Five tattoos

She was pretty in her sort of way. I mean, she was definitively pretty, but had that ``I don't give a fuck to the world'' look with dark nails, tattoos, thorn clothes, and a odd but hypnotic make-up: a very black rimel on the eyes, a golden skin that made her green eyes and black hair blend perfectly somehow. She looked young, I could have given her sixteen, but she was twenty-two. I fell in love, stupid man I am.

It took a while to get to her. My first approach was dismissed by a side glance and a walk away. The next one was not much better, but I got a ``piss off''. I became more aggressive in my tries, until the fifth or so, when she was blunt. ``Hey pal, get off. I don't want anything with you.''

I got the hint. The same night, leaving in my car, I ran over her. Or better, she ran over my car. I was still maneuvering, the car practically stopped, so she was not hurt. ``Fuck you!'' she said, lying over the hood. I was tired of her after all that fruitless chasing. ``Come on, get off the hood, you are drunk. Go away.''

I saw her again in another party, and this time she came to talk to me. ``The guy that ran over me.''

``Oh, was I your first?'' Perhaps it was because she had seen my car, or maybe because I pretended to not care anymore, but she was more receptive that night. I took her to a hotel, and she proved she had no inhibitions. I glanced at her tattoos while we grabbed each other, one on the small of her back, one on her left ankle, one on her right breast, one on her groin, to the right, high enough to be in view if she wore a bikini, but a tiny one.

The next morning I could see the tattoos better, while she was still asleep. The one at her back was made of two Chinese or Japanese ideograms, I don't know which. On the ankle she had a red rose. The breast had a small angel, a bit weird, but it was an angel. The last one was a hummingbird. ``Are you a pervert?'' she said, startling me while I examined her last tattoo. I was going to deny, but I remembered that I had to play the game. ``Yes, a big one.'' A few weeks later, I was kissing one of her tattoos and she asked if I like them. I did. ``All five of them?'' Then she sat in front of me, bowing her head down. There was a small tattoo that I had missed, on the back of her neck, very close to the hair line. ``Almost nobody notices this one. It's a secret,'' she said, and had a smile, one of the few true smiles she ever gave me. I thought she loved me then. Stupid.

I once told her she looked sixteen. ``Up yours.'' And she added, ``So you're with me because I look like a Lolita?'' No, she was past the Lolita phase. She had an almost angelic face when she was facing you directly, but as soon as she rotated her head a little bit she became sexy, with a naughty glance that screamed ``I'm a bad girl''.

She didn't care about me. She fucked another guy and told me, like it was nothing. She made scenes from time to time, for ridiculous reasons, sometimes not even true. She wasted money like there was no tomorrow, wanted expensive things that once she got she would use once and forget about, wanted to go to the most expensive and exclusive places, where she sometimes left me to go with friends or to flirt with other people. She sometimes flirted with girls, but I think that only to shock them and to hurt me. My friends told me all the time to dump her. One day, one of them said he had something important to tell me. I went to his place.

``You may punch me and never talk to me again, but if this makes you dump her, it was worth it.'' He gave me pictures of her, being fucked by someone, then doing the photographer too, both together. ``I took them.'' I wanted to kill him.

I broke up with her, and called him one night, very drunk. I don't remember what I said, but he came to see me the next day. I almost punched him, but didn't. We stayed friends, somehow. Best friends are not people who tell you that you like nice when you don't.

She fucked her way to the top, as the old saying goes. I knew she was on the top when I saw pictures of her in one of those celebrity magazines. Someone told me she was in it, I bought it and she was, at some fancy party, dating a famous guy. She looked pretty in the pictures. I hope she likes my pictures too, I'm sending her copies. And, who knows, perhaps I'll send them to someone who will appreciate their artistic value and publish them.