Vegas Tattoo

Assignment: Bill mentioned that he saw a woman in a loud white truck outside of Fred Meyer with a tattoo across her chest which read "VEGAS". Write something about it.



My contribution:

While Roger was in the store buying a case of beer Dawn was using the visor mirror to reapply her Scarlet Mauve lip gloss. She noticed the green, red and black tattoo printed on her chest. The letters and even the word itself were all backwards, which it always was whenever she saw it, but she knew what it said, "VEGAS."

Even though the tattoo was "Over-the-Top" (of her boobs she thought to herself and smiled) and came out of a two-week alcohol and drug binge sixteen years ago when she was twenty-two years old, only very seldom did she regret the body marks. The tattoo let people know that inside she was free and untamed. It brought to her mind an image of wild mustangs galloping over the desert Southwest.

Still, she was starting to feel that she had outgrown the tattoo. She once talked to a dermatologist who told her that the tat was too large to remove. Her chest would look mottled. The best she could hope for was a modification of the tattoo, reworking to change or obscure the message.

A tattoo that made her look like an out-of-control party girl just didn't seem to fit anymore. It wasn't fun like it used to be. She was older and was looking for something more adult: something modern and more sophisticated.

Dawn loved animals. She had two dogs and a cat in her house. She wondered how it would feel if people looked at her as a caring and compassionate person instead of a party-girl. She would like that. She really didn't have a problem eating meat, but she began to wonder, "What would it be like if people thought I was a Vegan?"

It was contemporary and cutting-edge. It was a word that would make her appear thoughtful and "with it." You have to be smart to be a vegan. She didn't feel she got enough credit for her mind. She was tired of being stereotyped as slutty.

She shut her eyes and leaned back into the seat. She was daydreaming about being known as a vegan, maybe a vegan leader when she was shaken by a case of beer hitting the bed of the truck. Roger slid into the driver's seat and started up the noisy Ford. Dawn almost asked him what he would think if she became a vegan, but thought better of it.

Mike Mallory