This War Paint

Butch


It was a nice place to live. There was sun almost every day, baby blue sky barely ever obscured by passing clouds, just enough rain to feed their gardens but never too much to overflow drains and cause havoc. Those types of things didn’t happen in our town. Crime rates were a record breaking low and every face you passed seemed to be smiling directly at you. As if the entire neighbourhood knew your deepest secrets, as if they were slowly just drawing them out.

When it came to me those smiles disappeared, merging into disappointed frowns or ugly scowls. Their eyes overlooked me, maybe hoping that if they didn’t acknowledge my existence then I would just fade into nothing. There was no need to draw me in, to catch me out on a lie; I was already the towns’ black sheep.

I wasn’t deaf. I wasn’t stupid. I knew that it wasn’t just my appearance. I knew that it was my whole family; my very condemning factor being that I had been born to parents who didn’t fit with the neighbourhood’s ideals. They didn’t hold huge thanksgivings overflowing with visiting relatives, they didn’t help out at street carnivals, they didn’t offer to donate money into the local charities. To our small town, this was as bad as sin. And I was these sinners’ son.

Of course, though, nobody really knew just how unfit my parents had been. I wasn’t about to enlighten them either, give them anything more to gossip about, add fuel to a fire of slander against my family’s name. It wasn’t that I cared for them – I hated my parents – but it still felt disrespectful to unfold any secrets kept so heavily buried for years. Because they still lived so close. They were still blood.

I wasn’t ashamed anymore when I curled my large body up in the backseat of my car. It didn’t feel wrong; it felt more like a home than their house had ever been. It even smelt warmer. Suddenly there were no more cold empty spaces for my parents to fill with their hatred. There was just me and a scratchy blanket used more for comfort than warmth.

I was an eighteen year old boy sleeping in the back of his car with only a part time job as a mechanic to put food before him. And the neighbour’s loved it.



It was summer. The nights were light, the mornings seemed extended, and the sun had already turned my skin a darker bronze than usual. Summer to me meant the beach and parties and tattoos. I liked how hot it got in our town. I especially liked it when it meant that all the girls flocked to the sandy shore in little to no clothing, clutching beach towels and sunscreen.

School was close to finishing and I wasn’t sad to see the back of. It was no secret that although I wasn’t dwelling among the dregs of the popularity chain, I sat somewhere between the school bully and the ignored mute boy. Girls seemed to either want me or be disgusted by me. That was fine, great even when those girls happened to be hot, but it did become annoying. Especially when there was only one I wanted to have.

Jane Hathaway. Perfection embodied. She was so out of my league it wasn’t even funny; she was so opposite to me it was almost unreal. But I knew the first time I saw her that I had to have her. There was no strike of lightening, time didn’t stand still - I just caught sight of her smiling face and felt my heart quicken so much it was almost humming within my chest. And that was that. Jane Hathaway became the leading lady of every dream I’d had since then.

Not that I was alone in my admiration for the town’s sweetheart. It seemed that everything with a dick was infatuated with her, would steal glances at her whenever nobody was looking, would practically fight each other to get just that inch closer to her and her strawberry smelling hair. I knew it smelt like strawberries. I remembered the day she’d brushed up against me accidentally, jostled amid the crowd of other students, and I’d inhaled probably not-so-subtly.

I swallowed as I felt the needle press further into my skin, not at the pain but at the images of Jane Hathaway playing out before my eyes. Just the mere thought of her could get me excited in ways I felt ashamed to admit. It was ridiculous how perfect she was and how much I wanted to join her on whatever cloud she lived upon. But, of course, I would never get off the ground anyway. I was Butch. I was the devil in so many peoples’ eyes. I was condemned.

The woman beside me grunted a bit in discomfort. She lessened the pressure on the needle as it flew across the skin on my forearm, leaving its inky trail behind. It had been spontaneous coming here today. I hadn’t planned it or even really thought about it. I just knew what I wanted to cover that spare piece on my arm which had been bare for too long.

“What does this make it now, Butch?” she broke the silence in the tattoo parlour “50 something?”

“53,” I told her.

She smiled fondly, eyes darting over the other artwork lacing my entire body. “And you’re still going?”

