Shane had been four Modelos in up at the lake when he told Ilya he would consent to a matching tattoo for Ilya's birthday if he could beat Shane around the trail. The loop is just shy of six ks and every single morning without fail Shane laps it in about twenty-two minutes, Ilya hot on his heels. When Ilya pushed past him the following morning to get a foot over by the trailhead marker he let out an ear-splitting yawp that Shane found very unnecessary.
Yes, he should have factored in the Modelos. Yes, he suspects sabotage. Yes, he is shitting himself.
Now they have back-to-back appointments with an artist in Hintonburg who Bood likes, because Ilya's preferred guy returned to Denver after some visa trouble. Evidently paperwork was not his forte.
Meanwhile, Ilya keeps airdropping Shane screenshots from the studio's Instagram - arrow-pierced hearts that read MOM and ugly sprawling scorpions and busty pinups in black and white. Cliché bullshit.
"This style is called American traditional, very classic," Ilya says, "but I don't know, maybe we like fine line better?"
"Stop fucking sending me these," Shane snaps. "You can literally just pass me your phone."
Shane obviously has no problem with pain. That part actually - well, he had Ilya jab a fingernail into his forearm with his best approximation of force, and it was a non-issue.
"But it really doesn't feel like that at all," Ilya told Shane when he said this.
"Then do it the way it feels," Shane had said.
Ilya shrugged. "Don't think I can. It's like. Buzzing. Moves around, but it stays with you."
"Yeah?" said Shane, shifting on the couch.
"Like if sunburn is made of bunches of needles, and they're all pressing down into you."
"Yeah," said Shane again, suddenly unable to feel his feet. "Can you, um. Can you do that nail thing again."
Anyway.
When they pull into the parlour ("Do not call it that, it's not 1949.") parking lot, Shane realises that the concept of "chattering teeth" isn't, as he had always thought, a wimp's hyperbole. Ilya's hand's stayed glued to his thigh the duration of the drive. He's kept the final designs under close wraps. Shane thinks he might puke. He's never felt this pathetic in his life. He didn't tell Yuna they were doing this - she's never much liked Ilya's tattoos, and it's possible this is the straw that breaks the camel's back. Forget gay son. Forget gay son gay marrying gay rival. Forget gay married gay son leaving Montreal. It's going to be the sight of her only child sporting a tarantula with Megan Fox's face on his elbow that does it. Or knuckle tattoos that say SOFT CORE. Or --
Ilya taps him: time to get out. Not once has he said anything to the effect of "You know, you don't actually have to do this." And why would he. Or should he. It is a beautiful June day in Ottawa and Shane is letting Ilya choose a permanent infection to shove under his skin.
When he thinks of it this way he is able to glide into the shop as though carried by travelator.
It's quieter in here than he expected. Shane's chaperoned many a plastered Metro into places like these trying and failing to appeal to their better angels or at least common sense and they were clubbier in feel, blasting bad alt playlists and echoing with laughter and an off-brand kind of locker room banter. There's none of that telltale buzzing machine noise, either. Shane looks at Ilya.
"What, Hollander? You were the one who wouldn't let me bring Andrew to the house."
"I just think it's probably more sterilised here," mutters Shane. "You booked the shop out?"
"Well I wasn't going to let anyone else see you like this," says Ilya.
Shane swallows. Andrew emerges, says hello. He's a bald guy in his thirties with gold wire aviator glasses. This relaxes Shane ever so slightly. Neither of their type.
"Come on down," says Andrew. "Pick a table, any table."
Ilya chooses the middle right. Not that it matters. He sits down on it. Shane hovers. Ilya glances to his side. Shane hops up next to him so they're sitting shoulder to shoulder. He's wearing a loose tank but he's sweating into it in ways he's never sweat before.
It's the permanence.
"So, this is quite the honour," says Andrew. Tattoo artists must be contracted to speak like this, thinks Shane. Somewhere between carney and a person who writes poetry on a typewriter. "I understand this is your first piece, Shane?"
"It is," says Shane, voice compressed and run through an anonymiser. To his ears. He concentrates on Ilya's breath.
