The Present

A friend had a birthday this week, the big 3-0, and to celebrate I offered to take some portrait shots of his birthday present to himself: his new tattoo.

Ryan isn’t an ink-junkie. Until last week, he only had three tattoos, all tasteful and harmonized: a tribal design on the back of his neck and shoulders, one on the small of his back to match it, and a little one just under his navel.

It’s the sexiest thing – you can see those two poking up above the top of his jeans sometimes. Those are popular spots for girls to get inked, so seeing Ryan with his tattoos flashing front and back, his thoroughbred body every inch a man’s, is really something.

The guy is a bike nut, for Pete’s sake; he both repairs and custom paints motorcycles. He’s perpetually grimy around the knuckles, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a clean shirt. Those little reminders that he’s just a trifle vain are sexy as hell.

Needless to say, he turns me on like crazy; always has. We’ve always been friends since we met at a friend’s house, and he’d kissed me once or twice, but things had never gone further than that.

Well, I get him to my place, pour a couple of glasses of Shiraz into him to loosen up the kinks in his spine, and tell him to show me his new ink. It’s been a couple of weeks, and the whole time it’s healing he’s kept the damn thing under wraps like it was some sort of public monument and he was going to have an unveiling ceremony at midnight.

He hasn’t even said where it is, and it’s not visible with his clothes on, so I figure I am probably in for something le juicy, if you know what I mean.

He dilly-dallies, and I start to wonder if there’s a culture anywhere in the world where it is appropriate to grab someone, shake their shoulders, and holler “For god’s sake! Show me your gorgeous naked body, already!”

At last, he grins and stands up in front of the backdrop I have hung up, a big white sheet printed with a tribal design. I click the lights on, and I know he can feel them on his skin as he takes his shirt off.