melting ice cream. She saw some tattoos she admired and began asking about the various artists at the festival. One name kept coming up, the best artist at the festival, a Viet Nam vet named Sarge Lazuli. He didn’t have a regular base, didn’t work in one of the parlors among the bait shops and bike repair garages, but everyone seemed to know of him. He worked from a small travelling studio which he towed behind his camping van to fairs and carnivals around the country. He only did butterflies, and his mostly female clientele always wanted their designs on an intimate area, somewhere seductive like the top of the breast, the small of the back, the ass, the ankle, or sometimes, just below the panty line.
At this festival, amid thousands of inked bodies, the line for Sarge’s trailer never receded. Hundreds of women lined up, but only several each day would be chosen to pay $500 for the privilege of a Lazuli butterfly. Elaine decided she would make it worth his time.
She approached him at the end of the first day, just as he began packing up. Dressed in army fatigues with a black bandana around his head to retain his mass of grayish black hair, he commanded quite a presence. Elaine tried not to be intimidated by his large figure, his muscles stuffing his long sleeves like sausages, and his face, scarred and stubbled, in perpetual anger. His hands, the largest she had ever seen, were stained blue-black nearly everywhere. The Doors played on the stereo behind him, and black POW/MIA flags decorated the tent walls.
“Closing up for now,” he grumbled.
“Your talent is amazing,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Can I ask why you only do butterflies?”
“You can ask, but I’m not likely to tell you.”
“Sorry,” she said, indignant. “I’m thinking of getting one.”
“Well, you sort of missed your chance this year. I only do repeaters. No first-timers.”
“Why not?” she asked. “Money’s just as good.”
“Actually, that’s not true. Newbies ask too many questions, fidget too much, cry too often, and when it’s all over, they look at you unforgiving. No one likes their first tattoo, which is why people will either get another one or hide the one they have.”
“Well, it’s not like this is new to me. I’ve spent years thinking about it and four weeks getting up the nerve. Everyone says you’re the best, so I’d rather not go elsewhere. I can pay you double,” she said.
“Not really about the money,” he said. “Go have one done somewhere else and then come back.”
“I don’t want a gallery,” she said.” I just want one tattoo. A butterfly. I’ll pay you triple.”
“Sorry,” he said.” But rules are rules. Just get a small one, and then come back. A little rose or something. Maybe honeysuckle. It attracts butterflies.”
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Elaine returned the next afternoon with a sprig of honeysuckle drifting from under her shirt towards her cleavage, the design small and vivid behind the glossy sheen of therapeutic ointment. The night before she argued with herself for nearly an hour about whether to just leave with her newly acquired tattoo, or to stay and pursue a Lazuli butterfly. Clearly an executive at her level could not be covered in ink, but there was something about having a tattoo that many women could only dream about, like a pair of Prada shoes or an Armani blazer. Besides, Sarge’s behavior had challenged her and the thrill of competition made her want to come back the next day. Now he would have to surrender. She walked past the long line of bodies to where Sarge was working on a woman’s enormous, naked breast. He held the tattoo gun in his hand, steadily maneuvering its needle over the woman’s tanned skin.
“I did it,” she announced, quickly pulling back her halter for him to see. “Should I just wait over here?”
He said nothing, coloring in the wing of a bright yellow swallowtail. “The swallowtail are large butterflies that form the family Papiliondae. There are over 550 species that reside mostly in the tropical areas of…”
“Excuse me,” she said. “What time do you want me to come back?”
“…each continent except, of course, Antarctica. The life cycle generally begins…”
“Hello! What time?”
He turned off the gun. “No one talks to me while I’m working, and I only address the one I’m working on, so please go now, or stay and shut up.”
She dropped her hands to her hips and sneered. The bare breasted woman reclining in front of him looked at her mockingly, as if everyone knew this.
Elaine left and wandered the fairgrounds the rest of the afternoon. The dry heat and sporadic gusts of wind caused little funnel clouds of dirt to swirl about. Concerned for hew new tattoo, she loosely covered it with a satin scarf. She waited until closing time and approached his trailer again.
