We stayed as late as we could talking. Well, Aminta talked, I mostly just surprised myself with how well I could pretend to know what was going on. The trick is to watch the eyes and listen for key words (which was mostly "gringo"). Eventually we had to leave to get the car returned on time. Checking my watch we had a few minutes buffer, so we filled the gas tank just enough to move the needle to F. We walked in the front door of the rental place with 90 seconds to spare. After Thursday's rainforest and last night's [i]Pirates[/i] this is becoming a bad habit. Turns out we needn't have rushed, as we had to wait five minutes before anyone showed up to take the car back. I won't say I returned it in good condition, since it was missing an AC knob and you had to put it into neutral at stoplights so it wouldn't shimmy, but I returned it in as good a condition as I rented it.
Another of Aminta's cousins picked us up at the rental place and drove us back to the tattoo shop, where we sat in the car talking for at least a half hour. Eventually we went in, waited another 2+ hours, and mom- you can stop reading now.
I had a picture I drew of a [[Chi-Rho]], a Christian symbol more than a millennium old, that I wanted tattooed on my wrist, the traditional location to mark slaves (and pirates! ((jk, pirates got gallows instead of markings)) ). I expected them to redraw the picture I showed them, but they just photocopied it with the reduce option. The only saving grace is that when Christian traced it onto the transfer paper he cleaned it up. We even adjusted the drawing a little, lengthening some arms while shortening others. Delly even showed up to join the party. We perfected the design, he shaved my arm, and the time came to lay back (I always feel faint when donating blood, so this seemed a good choice) and brace for half a dozen needles to pierce my skin every tenth of a second. It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. In fact, I couldn't stop smiling. I'd say it definately hurt, but not as much as many of the things you would think of as hurting. Stubbing your toe, grabbing a soldering iron backwards, and standing under decks shorter than you are all hurt more. I never felt even a slight flush of woozyness.
Before I knew it he finished the outline, and went out to stretch his legs, put on some music, and talk to his boss. I admired the lining and smiled some more. Aminta fretted about how angry my mom might get at her. He came back in singing switchup to do the shading. I think the most important trait for a tattoo artist is charisma. Christian set me entirely at ease as we talked. It turns out he even went out to the same movie at the same time in the same place last night. He even admitted to being the jerk who took a flash picture during the credits - which made Aminta and I both laugh (as much as I could without moving my arm). As he finished the tattoo he began giving Delly lessons, explaining how all the things she'd read in books work in the real world. I felt kind of like one of those cadavers they use in medical school, but I didn't mind. I suppose they don't either...Christian cleaned up my arm, took some pictures, and explained the after-care. Then he asked for less money than I can imagine paying for something that should last the rest of my life, so I tipped him, thanked him, and we headed back home to pack up.
We went back out to La Guancha for a last huzzah. I paid for one of my 5 drinks, and even had to turn some down - neither of those things ever happen. I wasn't even wearing a low cut shirt. (Aminta: "That tattoo makes you look so BA when you pick up your shotglass" Me:" I KNOW RIGHT!") After meeting old friends, chilling with Kike some more, and nearly panicking when Aminta disappeared right as we should have been leaving, it was time to say goodbye to PR. Or rather, it was past time. Delly drove us back to her house at a good clip, we grabbed our bags and jumped into Nelly's car (Yeah, Aminta's two best friends are Delly and Nelly) since she lives closer to the airport. We got to the airport at 3:32 for our 4:00 AM flight. Which was two minutes after they "closed" the flight. Luckily they reopened it for us, and after ducking through a few barriers and being escorted out to the plane at full speed we got to the flight only seconds after the people just before us. To be honest... it was sort of fun. Not that I recommend it.
The flight was... I don't know. I slept the whole thing. Aminta said she watched a movie one and a half times... I didn't. In JFK we walked to our gate and I slept on the floor in a black hoody with only my glistening tattooed arm showing. I hear that Amy talked with the cleaning lady about how homeless I looked. Apparently she offered to poke me with a broom. We even got a delay, which I was happy to hear since I'm an expert on floor-sleeping and only amateur at plane sleeping.
The flight back to Dulles was too short to bother sleeping on, the stewards were rushing and still barely got the drinks cleaned up in time for the landing. I then drove home, taking a slight detour through Ballston (If anyone checks a map they might notice Ballston is not between Dulles and Damascus. I'm not convinced that there is a connection between Dulles and 695 to the North. If there is, I've never found it coming nor going. And there are definitely no signs for it). Anyways, in keeping with our theme we made it to Maryland with less than a half-hour to spare before Ethan's Graduation party where I played a game of "Who will notice first?" Adam (my older younger brother) won with a time of 10 minutes, followed by my uncle at a half hour, my dad at 35 minutes, and my mom took up the rear two hours later with the ambiguous question "That's ink, right?"
Last trip I tried to end with an uplifting sentiment about life. This time I'm going to end on the complete opposite foot with the sole sentence I heard of a cell conversation as I stepped off the plane: "...he's not here, so I think I have to rent a car and drive to his house and punch him in the neck."
(Photo by Aminta)
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