32 Days of Christmas; Day 5
Now in the twelfth month, on the fourth day of the same, when the sun hid behind cold clouds and garlands were beginning to sprout everywhere, Bria decided to visit Ryder’s shop for a tattoo.
The festive season was around the corner, and she wanted to feel a little more rebellious—more daring than she already was. All her friends had tattoos. If it weren’t for her strict grandmother, who she lived with on the outskirts of town, she would have gotten one long ago. Even in high school she’d wanted one. She believed it would make her powerful: a full sleeve of ink on her less dominant right arm. Something that would make someone think twice before approaching her, especially paired with her long nails.
The only problem was that she didn’t know what to get. Her friends had inked their boyfriends’ names, their pets, their zodiac signs, or meaningful dates. None of those things mattered enough to her to etch them onto her skin. She didn’t have a boyfriend; she enjoyed the company of her female best friend from high school, and that was enough. She had no pets. She was “African like that,” as she put it. Animals belonged outside; humans belonged indoors. And though she was obsessed with many things, believing the stars dictated personality wasn’t one of them. So zodiac signs were out.
Still, she decided to go. Time was running out; she wanted to be healed and satisfied before the end-of-year parties came in thick and fast.
Ryder had been recommended by most of her tattooed friends. Their tattoos were simple but clean. “Like they were done by someone who actually knows his stuff,” she liked to say.
They had agreed to rendezvous at 9 a.m. She thought it was an odd hour for a tattoo appointment but went with it. She had things to do afterward anyway. She imagined it would be quick and painless—in and out. But when she got to town, Ryder was waiting outside a shady kinyozi. She immediately thought the whole idea might have been a mistake.
Then she saw him.
He was handsome—striking, even. Not at all what she had expected. Tattoos climbed up his neck and down his arms and chest. He wore a baggy Lucky Dube vest, long flowing locs, and had a silver tooth in his smile. His arms were shiny and muscular beneath the ink. His light skin was barely visible under the art and the dark dreads. Yet his appearance was strangely inviting. Bria felt safe, inexplicably, despite not knowing him at all.
“Bria?” His voice was gentle, almost like a character from a Disney movie.
“Yes.”
“Karibu. Tuishie hivi nyuma,” he said, guiding her into a back room that you wouldn’t know existed unless someone showed you. She felt the eyes of the kinyozi customers trailing her, some even using the mirror to sneak a look at her exposed thighs beneath her short skirt.
They walked through a dark corridor that felt longer than it was, then stepped into a dim red-lit room that smelled of smoke and burnt skin. The scent wasn’t repulsive to her—she was a smoker herself. It felt familiar, like her usual hangouts, except here there was an added scent, something faintly aloe-vera-like. A reclining chair sat next to a dentist-style bed, illuminated by a single bright light. The rest of the room glowed a mysterious crimson.
“Take a seat. I’ll show you some designs I’ve been working on,” he said, that soft voice once again easing her nerves.
She lay back on the bed in silence, strangely comfortable, as if the dreadlocked stranger in the questionable kinyozi back room had somehow become a friend.
“Uko na blunt?” she asked, breaking the quiet as he flipped through his portfolio.
“Yeah, sure.” He handed her a cigarette and lit it with practiced ease. Even his movements were gentle. A part of her spine that she thought was immune to men suddenly reacted, tingling with a sensation she didn’t recognize.
Bria is something of an introvert—though she hates the word. She prefers “selective socialite”. Catch her dancing in the rain to Charisma songs and you’d think she is wild. Catch her smoking on her balcony with slow jazz humming in the background and you’d assume she is some contemplative intellectual searching for answers at the end of a blunt.
I’m not a smoker. Never have been. But I love the romanticism of it all. It happens to me often: this fantasy that I’m a smoker. That I’m the kind of man who stands on his balcony at midnight, or sits in a room lined with books, a cigarette perched between his fingers, looking like I’m contemplating something profound. Like a movie character whose cigarette is shorthand for depth, complexity, or some inner battle.