“OK I’m back. Now, can I make an appointment or will you make me wait in line all day tomorrow for the privilege of paying you money to beautify my body by inflicting pain on me?”
“Listen, I don’t have to paint you. I can refuse for any number of reasons, not the least of which is because you are untested and probably intoxicated. Plus, you annoy me.”
“I am not intoxicated and I am tested. I got the small tattoo last night. I tried to show you before.”
Sarge looked at the small blooms curling from under her halter top. “Hmm,” he said. “Not very original. How did it feel?”
“A little uncomfortable, to tell the truth.”
“Well, multiply that by ten, because a butterfly will be far worse. I will not paint you unless I am 100% certain you can be still and silent under the circumstances.”
“Look, I’m sure I can take it. If not, just stop and I’ll walk away, no further obligation on your part.”
“Impossible. I will not have a half-formed specimen running around. You will have to stick it out, unconscious if need be, until I’m through. You have given me no indication that you can handle that sort of commitment.”
She rolled her eyes at the word and brushed her hand across her arm. “So we seem to be at an impasse. What exactly do you want me to do? What sort of pain management threshold do you want me to have? How can I possibly prove it to you?”
“Get another tattoo. You did the top of the breast. That’s fine, virtually painless. Do something else, like the ankle or the small of your back. Look, there’s a lot of women here. Many more than I can possibly do in a single week. Some of them will follow me to the next fair to try again, and all of them have enough tattoos that I know they can handle it. So skip a few degrees of discomfort and go for the ankle. Just don’t get a butterfly. I won’t do one if you already have one done by someone else.”
She wasn’t accustomed to this kind of defiance. She never let a man talk to her that way or dismiss her unproven. Screw him, she thought. There are other artists who will do what I want and be thrilled to do it. I don’t need a Lazuli.
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She returned the next morning and went to the first booth she saw, looking at the catalogs of butterflies and the samples painted on sheets of cloth on the walls. The artist was helpful with suggestions, offering a small butterfly in the cleft of her butt. “I’ll bet you got a fine ass under there,” he said.
His booth was a mess of clippings from tattoo magazines, all his work, or so he claimed. Most were complex geometric designs, but some portrayed a full-scale panorama of fantasy images like dragons and sharp-breasted heroines with swords aloft. She looked at the butterflies from his portfolio as well, but decided not to settle for second rate work. During the night, Elaine had carefully weighed the options. Either she could get a butterfly elsewhere and be done with it, or she could get something else and then press for the Lazuli. She decided that the goal was to get what she wanted, and for her, this meant the best butterfly on the planet. In the end, the satisfaction of having the best outweighed her impulse to gloat in front of Sarge with the work of someone else. This guy’s butterflies seemed different somehow, the same images, perhaps, but lacking something indescribable. Less real, perhaps. Elaine saw an Indian henna design around the wrist of one woman and thought she might get the same around her ankle.
“Can do,” he said. “Do you have a specific design in mind or should I just choose one?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Aren’t they all the same?”
He stepped back and eyed her up and down, the spittle oozing from the corners of his mouth and drawing her attention to the bite marks scarring his lower lip. “No, honey. Different designs mean different things, but unless you’re into foreign men no one will really know.”
“Well that’s none of your fuckin business, right?” She glared at him.
“OK, OK, so maybe you like girls.” he said, looking at her for confirmation. “You know, what about a snake coiled around the ankle, ready to strike? Thwap! You seem like an independent woman, right?”
“Right, but I work in a rather stuffy place. An ankle tattoo is bad enough, but a snake wrapping halfway up my leg definitely won’t do at all.”
“Well, how about a small one on the wrist instead? You could wear long sleeves or a watch or bracelet to hide it when you feel the need.”
“Hmmm. Will it hurt more?”
“Only if you want it to, honey,” he said. “Ha ha. Just kidding. It won’t hurt no more than the ankle would. If you’re concerned about it, maybe I’ll only go around once. Keep it simple, but I’m not sure how good a snake will look, without all the detail, I mean.”
