Driving Dom

Sam parked his Honda on Sunset near Vons, a few blocks away from Attila Tattoo. He’d paired his Black Dahlia Murder t-shirt with the baggiest pants in his closet, hoping to toughen his image up for the occasion. Sam wished he had someone — OK, a girlfriend with dyed hair and gauged earlobes — with him as he entered the shop for the first time.

Thanks to magazines like Blasted and Ink Stain, Sam knew that Junior, one of the best artists in LA, worked at Attila. The place was legendary for churning out high-quality work in a lowbrow atmosphere, but it was even scuzzier than he expected. The decades-old red paint was peeling off the walls in places, and the acrid aroma of brimming ashtrays spilled into the waiting room from the artists’ area, which lay just beyond a wooden gate. Laughter punctuated by the intermittent buzzing of tattoo machines. The familiar whiff of antibacterial soap. Sam’s stomach gurgled in anticipation. Junior, a bonafide legend, was less than ten feet away from him. The decadent thrill of the tattoo world never got old.

Right after his eighteenth birthday, Sam came home with his first one: a swollen looking panther on his right shoulder from some place called on Melrose called Dice and Vice. Despite considering himself a liberal Los Angeleno, his real estate agent father expressed disappointment. Sam’s mom joked that it was her fault for taking him to see Blink 182 at the Grove in Anaheim.

“Most people with tattooed heads don’t end up living in the Palisades,” she explained to Sam. “Remember that.”

But their disapproval didn’t stop Sam; the panther was just the beginning. As his collection grew, Sam took a job at FedEx in Studio City both to placate his parents and maintain his ink habit.

Sam did a lap of Attila’s waiting area, taking in the yellowed flash sheets on the walls and plotting his approach. He’d saunter up to the divider and wait for a lull in Junior’s conversation to interject some scripted trash talk. He knew exactly what he wanted: a classic dagger with a banner. Easy.

Before he could enact the plan, a gravelly voice called from behind the gate: “What’s up bro?” Bald and burly, with two full-sleeves of black and grey tattoos sticking out of his oversize white t-shirt, the artist introduced himself as Little Dom. While obviously Caucasian, his fashion sense was pure cholo.

“Let me see those tattoos,” said Dom, bum leg dragging behind him, dangling cigarette dripping a trail of ash on the filthy carpet.

He grabbed Sam by his skinny arm and twisted it around, frowning at what he saw. “That one’s alright,” he said, pointing to a redheaded pin-up girl with gravitationally improbable breasts on the opposite bicep. Dom was so close Sam could smell his aftershave. And he wore plenty. Once Dom released him, Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. The cranky host proceeded to demean one tattoo after another, insisting he could have done each better. “That supposed to be a swallow? Looks like a pigeon. I could fix that. What you wanna’ get done today?”

Sam pointed at a dagger on the wall. “I was thinking something like that but with a banner wrapping around the handle — ”

“That’s a stupid idea,” Dom croaked.

Squirming now, Sam struggled to think on his feet. “An eagle with an eyepatch?” he offered.

Dom wasn’t having that either. “I got a design for you. Something nobody’s got. Come back here into Little Dom’s area.”

As he trailed Dom through the saloon-style doors, Sam saw Junior. He was a little guy in a Volcom sweatshirt hunched over his client’s upper back, finishing off a family name in ornate lettering. Sam felt trapped behind glass. The pushy old man was ruining his shot at meeting the real talent.

Dom’s station was a mess. Ink bottles lay on a silver tray like colorful, fallen soldiers. On the wall above them, a velvet painting depicting a dog card game shared space with dozens of overlapping stencils. “Check this out, bro.” Dom pointed at a busy butterfly design which incorporated not one, but two pairs of female eyes into the insect’s wings. The effect was hypnotic and unnerving but not at all what Sam wanted.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s really…impressive, what you did with the eyes. But I was thinking of something different.”

Dom disagreed. “Your buddies will trip when they see this. It’ll be better than those poseur tattoos you got. Wait.”

Before he knew it, Sam was in a vintage barber’s chair and Dom was shaving his upper back, preparing to place the butterfly. The artist talked non stop as he puttered around his lair, mostly jailhouse brags peppered with hints of submerged insecurity. “This Little Dom tattoo is gonna’ be the best piece you got…I may have been locked up but I ran shit on the inside…I got so many girls…I’m so ugly I’m good looking…”

The weight of a muscled forearm on his back, the brief respite from the pain that came with each soap spray and wipe — Sam forced unwelcome thoughts of rough prison sex from his mind as he stared at the floor and waited for Dom to finish.

