It was about twenty years ago. An elderly gentleman, in the late seventies of his life, decided to get a tattoo. Not on a whim, not for fashion, but as a religious act of penance – a vow to Jesus and Mary.
He was the embodiment of a stereotypical Lika grandfather: a hunting hat, gray mustache, calm and gentle eyes, slightly weary. He looked as if he had stepped out of the series Jelenko – kind, attentive, uncorrupted, a genuinely good man. Untouched by metropolitan complexes, natural to the core, sincere in every way.
We scheduled three appointments.
One for Jesus.
One for Mary.
And a third to cover an old tattoo, probably tattooed shortly after World War II. I tattooed Jesus and we agreed to meet a week later for the Mary tattoo.
During the appointment for Mary, among other things, I asked him how people reacted to the new tattoo.
- Great - he said - no prejudice, no judgment.
- And your wife? How did she react when you came home?
- She didn’t even see it.
- How didn’t she see it? She had to see it when you… do those things?!
- Well… we don’t do that anymore.
- Why?
- Ah… what do I know…
- And Viagra?
- What’s Viagra?
- It’s a medicine, a pill… you take it and yours stands up like when you were twenty.
A brief silence.
- Can you write down the name of that medicine for me?
- I can.
I looked up everything about Viagra online, translated it into Croatian, and printed it out.
I tattooed. Grandpa studied Viagra.
Two weeks later, he came for the third appointment – to cover the old tattoo. But… something was different.
The first time, he had that cloudy, aged wiev. Now – his eyes were clear like a teenager’s. Groomed, upright, lively. His mustache was no longer gray, but brown. As if time had skipped several decades backward.
I asked if he had started taking the medicine.
- Well, I just need to do one more check first.
I could tell he was embarrassed.
- Well… I started.
And there was no need to say anything more. He was full of life, neat, smiling. Clearly, he had returned to activities he had believed were long behind him.
After that last appointment, we never saw him again. But one thing is certain – a visit to the tattoo studio had brought back his spark of life. I hope he is still enjoying his later years, with a smile on his face, youthful energy in his steps, and… perhaps a little adventure along the way, if he is still with us.