”Try it,” she said.
After applying the stencil, he placed her wrist on the table as she reclined in the chair, trying to relax. The minute the gun hit the skin atop her wrist bone, Elaine flinched. He touched her again, as if holding a feather, but Elaine shook again, nearly causing him to throw the gun in the air.
“Look,” he said, “this isn’t working. There’s no way I’m going to get a snake and all the detail around here. Maybe you should choose something else. We’re not too far along that I can’t make this line into something else.”
Her mind raced to find an adequate solution, but she was thinking more of the butterfly, knowing that this was just a small step on her way to the ultimate goal. She had to be tougher than this. “Caterpillar,” she muttered.
“Hmm? I never did a caterpillar before. Let me see what I can find.”
He reached toward the shelf and pulled down a field guide with insect drawings, the spider pages dog-eared from prior use. Sweeping through the pages, he found a photo of a butterfly in various stages of development. He pointed to lone orange-spotted specimen on a branch. “How about this?” he asked.
“Fine, but just the caterpillar. And make it good.”
“Honey, everything I do for you will be better than good.”
“Say,” Elaine asked, “do you have any whiskey?”
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The next day, Sarge’s line was the longest yet, and though Elaine arrived at dawn, she didn’t expect to see women asleep outside his booth, as if waiting for concert tickets. Her wrist hurt terribly. When she awoke that morning she found it stuck to the blanket, the cream and ooze from her skin adhering to the fuzzy white velour. After gently pulling them apart, she spent her first moments at the sink, picking away the white fuzz from the caterpillar’s back.
She did not rush to the front of the line this time, nor did she try to approach him on his breaks as many did. She was beginning to get angry at herself for letting this tattoo artist manipulate her like no man had ever done before. The tattoo was supposed to symbolize her independence, her ability to simultaneously break from conservative convention while also playing it for all the salary she could earn. It was to be a symbol of her control, and now, having done what Sarge had ordered, she should be storming to the front of the line, waving a fistful of hundreds in his face and demanding her goddamn butterfly. But instead she stood patiently, reading a book to keep her distracted from the pain in her wrist and the itch of the freshly-peeling skin on her breast. The women around her admired her other tattoos, commenting on her bravery and her choice of images. With a flower and a caterpillar, said one, nothing else could go on her body except a butterfly. Might as well be a Lazulli.
At dusk she was still a dozen people away from him, and she knew she would not reach him before he closed up shop. The fair in its final day, she began to wonder if she would have to come back next year, to be first in line, to see him again and to allow him to work on her. Would he remember her? She thought of going to the head of the line and insisting that she be next, reminding him of his promise and showing him the battle scars on her wrist, but she didn’t want to make him angry.
She was just two customers away when he announced that he was closing. She stayed in her place in line, leaned up against his trailer until all the others had gone away. The day’s dust settling in her eyes made them tear up slightly. She couldn’t decide whether to speak to him or not. “So, all this for nothing,” she said. “I’m a dumbass.”
Sarge stopped packing his equipment and peered around the corner of the tent. “Well well,” he said. “I thought you’d finally given up. If I had known you were in line, I might have snuck you in.”
“Nope. Didn’t want to bother you. I did everything you said, just like you said. A flower on the tit, a caterpillar on the wrist…”
“Let me see the wrist.” She held out her arm to him. He held it gently, like a kitten.
“This is really nice. Not entirely accurate from an etymological perspective, but close. It’s a monarch larva, I think. I don’t do monarchs.”
“Why not?”
“They’re a western species found in the tropics of this hemisphere, not in southeast Asia. They’re the wrong color for the jungles there; they’d be easy prey,” he said.
”It doesn’t have to be a monarch,” she begged. “It can be whatever you want, just please! I went through so much for you. To leave without a butterfly, without your butterfly, would be a failure. What a joke! This flower, not even a rose. This caterpillar, so obviously not a snake. They look stupid alone.”
He looked at her pleading with him. She seemed broken down, as if she had transformed from one self to another, weaker somehow, incomplete. He tried to cheer her up. “To complete the lifecycle you’ll need a chrysalis,” he said.
