Читать книгу Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same - Mattox Roesch - Страница 9

I almost ended up with Go-boy’s tattoo. I lost the bet and was supposed to get this drawing of an Eskimo Jesus tattooed on my right forearm. It was the tattoo that Go-boy had inked on his own arm. The design he had created.

Our bet started when I moved from Los Angeles to Unalakleet, Alaska. I was seventeen. Mom was sick of my shit and sick of her own shit, so she gave in and moved us about as far away from LA as possible—to the place where she’d grown up, the place where she hadn’t been in twenty years. A bunch of family I’d never seen before welcomed us when we got out of the small plane. My cousin Go-boy was with them. He was tall, taller than me, and his black hair stood on end, messy, like a cloud of smoke. Go introduced me to a few people and then we split, and he gave me a tour of his small village—my new home. It was only the second time I had met Go, and I told him I was moving back to California at the end of summer, in three months, telling him this was just a temporary thing. But for some reason he didn’t believe me. He bet I’d stay.

He said, “You’ll still be here this time next year.”

I laughed at the idea right then. It was strange. I didn’t know why he thought he knew me so well or why he didn’t want me to leave his town. I’d never known anyone with such confidence—not in other people, not in me. But either way, it turned out he was right—I stayed and lost the bet. I stayed through the summer, through the manic sun of June and July, the ditches full of fireweed, the dusted car windows, the gravel-filled shoes. I stayed into the months of mud puddles and rusted bike chains, and then the forgettable fall. I stayed for my senior year in high school. I stayed for seven months of winter, seven months of blizzards, seven months of east winds and billboard-sized drifts, seven months of short and shorter days. And I stayed through the spring melt and into the next summer. I even stayed during the few times Go himself left.

But I didn’t get Go-boy’s tattoo.