Speaks with Doorknobs

It was only a week ago that I claimed that women were the source of all language—that two guys meeting each other for the first time would merely say "Hey" and be done with it.  If he's not armed and not belligerent, then that's good enough for me.

Tonight, I have verification of my thesis.

We were walking to Whole Foods at about 7:00 this evening, and we took the side route we often take across the meadow next to the Mystic River.  There are a couple of nice gardens back there, and it's good to be away from traffic noise.  There are often a lot of folks in there with their dogs, too; the grassy area is about the size of a par-four golf hole, and people can let their dogs go run.  You can get right down to the river's edge on the north side, so the dogs are occasionally wet.

We were about two-thirds of the way across the lawn when we came across a young man and his dog.  The dog:  sort of boxer-ish; a tough, square dog, but friendly.  The young man:  baggy shorts, t-shirt, goatee, muscular.  A tough, square guy, but friendly.  (People really DO look like their pets...)  Had I been alone, I would have said Hi to the dog and Hey to the owner.  But I wasn't alone.  I was with my wife, Speaks with Doorknobs.

(You know about that?  Nora and I were out in Eureka last summer with my friends Ryan and Val, and I was talking about how Nora helped me be more outgoing.  "I'm sort of reticent by nature, but Nora will talk to a doorknob about the interesting hands it's known."  That launched her alternate name, Speaks with Doorknobs.)

"What's his name?"

"Her name—it's Nadine."

"Oooh, hello, Nadine!  Ohh, such a good dog..."  By this time, Nadine is playing with Nora, and Nadine's owner has come to about four feet away.  And he (the owner, not Nadine) is heavily adorned with very colorful tattoos.  His legs are covered from the hem of his shorts down to his ankles; his arms are covered from the sleeves of his t-shirt down to about mid-forearm.  Nora stops playing with Nadine, and turns her attention to the guy.  "How long have you been working on that?"

"About ten years or so."

"Wow, that's amazing."

"Yeah, I'm about done."

I was somewhat emboldened, and asked "Are you ever really done with a project like that?"

"Well, eventually, you run out of spaces.  I mean, there's the naughty bits, but..."

The art is somewhat Chinese, mostly dragons and florals, but some Celtic braids on his biceps.

"Have you had it all done by the same artist?" I continued.

"No, I started in San Francisco, and then..."

"How long ago were you in San Francisco?"

"About ten years."

"I used to live in Oakland."

"Oaktown... I liked the East Bay.  Anyway, I started in San Francisco, and then came here and started working with a guy in Medford Square.  But then he moved his shop to Portland Maine, and I got tired of driving that much, so now I'm working with Redemption."

Back to Nora.  "So do you tell them the design you want, or give them a theme?"

"Not really.  I tell them 'just do what you want.'  I figure, I'll let the artist be an artist.  They're more into it that way."

"Does the color hurt more than the black?"

"No, the outlining definitely hurts more.  It's one really big black needle, and it hurts a lot.  The fill is a lot of little needles.  The outline is worse."

Back to me.  "Do some parts of your body hurt more?  I've had friends tell me that areas with thin skin, like around joints, that's worse."

"It all hurts.  Over bones, yeah, that's bad.  But really, it all hurts.  Especially now that I'm older, my threshold of pain is a lot lower than it used to be.  I can't sit there and take it like a young guy.  But yeah, some parts are worse.  Like your sternum.  Over your kidneys.  And your legs... there isn't any part of your legs that doesn't hurt."

"Is there ANY place that doesn't hurt?"  Nora asked.

"Oh yeah.  Your arms, your shoulders..." And with that, he pulls his shirt up to his collarbone, and he's fully tattooed, in color, from his waistband across his stomach and chest and up to his shoulders.  There's about a two-inch diameter blank space around each nipple, but aside from that, he's wall to wall.

"WOW!" Nora said.  "That's amazing!  And the back, too?"  So he obligingly turns around and pulls up the back of his shirt; again, not an unmarked square inch.

See, there's the difference.  I'd have walked by him and said "Hey" and thought to myself that guy's got a lot of tattoos... but Nora's got this dude stripping down in a public park.

I coined a somewhat more flattering name for her a few years ago, after it seemed like her dentist and her optometrist and the Price Chopper bakery clerk were all telling her their life stories without request.  "You're, like, The Ethnography Whisperer."  Either way, whether she's named after a Kevin Costner or a Robert Redford movie, she has this way of letting people talk.  I can do it as a professional skill; Nora does it as a way of living.

On the way back, we met the full complement of Mystic River dogs: Avalanche (St. Bernard), Bella (a white Maltese), Hunter and Jerry (race-rescue greyhounds), Mojo (a boxer-pitbull), Jake (black Chuihuahua), a Basenji we don't remember the name of, and a couple of others.  Nadine was still there, too.  So Nora got her dog fix, and I got to marvel once again at the power of her ability to extract stories.  It's great to be in the presence of a master.

(I, however, am pretty good at re-creating dialogue...)