Elaine smiled. “I already have one of those, if you know what I mean. A warm close cocoon, a blanket of wisps to envelop it, a place from which new life springs. I just need the butterfly to emerge.”
He chuckled, admiring her reasoning. “So you want a butterfly to emerge from between your legs? One large enough to have come from that cocoon of yours? OK, here’s the deal, a Delias pastihoe Pieridae resting atop your public hair, wings outstretched like a mounted specimen, with just the tip of the wing visible from above the waist of your pants. Do you want to see what I mean?”
He lifted his shift above his head to reveal a torso covered in butterflies. Like a mosaic, their wings aligned tip-to-tip with each other, with only a small space between them. The colors were not as vibrant as she expected, but the variety was dazzling. A ring of a dozen different species encircled his navel, each one brighter than the next as they spiraled out from the center. Covering his ribs, some butterflies in flight, others alighting on branches that soared to his shoulders. Under his arms, two mating moths, bottom-to-bottom, their wings looking like owl’s eyes.
“This one here,” he said, pointing to a black one spotted in white and yellow, with a sunburst of orange at its body. “This one saved my life in Nam. They all helped, but this one was the most important. That’s why he was the first one I did. I wish I had done a better job, but I was just a beginner then.”
“They’re all so beautiful,” she said. “How can you do them on yourself like that?”
“It’s tricky because you have to hold your breath so your chest and abdomen don’t move. That’s another thing I learned in Nam, to breathe deeply and not allow yourself to move even an inch, not allow a sound to be heard. You have to learn to lie there as if you’re dead or invisible. Shall we? You’ll have to lower your pants and underwear to below your knees. Whiskey?”
She unsnapped her jeans and stepped out of them. Standing in her bikini panties, she rolled down the waistband revealing just the top of her trimmed hairs. Sarge grabbed a blanket from the shelf, and Elaine lay down in the chair, removing her panties, and lowering the blanket enough to let him survey the field on which he would do his work. He began to draw the outline, making a few small adjustments before getting the inks and gun prepared.
“Now remember, don’t talk. Try to hold your breath each time I come to touch your skin. I’ll work in short segments so you’ll have time to catch your breath.”
She nodded and finished the glass of whiskey.
“I’ll tell you a story,” he said. “You asked me why I only do butterflies, and I told you I’d never tell, but there is something about you. I’ve never told this story before, but I’ve never done this specimen on anyone else either, so I suppose you should know what it is and why it matters to me. Maybe it’s because you come off as so self-assured, but no ordinary woman would have searched me out for their first tattoo. It’s the designer threads that tell me you’ve got some money. Usually your kind won’t come near a parlor. Fear of needles, the same fear that kept you away from hard drugs. Fear of disease, the same fear that kept you from having unprotected sex. Fear of regret, of wanting something so badly that you know you’ll wish to reverse the irreversible. But for all that talk, you’re not afraid now. You’ve had the other tattoos. They’re discreet, but not completely hidden, not like an ordinary corporate woman would have. So if you’re not afraid, neither am I.”
The first sting of the needle penetrated Elaine like a kick in the gut. The pain centering in her groin reminding her of the sharp sting of defloration, or feeling, she imagined, like giving birth. Sarge pulled back and Elaine nodded to him, taking a breath and closing her eyes.
He continued, “I didn’t ask to go to Nam. The draft is what did me in. Back then, as a kid, I was very afraid. Afraid to go to war, sure, but more afraid to run away. My father was a military man, see, retired by then, but when the draft notice came in, I think it was what he wanted for me. Not being college bound, it was my only option.”
Elaine tightened her abdomen. “Do you feel that?” he said. “Yes? OK, let’s slow down. Another glass of whiskey?”
“Can I just have the bottle?” she asked.