It took Dom nearly three hours to complete madame butterfly. Halfway through, Junior and the other artists went home. Sam started to think Dom was intentionally going slow to keep his audience of one. This thought evoked some pity. It seemed Dom hadn’t had a friend for a long time. Maybe, ever.

Sam also struggled with making close friends, preferring the reliable fantasy worlds of comic books and video games. It wasn’t all that surprising that he’d taken to body art. If Sam was honest with himself, getting tattooed was another way for him to collect rather than connect.

Sam shivered as Dom wiped the fresh wound down with a warm washcloth. Then came the familiar endorphin rush— the tattoo customer’s version of a runner’s high.

“That’s the cleanest butterfly tattoo you’re ever gonna see, bro.”

“Cool,” Sam said, looking over his shoulder into the mirror. Well, there was more green than he’d imagined from the uncolored stencil. And were the wings a little unbalanced?

As he left Attila, Sam saw Dom in the cramped closet preparing needles for the next day. The old man worked on his task with the quiet focus of someone who knew how to turn minutes into hours into years.

Dad’s reaction to Sam’s newest epidermal addition was unenthusiastic. “Won’t have to worry about looking for a new job anytime soon. Keep getting those things and FedEx will be the only place that’ll hire you.”

Sam’s mother softened her criticism with a grudging compliment: “Well, it would be kind of pretty if the eyes weren’t so creepy,” she said.

As usual, Sam couldn’t stop looking at the thing. Despite the initial misgivings about the design, he traced every minute detail of its healing progress. It got worse before it got better, that was for sure. The skin scabbed in places and peeled in others, but finally emerged, like a monarch from a cocoon, in a form Sam deemed acceptable. He’d need another, though — a better one. And soon.

With the butterfly healed, Sam decided, against all logic, to brave Attila again. He would avoid Dom at all costs and talk only to Junior—it couldn’t happen twice, could it? — but the wily gangster ambushed him.

This time, the old man launched right into the hard sell on a pricey snake design. Dom held the crumpled piece of transfer paper up to Sam’s face. The snake had a magic-marker-weight outline and what looked like hastily applied decorative dotting on the scales. “No one has a tat like this, bro,” Dom insisted. “Let’s do it right now.”

Once again, it wasn’t what Sam wanted. The design was all wrong. Too blocky, too bold, if that was even possible for a tattoo. Could he talk Dom into redrawing the image, maybe try integrating a few suggestions? Unlikely. He considered turning around and running out the front door but Dom hovered over him with his girth until Sam acquiesced and assumed the position, this time lying horizontally on his side.

The whole thing was over quickly.

Leg smarting, Sam consoled himself in the car all the way home. OK, even if he was the owner of another tat he didn’t exactly want, at least this one was a tough-looking snake. Hopefully, if he kept adding pieces around it, quantity would eventually outweigh quality. Though imperfect, Sam told himself it was a unique take on a classic; Dom swore the image was a one-of-a-kind.

A few days later, while at the corner of Sunset and Vine, Sam saw a bike messenger stopped at the light wearing an identical design on his calf. No doubt about it. It was Little Dom’s custom reptile. Sam sighed. He glared at his snake; it looked even more juvenile than before. He wouldn’t let that hack touch him again.

The experience so soured him that a few months passed before Sam let himself think about a new tattoo. Slowly, though, the itch returned. He even considered returning to Dice and Vice, just to avoid Dom, but he still wanted that dagger from Junior. Sam decided to make a third and final attempt. He even called ahead to be certain Dom had the day off, but in Attila’s outlaw style, the number was disconnected.

Once more, Sam parked his Honda near Vons and summoned his gusto as he walked to the shop. He had it mapped out. Walk with purpose directly to Junior’s station in the back. Bypass any distractions. As soon as be opened the door, however, Dom cornered him in the lobby, looking lonelier than ever. Today’s seminar was on lowrider culture.

“You know how the pachucos lowered their cars back in the day?” Dom asked, getting right up in Sam’s face. Dom answered himself. “Sandbags,” he said.

Sam nodded.

“You need to feel a lowrider, homie.” Dom threw his bulky keychain from across the room. Sam caught the hunk of metal against his chest. “Today you’re gonna’ drive Princesa.” Dom ushered Sam out the front door.