“Sure, what would I be without my tattoos?”

She laughed and the sound rolled around the almost empty room. I’m sure if it wasn’t for me and my friends the place would have already gone out of business. Being in the middle of a religious, clean town of roughly 5,000 people wasn’t the best environment for a tattoo parlour.

“You know what Butch; you’re a real piece of work.”

Normally I heard those words in a tone of malice and scorn but Mariah was smiling still. Mariah had done mostly all of my tattoos and knew me better than my own parents did. She knew that I’d broken my arm in a car accident when I was thirteen, she knew that I’d been in love with Jane Hathaway for three years, she knew that I slept in my car most nights to avoid being anywhere near home. Everyone knew that I was rough and tough and buff but she knew there was something more to the muscles and tattoos.

“So I’ve been told,” I grimaced.

“So what’s the story behind this one?” Mariah asked, clicking her neck, her entire body tensed to finish the art her hands were carving out of my arm.

“Spur of the moment.”

“You just decided to get ‘Fuck Off’ tattooed on your arm on a whim?”

I thought back onto how angry I’d been that morning. How pissed off I’d been that the world saw fit to cast me into such a bad light with the town. How Jane Hathaway didn’t even know my name – or if she did it was only the nickname ‘Butch’ that people called me out of fear. How my parents were fucked up people who really shouldn’t have had kids.

“Pretty much,” I had to stop myself from shrugging, aware of the needle still pressed into my flesh. Mariah smiled again.

“Why am I not surprised Fraser.” She liked to alternate between my street name and my real one – slotting them in considering the moment. She would never take me in, tears spilling from my eyes, fresh from another fight with Dad, and call me Butch. It would always be Fraser then. Always.

Mariah herself was an older woman with blonde hair so light it blended in with the grey she tried to deny. She still wore clothes made for a twenty year old and still talked like one. The town only tolerated her because she volunteered down at the homeless shelter once a week – as if that act in itself made up for all her other shenanigans.

My eyes drifted onto the large board just above our heads. Crudely taken photographs were pinned up by multicoloured tacks, hanging clumsily, overlapping each other so the most recent almost obscured the old. Most of them were of me, pulling up pieces of clothing to show the work Mariah had then just completed. Some were of my friends with their tattoos proudly on display. Some were even of strangers who’d come and gone with only Mariah’s art telling of how they’d ever been there. And the board proving so too.

And then my heart stopped beating in my chest.

Because, only just visible in between a picture of me with my fresh lighthouse tattoo and a stranger’s tacky angel, was Jane Hathaway. Unsmiling, she stared straight at the camera, straight through the camera, and chills shot down my numb body. It was strange to see her without her face lit up into something cheerful. She looked painfully beautiful with auburn hair falling slightly into her face and big doe eyes widened in something like confusion.

But that wasn’t the most astounding thing about the photograph – her beauty. I already knew she was breathtaking. The real shock came from seeing the flower running along her left hip, winding itself carefully up her stomach. I had to choke back in the air I’d only just realised hadn’t been inhaled, my eyes raking over the photograph as if scared I’d blink and it would be gone.

“Mariah,” I whispered after my throat opened up slightly “why didn’t you tell me?”

I couldn’t tear away my gaze from Jane but I heard the smile break itself onto her face. Knew that she understood what I was referring to, could trace the line of my burning stare.

I had over 50 tattoos from Mariah littering my body and yet Jane’s looked the best, the cleanest, the neatest. The flower was so detailed I could almost see it flutter and stretch, could see why a bee would mistake it for real. And the creamy skin it sat on made me momentarily forget the needle still working its way through my shoulder to shift uncomfortably. The desire it stoked within me was an inferno, licking up my being, desperate for just a touch.

“You never asked,” Mariah eventually replied through a thick smirk.

I normally would have scoffed, given her an unbelieving look, told her that Jane Hathaway would never set foot somewhere so forbidden and dirty. But there she was, staring right at me. A hand tugging up her shirt to reveal the tattoo still so fresh it appeared to shine under the dim lighting.

“Seems you have more in common with Miss Hathaway than you thought, huh Butch?”