"I'll go first, Andrew," says Ilya. Shane glares at him. What the fuck? He wanted to go first. Now he's going to have to--
"You can wait, малыш," says Ilya, in Russian. He rolls down his shorts. "I want it here, on my hip," he says to Andrew.
Shane's mouth falls open. They hadn't discussed location. Hipbone is. It's pretty hot.
"Sure," says Andrew. "Let me just get...." he wheels himself over to a desk, grabs a sheet of transfer paper.
On it, reversed, in stark black gothic looking figures: the number 24.
Shane barks out a laugh.
"You like it?" grins Ilya. "I love even numbers," he tells Andrew, who laughs a bit.
"Oh my god," Shane says. But then--
"Don't get ahead of yourself, Shanya," says Ilya. "Watch."
Shane barely breaks eye contact as Ilya gets his jersey number tattooed onto his body. Looks at Ilya's face as he lies down, and Andrew shaves him. Transfers the stencil. Turns on the gun. Ilya smirks at him when the whining starts up.
In Russian he says to Shane: "Sounds like you."
Shane isn't sure how he gets through the next half hour. He starts getting hard about half a dozen times, and it's only by picturing his parents dead in a car crash à la Bruce Wayne that he kills it every time.
Andrew seems to be quite thorough. He bandages Ilya up. 24 marked up 2.4 inches high. It's.
"Now you," says Ilya, smirking. Shane levitates.
Andrew grabs another piece of paper. Same font. Shane's nothing but gamma waves. Mirror image 81, like he thought. But. It's--
"A temporary tattoo?" Shane all but yells.
Ilya is laughing to himself in the way that Shane really fucking hates. Like that dog from Wacky Races. Shane hits his chest hard.
"No," he says.
"No?" says Ilya, a cherub lifted from church. He's giving Shane an easy way out. Which makes it so much worse.
"No! I didn't-- no." Shane turns to Andrew. "I want it for real. As big as his."
Ilya raises his eyebrows.
"Okay," says Andrew, uncertain. Shane doesn't know how Ilya coached him, but he probably didn't think he was getting in the middle of a marital spat today.
Wait, wait wait. No. This is ridiculous. He cannot get a tattoo out of spite. Ilya's not saying anything, just looking at him with curiosity and amusement. Shane thinks hard.
"Sorry. Actually, I know this is kind of-- could we maybe make it fit on one knuckle? Like on my ring finger. Would that be too small?"
"What," says Ilya, quietly.
"That's good, right?" Shane asks him. "I've always been pissed I can't wear your band."
Ilya answers by kissing him. It's chaste by their standards. Shane smiles big and stupid.
"Give me just a sec," says Andrew, who's elected not to see any of this. Shane likes him, he's decided.
It really doesn't take long, in the end. When the gun makes contact with his left hand Ilya's gripping the right one even tighter.
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Finished painting a set of pendants for a commission about Shackleton's Trans-Antarctic expedition. Endurance, whales, Frank Hurley and penguins. Sea pottery officially captured my brain.
nasa is using a 3D world graphic for the solar eclipse thingy today where germany is still devided in east and west adjfglkafdhgadfg. buddies, it's been almost 40 years.
So I showed this to a physicist and they were like "Oh! Yes! It's a figure from Fred Espenak's very old paper where he did a bunch of eclipse graphics! I've been looking at these my entire internet life, basically, for every solar eclipse! They called him Mr. Eclipse. He just passed away recently 🥺"
Anyway apparently Mr. Eclipse made 5000 years' worth of solar eclipse graphics, which you can find the simpler versions of here
So now instead of laughing at NASA for their outdated graphics I'm emotional about Mr. Eclipse and his hard work
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at a conference I attended recently, a researcher pointed to the difficulty of finding material in archives because so much depends on the metadata and the terminology used to describe things changes over time. "it would be so helpful," the researcher said, "if I typed 'lesbian' into the library of congress database, it would also show me results that were categorised in the 50s, when the materials were interpreted as 'intimate female friendships'"
which is what tag wrangles at Archive Of Our Own do incredibly effectively: searching for "omegaverse" also leads to "alpha/beta/omega dynamics" and "alternate universe: a/b/o" and so on. but ao3 achieves this frankly incredible categorisation and indexing system by the power of countless volunteers putting in hours and hours of unpaid and unthanked free time, and it's completely understandable that most archives do not have that kind of infrastructure, but also how incredible that a fan-run website has better searchability, classification, and accessibility than the library of congress
Dove-Shaped Perfume Vessels from Ancient Rome, c.50 CE: these glass vessels were filled with scented oils or cosmetic powders and then sealed, meaning that their contents could only be accessed by breaking the dove's neck or tail
These bottles were created and used as unguentaria (otherwise known as balsamaria) which are ancient vessels that were typically filled with scented oils, cosmetic powders, balms, or ointments. Unguentaria could be crafted from ceramic, glass, or stone, and they came in various shapes and sizes, but dove-shaped vessels made of glass were especially popular during the second half of the 1st century CE, when they were produced and distributed throughout the Roman Empire.