Ground-scraping body, beefy whitewall tires, Virgin of Guadalupe-stickered back window, Princesa was both art piece and trophy, the vehicular extension of Dom’s fixation with Latino culture. Easily twenty feet, she was an imposing sentry. The yellow sunlight of Hollywood’s golden hour struck Princesa’s immaculate white paint job, creating a glare that was tough to look at without squinting. Sam approached the Chevrolet Impala with deference, holding his breath while taking in her full length.

“Go ahead, holmes. Unlock it,” Dom instructed.

Once seated, Sam gripped the blue and white leather wheel. Every detail — from dangling dice to analog mileage gauge — looked impossibly fragile. He exhaled, the sweat on his back plastering his t-shirt to the leather seat. Sam’s hand rested on Dom’s rabbit’s foot, which hung passively from the ignition. Staring straight ahead in the passenger seat, Dom spoke in a cigarette-stained voice: “It’s manual. You can drive, right?”

Technically, sure, Sam thought, wiping the sweat from his forehead, but the Impala was nothing like the Honda, a graduation gift from his parents. Dom flashed his gold-toothed smile. “I’m letting you ride my lady, homie. Don’t be chicken.”

Breathing in and out with great exaggeration, Sam turned the key. Beneath him, he felt the unfamiliar bounce of hydraulic tires.

“Nice,” said Little Dom.

Lightheaded, Sam waited. Let them pass. Find an opening. Now. Merge. He pulled into the rush hour Sunset congestion.

They cruised down Sunset, soon crossing Cole, then Wilcox. The sun disappeared behind the Hollywood Athletic Club, then returned above the Money Mart at the corner, blinding Sam. He put on his sunglasses and sank into the seat. To the rumble of the Impala’s engine, Dom smiled and bobbed his head. Sam tried to do likewise but was distracted by the afternoon traffic, the copious legroom, and Dom’s always-threatening proximity.

Dom hung his arm out the window and smoked cigarette after cigarette. At first, Sam adhered perfectly to the speed limit, but as his confidence grew, he sped up a little, then a little more.

Dom glared. “Slow down,” he ordered.

Sam returned to the car to thirty miles per hour.

The ambient engine hum blended with Dom’s rambling. “You never been in a car like this…I tricked this bitch out…when you go back home, you tell people you drove Little Dom’s ’59 Impala…you say, I drove Princesa. They’ll know what you mean…” Sam wasn’t sure who Dom thought he would tell, but then, Sam wasn’t even sure Dom knew his name. They stopped at a traffic light. As they waited, Dom switched on the AM-only radio. Some oldie with lyrics about being a puppet under someone’s command. Fitting.

“You like that?” asked Dom.

He knew this song from somewhere. Sam remembered Sundays in the car with Dad, hopping between house listings all over Silver Lake and Los Feliz, occasionally even venturing past Western. His father usually wore a Tommy Bahama shirt and sunglasses and sang along loudly to Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” and “Midnight Confessions” by The Little Rascals. His forearms were covered with thick blonde fur, bleached by the California sun. Sam imagined his Dad was a Hollywood big shot. Maybe Dad couldn’t teach him the difference between a V6 and V8 engine, but the years spent listening to oldies radio together had made Sam a repository of obscure music facts.

“‘I’m Your Puppet’” Sam offered. “Great song.”

“I’m your puppet,” Dom laughed. “That’s fucked up.”

As the refrain repeated, Sam unconsciously inched the Impala closer to the Subaru in front of them. What if Dad drove by? What would he think of this? He wouldn’t believe Sam could drive a cool car like this, much less know someone like Dom. The thought evoked the mixture of elation and dread he got in high school when he skipped fifth period to extend his lunch.

“Yo, watch it,” Dom said. Startled, Sam sat up and slammed down on the brake. The two of them lurched forward in the front seat. Sam hadn’t noticed the lack of seatbelts, but now, as he and Dom slid toward the dashboard, he realized their absence added to the spaciousness of the front seat, the sense of untethered freedom. Princesa slammed into the Subaru, restored headlights crunching on impact. Out of the corner of his eye, Little Dom was thrown around like a marionette, arms akimbo. His bald pate hit the inside of the windshield. Sam’s head bounced off the steering wheel and he bit his lower lip. Hard. The car stereo played on.

Sam sat up straight in his seat. Dom banged his hand on the dashboard. “What the hell, homie? You got to stay awake when you’re cruising.” He rubbed his head. “Fuck.”