It’s all delusional, I know.
But I’m drawn to characters who smoke, like Thomas Shelby in Peaky Blinders. Most villains smoke. And let’s be honest, these are the only characters that really matter. Heroes are boring. Villains smoke because they’ve made peace with mortality, or they’re intentionally flirting with it.
Perhaps I need to talk to someone about this.
Perhaps I need to talk to Bria about this.
But hers isn’t delusion. She is a smoker. A talented one, if that’s a thing. She can blow rings and shapes. She can spell I love you with smoke from her nose. Her nose hairs are practically dead from years of abuse. Her cure for a cold is “a quick smoke”. Her cure for cold weather is “a quick smoke”. Her solution during an argument? You guessed it: “a quick smoke.”
The tattoo was simply another way to define who she was—to cement her defiance against everything she despised in this patriarchal society. To defy the gods who took her parents early. To challenge her grandmother, who was still too steeped in religion to understand that even gods, surely, had tattoos.
When Ryder returned with the designs, his head hovered close to her thighs—the way she was positioned on the bed made it inevitable. She passed him her cigarette without a word, and he took a slow drag before handing it back, the two of them sharing the thin column of smoke like an unspoken pact. Ash flaked off and landed on her thighs, burning her skin in tiny pricks, but she didn’t flinch; if anything, it amused her. They exhaled together, shaping the smoke into rings and spirals—both of them natural smokers, effortlessly cool in the hazy red glow of the room. They flipped through the pages amid the drifting ash, the heavy portfolio resting on her bare thighs, her skirt far too short to shield anything. His hand slipped beneath the book, pretending to support it, while subtly tracing her inner thighs. Strangely, she didn’t mind. She had always assumed male touch repulsed her. Apparently not this one. She let him continue, meeting his lingering glances.
By the time she chose her design, Ryder was visibly hard. Even in the dim lighting, she could see it pressing against his navy shorts. Her friends had warned her he was a playboy, but that advice was somewhere outside, back with the nosy customers in the kinyozi.
She had originally wanted the tattoo on her right arm but she changed her mind. Now she wanted it on her left breast—high enough to be bold, low enough to be sensual.
Ryder lowered her leather top just enough for workspace.
It wasn’t as painful as she’d feared. She held steady. All the while Ryder breathed softly against her skin, his wipes growing colder each time. Their eyes met often. They barely spoke. She hated small talk anyway, and she was glad that he seemed to sense it. Soft music played from hidden speakers. The tension in the room felt as tangible as a fabric they had both agreed to tug at.
It took about an hour and a half. She loved the final result, yet something felt incomplete, like leaving then would make her an unfinished story.
So she kissed him, before the ink even had time to dry. He kissed her back instantly, his hands slipping fully beneath her skirt now. He sucked her breasts, carefully avoiding the tender, reddened area. His hardness was warm against her, pressing through the haze of smoke and red light. Suddenly the choice to wear a short skirt felt like the smartest decision she’d made all week. He was gentle, exactly as he looked. What should have been a quick appointment ended up consuming most of her afternoon.
By the time she finally left, nightfall was creeping in. They had made out, smoked, made out again, and smoked once more—then passed out for a while. It was a whole event. Her only pains were her throbbing skin and her pounding head. She staggered out of the kinyozi. Ryder seemed perfectly fine. Like the gentleman he was, he ordered her an Uber and sent her home.
The only confirmation he had that she arrived safely was when she returned a few days later—this time wearing an even shorter skirt, and not for a tattoo.
*******
A year later, she still visits Ryder’s shop. When she told me this story she still had only one tattoo: the conspicuous piece of symbolic art on her left breast. Even though she knows she’s not the only girl who gets more than tattoos from Ryder, she doesn’t mind. She feels no guilt about her visits. But she does offer one warning:
if you must get a tattoo, don’t get it at Ryder’s.
✍🏽Reagan.