Above: a dove-shaped unguentarium with residue from the original contents still visible inside
Each bottle was crafted from blown-glass that was carefully modeled into the shape of a bird; the inner cavity was then filled with perfume or cosmetic powder, and the tip of the tail was reheated and compressed, effectively sealing the vessel.
Above: dove-shaped vessels that were opened and emptied long ago, c.50-100 CE
As this article explains:
The vessels were produced with glass blowing pipes by so-called "free blowing," and are for this reason extremely thin-walled, with body thicknesses significantly below 0.1 cm.
After the containers had been filled, the tail feathers were sealed airtight by reheating to protect the contents from moisture. Parts of the containers, such as the head or tail feathers, had to be broken off in order to access the contents of the vessels, which means that they were disposable packaging.
Above: vessels with the tips of their tails broken off
Most of these bottles were made from clear or pale blue Roman glass, but some were crafted with a dark blue, green, purple, or yellow appearance instead:
As cheap, mass-produced goods, the packaging consisted mainly of the conventional thin-walled and transparent Roman glass with an unintentional light blue colouring. Specimens made of intentionally coloured transparent glass (e.g. dark blue, dark green, violet or yellow) are less common. This may also have to do with the fact that the pink or white contents could be visually better distinguished and marketed if the vessels were made of the conventional Roman glass, which offered more transparency to the beholder than the intentionally coloured glass.
Above: a sealed unguentarium that likely contains scented oils and cosmetic residue, from Rovesenda, Italy, c.50 CE
Research suggests that many of these bottles were filled with powder, including pink substances that have been described as "blush" or "rouge," while others were filled with liquid.
Above: more dove-shaped unguentaria from the Roman Empire
Vessels with this design (which is also known as Isings form 11) have been unearthed at Roman-era sites located throughout Europe:
Evidence shows that these glass containers were widely marketed in the Roman Empire. The main areas of distribution are the central and northern Italian regions of Campania et Latium, Venetia et Histria, and Transpadana, along with the northwestern provinces of Gallia Belgica, Gallia Lugdunensis, Germania inferior and Germania superior [in what is now Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands].
There is also evidence from the Balkan and Danube region in the provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia, and also from the eastern Mediterranean in the provinces of Achaea, Creta et Cyrenae and Macedonia. The distribution in the western Mediterranean seems to be limited to Hispania Tarraconensis.
Above: the severed heads of two bird-shaped unguentaria
Sources & More Info:
Glassware and Glassworking in Thessaloniki: 1st Century BC-6th Century AD: Bird-Shaped Inguentaria (Isings Form 11)
The Austrian Archaeological Institute: New Finds of Bird-Shaped Glass Vessels with Residues of their Former Content
The British Museum: Roman Perfume Bottle in the Shape of a Bird
Società Friulana di Archeologia: Glass Doves and Globes from Thessaloniki: North Italian Imports or Local Products?
Analytical Chemistry for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage: Compositional Analysis of Greco-Roman Unguentaria Residues
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Bird
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“I am wearing Christian Dada shirt with farmers pants by Carla Fernandez and Balenciaga boots. My stile was inspired by craftsmanship of designers that still making things in small amounts by rescuing techniques like embroidering and tradition local work garments for the urban settings (none does that better than Carla Fernandez).”