“Not a problem,” he said, passing it to her. “So off I went to boot camp where my fear of failure overcame my fear of fighting. Then off to the Philippines for transport to Nam, and by that time, my fear had hardened into a shell, a blind, stupid bravery that eclipsed everything else when I was in the jungle. So beautiful it was, the jungle, teeming with so much life that all the killing didn’t bother me. It all spilled out of me until the day I saw my friend Willy get decapitated by a VC who took great pleasure in severing each limb from his body.”
Sarge stopped, resting the gun for a moment and looking off into the night sky. In the sudden silence, Elaine heard the sounds of other vendors packing up their wares, the spraying of water hoses, the tossing of trash into the dumpster. The curses of manual labor.
Sarge continued in silence for awhile, working the outline to completion. Elaine felt comfortable, the fear of the pain having subsided leaving only the fear of expectation. “Were you nearby?” she finally asked.
“Just ten feet away,” he replied, “buried under a pile of vines with insects crawling on my face, stinging me. The pain was ferocious, but I didn’t move, and do you know why? No, it wasn’t fear, and besides, your mind can’t always control the movements of the body. It was this butterfly that I’m coloring right now. It landed not eight inches from my face sitting in a pool of blood where Willy’s shoulder used to be. I’d never seen a butterfly as beautiful as that before, and I stared at the way its wings opened and closed, opened and closed, noticing how the bright markings on the body disappeared when it brought its wings together. The gook didn’t even notice it… or me, thank God. Eventually they all cleared out, but it was hours before I felt safe enough to move.”
Sarge stopped again, resting for a moment before starting to shade in the open wings with color. Elaine lay there lulled by the whiskey and the story. It seemed like hours had passed before Sarge began talking again. “No moon that night, the jungle was so dark I felt it was strangling me as I began to walk back in a direction I thought was east. I was wrong. I spent two days wandering in the jungle before I saw my platoon again, and I noticed every butterfly and moth those two days. I can still see them as vivid today. That first night back in my tent, stoned on hash and numb with hunger, the memory of Willy came rolling back in my mind. I don’t know why, but I began to carve his initials in my arm, see, right here? Only I messed up and they turned into what became the first tattoo I ever did. The W became the wings on this Zemeros flegyas here.
“Oh sure, the shrinks had fun with that. Mutilating myself, they said, feeling responsible for his death in some way. But I didn’t feel any blame, it wasn’t my fault he twitched like that. I think I just wanted to acknowledge the dangers of hating something so much that you are willing to die for it. So I made the decision that for the rest of my life I would show people that it is possible to trade pain for beauty. Like you’re doing, now. Like we’re doing together.”
Elaine looked up at him, his face betraying the strange paradox of joyous sadness, the delight in his work and the pain of recollection which had gone unexpressed perhaps for decades. She envisioned herself in that jungle, inches away from being discovered and shot, the smell of death, the smell of fear from his body, her body. She could not tell where it came from. But she was not afraid now. She closed her eyes.
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When she awoke, the fairground was silent and ready to embark with the first light of dawn. She felt his finger rubbing gently on her skin, first tracing the outline of the butterfly, and then painting wide swatches of its wings with ointment. She liked the way it felt, cool and gentle. The butterfly was beautiful, strikingly colored and almost quivering with life.
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s exquisite.”
“You should see them in person,” he said. “They’re stunning in their simplicity and beauty. And they’re persistent, like you.”
She smiled, attracted to him perhaps, but laughing at the improbability of what their relationship might hold. “I guess I’ll go now,” she said, reaching for her pants.
“Wait,” he said, “you really shouldn’t put those on. Keep that blanket wrapped loosely around you like a skirt. I’ll walk you to your car. It’s really late, and drunk carnies can be a little frightening.”
They walked through the darkened midway, the rides ready for transport, the trailers darkened, and the scent of beer and fried dough absent in the crisp night air. When they arrived at her car, she slipped out of the blanket and stood before him dressed only in her t-shirt. The butterfly in full flight, on full display
“I haven’t paid you,” she said, not sure what she might be offering.
Sarge averted his eyes and started to walk away. “I told you it’s not about the money, but please take care of that specimen. It’s the last of its kind,” he said, and he turned his back to her and floated off into the night.