Close-up of bold black brush-script lettering reading Work Bitch across a forearm, resting on a wooden surface.

Black script lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photo shows a forearm with the words Work Bitch written in large, bold black script. The strokes are thick and slightly uneven, with a brushed, handwritten feel, and the letters run diagonally across the skin. The image is in black ink only, with the skin tone and a pale wooden surface filling the background.

Lettering Forearm Script Word Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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Your letter came on Tuesday and I read it twice before the kettle boiled. You say the lettering on the Hartley's shop front looks too neat, and that Mr Hartley wants it to seem like it was done by somebody in a hurry. He's right, and you're right to hate it. A hurry is hard to fake. You have to let the brush run away from you for the length of one stroke, then haul it back before the paint sags.

I did the van for the Dunmore carrier in the spring, the one driven by the lad who took corners as if he owed the road money. He wanted two words across the cab, no more, and he wanted them to lean forward like they were walking into a headwind. I laid them out on brown paper, pencilled a slant of about twelve degrees, and never once lifted the quill to correct a letter. The W took three goes on the paper and one go on the van. The second K came out with a tail I'd have sworn was a mistake until the afternoon sun hit it and the whole word looked alive.

He came back on the Friday to pay and stood in the yard reading it out loud, slowly, the way you'd read a telegram from somebody you didn't expect to hear from. Then he laughed, shook my hand with paint on both of ours, and asked if I could do the same thing on his forearm, which I told him was a different job and a different price. He said he'd think about it. He's still thinking, I suspect.

So keep your brushes clean and your slant honest. The van went off up the Otley Road that afternoon with the sun behind it, and I stood in the lane until the words were just a glint of black and white, leaning hard into everything coming at them.

Your aunt Maureen