Sam gently turned the engine off and started to get out of the car.

“You sit down,” Dom commanded. “Let me take care of this.”

“Do you have insurance?” Sam asked.

Dom took off his glasses and glared. “What the fuck you think man? Yes, I got insurance.”

Drivers honked and passed them, brandishing middle fingers and disbelieving looks. Sam couldn’t believe he was in this situation in the first place. His first car accident and it was in a gangster’s Impala. As Dom exchanged numbers with the Subaru’s owner (a young woman in a USC sweatshirt) Sam pictured years of indentured servitude, making needles in the back of Attila. Dom would call on him at all hours demanding food from Vons, forcing Sam to clean ashtrays and scrub the shop’s temperamental toilet. He would be forever tied to Dom by this mistake.

Finally, Dom returned and lit a smoke. Sam was glad for the facade of normalcy. “Start the car. I’m gonna let you drive but we’re going back to the shop. Hang a right over there,” Dom said without looking at him.

They drove back in silence. He was relieved to see Dom’s usual spot still vacant, a massive hole no one was brave enough to claim, despite the paucity of street parking. Roy Orbison played in the background as Sam carefully backed into the space, hydraulics bouncing with every light tap on the brake. Finally, the task was done. He had returned the bruised Princesa.

“Get out,” Dom ordered. They walked in front of the car. She was a mess. “I gave you a privilege, holmes. I let you drive my lady. What the fuck?”

Sam’s throat choked. He stuttered trying to get the words out. “I’m sorry man. I didn’t even think I should drive it but you gave me the keys. I’ll pay you back to fix it. I have a job at FedEx.”

“Bro, shut up. First of all, I know you’ll pay me back.” At this Dom pushed his sunglasses down his nose and looked straight at Sam. These were not the sad eyes of an old tattooer; this was the icy stare of an ex-con who meant business. “Second, it ain’t the money. I got so much fucking money. Look.” Dom opened his wallet to reveal a wad of 100 dollar bills. “How do you think we got out of there so fast today? I gave the chick in the car you hit a grand, bro.”

So that explained it.

“Dom, I know I messed up. Here, let me give you my number. I’ll get all the money back to you.”

Dom slapped him on the shoulder. “It’s OK homie. You’re a good kid. I know you didn’t mean to fuck up Princesa. I got a buddy from the joint who’ll fix her up for cheap. He owes me.” Sam smiled hesitantly, warmed by Dom’s unexpected approval but concerned about what “cheap” meant. (Not to mention the nefarious business for which a jailhouse pal might owe Dom a favor.) Sam flashed to a picture of himself in his mid-40s, living at home and still working at FedEx to pay off his debt to a thug.

After slowly entering Sam’s contact info into his flip phone, Dom dragged his bad leg up the steps to the shop. Before opening the door he turned to Sam. “But don’t you even think about stiffing Little Dom,” he said. “I got your number, bro.” Then he laughed and walked into his lair.

In the front room, a twenty-something in a Dodgers cap pretended to study a dragon design. He had one visible tattoo: a bluish blob on his forearm. Dom was on the case. “Let me see that, homie. Wow, whoever did that really screwed up, no? Come back here. Little Dom’ll fix that.”

The customer didn’t know what hit him.

Sam left them to their transaction and stepped outside. As he passed Princesa, an alternate version of events ran in his head: Sam splayed out on the white and green leather front seats, a newly anointed gangster cruising slowly through the Los Angeles traffic, his dangerous companion nodding approvingly. In this daydream, Little Dom was the ultimate authentic accessory: a real live bad guy.

But this was reality. He kneeled before the alabaster goddess to inspect her disfigurement. Fuck. He’d really mangled the grill. Morbid thoughts raced through his head. Sam fretted for a full city block, again picturing Dom doing unspeakable things to him in defense of Princesa’s honor. Then, as his plain, nameless Honda came into view, the laid-back swing of “I’m Your Puppet” returned to his hips. By the time he got in his car, Sam was wearing the whole afternoon — Dom, Princesa, the accident, all of it — like a fresh tattoo.

He almost forgot that he’d agreed to pick up the evening shift at FedEx. With a sigh, Sam turned the key in the ignition and pulled into traffic, welcoming the subdued power of his Honda. He opened the window for some air. The fading light of Hollywood at dusk felt romantic, fated. With a few hours to kill, he decided to stop at El Pollo Loco before heading to Studio City. There was plenty of time.