There were a lot of hipsters in Plateau Mont-Royal, near the Old Port of Montréal, as promised by the porn theater-owners who also rent out our Airbnb flat in this trendy neighborhood. Plus cafes, coffee shops, bookstores, markets, restaurants and bars by the dozen. Of course all signs were in French, and everybody spoke it, but the odd thing was how perfectly everyone also conversed in English: no weird accents, no odd diction, no limited vocabularies. Were we in a foreign country or not? At times I almost wasn’t sure; I guess that’s just Canada, where there are two official languages, baseball and hockey franchises in the U.S. leagues, and of course plenty of beer and maple syrup.
And also Veronique Imbeault (@veroniqueimbo), an outstanding and creative realist at Loveless Tattoo on Rue de St. Denis. Two to three days were reserved with her to create the literary pairing with my Blood Meridian cheek: a scene from Moby Dick on my right buttock, complete with a furious Ahab, menacing and enormous white whale, and The Pequod on the high seas. I’d gone through perhaps a hundred iterations of the image in Midjourney, and towards the end broke down and hired the talented tattooist and AI-savvy Silvio Muniz in Brazil to complete the reference image. He did use my Ahab and whale, but fleshed the whole thing out nicely with splendid sailing ship, sky and stormy seas.
Vero initially took out most of the whale. I sent her a synopsis of the end of the book along with images of period-appropriate sailing ships and the smaller whaleboats with which the prey were directly chased. I stressed that the whale was non-negotiable and the malevolent cetacean returned and the ship was simplified and all was good.
Back to the hipsters. While I found some affinity with them via their clothes and tattoos, the nature of their ink was disappointing: seemingly random and sparse collections of small, linear, monochromatic work that seemed like runes or random pieces from a jigsaw puzzle. Was this a style, or did their barista and waiter jobs leave few Canadian dollars left over for inking? Was I peeved over the obligatory ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Queers for Palestine’ graffiti all over the neighborhood? I couldn’t tell. But it felt like they were wasting valuable space on a kind of virtual virtue-signaling: yes, we have ink, so we’re cool, but we really don’t care all that much about it. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so judgmental, like the vegans who give extra demerits to the vegetarians and none to the carnivores, because the vegetarians do get it. They get it but won’t go all the way. I guess I’ll just hope at least some of them find a way to go see an artist like Vero. (And maybe learn a little mid-East history while they’re at it.)
The first day of inking saw a complete and lavish Ahab take form. Given that this was not Japan I brought along my usual cocktail of hydrocodone, gabapentin, acetaminophen and ibuprofen. There were painful moments, but nothing major and far easier than the cold-turkey, four-day sessions in Tokyo. 9.5 hours and the day was a wrap! Jaime, Scott and I had a lovely and pricey dinner at a vaguely Greek, fancy place where we were somewhat under-dressed and, accordingly, hidden away in a corner. Nonetheless the meal featured some of the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever eaten, along with most of a bottle of an impressive Hellenic Chardonnay.
Day two hurt like stink: seemingly endless perineal poking, where the burn and sting and vibration literally went right to my core, straight up the poop-shoot to some dark and (typically) protected center of my GI existence. Given the meds I was surprised at how painful it all was. But Vero was efficient and focused—very little conversation and only a couple of tiny breaks throughout the entire session—and it looked like she would finish the whole thing in a mere two days. So I knew the end was in sight and just gave my best effort to hang on and not blow out a huge fart in her face or, even worse, lose control of my bowels altogether and soil her face with a noxious spew of post-airplane-constipation fecal sludge. Thank God my sphincter was up to the electric challenge.
Jaimie came for a visit at the studio just as Vero was wrapping up. I showed my wife some of the impressive oil paintings done by Vero and adorning most of the studio walls; we settled on a Flemish-looking portrait of a young woman and a skull. Even with the extra for the painting Vero’s fees were low for such a great artist. The briefest ink session of my adventure was done, and we headed back to our hipster apartment to get ready for another wonderful meal.
Our final full-day we rented a car and drove north, visiting an old college friend whom I hadn’t seen in over thirty-six years. She’d been perhaps the most vigorous and athletic person I knew at Yale; and yet she had been nearly killed on dozens of occasions by a mysterious neuromuscular disorder over the past decade. But she was doing better with immunosuppressive therapy and was still the very same, manic ball of energy and laughter I’d enjoyed decades earlier. It was great to see her again, meet her husband and critters, and hang out in her charming lake house for most of the day. I just had to avoid sitting any more than necessary.