Black and grey realism tattoo of a man's face split into angled panels with a cigarette, on the inside of a forearm.

Fractured male portrait on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey portrait of a man's face is divided into angled panels, showing eyes, nose, mouth and swept-back hair, with a cigarette and a striped collar at the lower edge. The shading is smooth and detailed on the skin tones, with hatched lines in the hair and clothing. The design sits vertically on a forearm against a dark background, with small lettering running down the right side of the tattoo.

Realism Forearm Face Portrait Man Hair Cigarette Collar Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Aldous Pell had cut hair in the same Sheffield shop for thirty-one years, and in all that time he had never let a customer sit facing the window. He kept three mirrors on the back wall, angled like the panels of a folding screen, so a man could see the back of his own head without turning. Ronnie Fairbrother, who came in every second Friday for a pomade finish, once asked him why. "Because nobody looks like one thing," Pell said, and snipped above the ear.

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Ronnie's wife had left in March, taking the wireless and the good kettle. He came in with his hair grown over his collar and sat down without speaking. Pell combed it back, swept it high the way the old films had it, and adjusted the mirrors until Ronnie saw himself three times over: the left profile, the front, and the right side with a cigarette cooling between two fingers. Ronnie laughed for the first time in weeks, a cracked sort of laugh that surprised them both.

"Which one's the real you?" Pell asked, brushing talc from the striped cape. Ronnie studied the glass for a long while. Then he tapped the middle panel, the one with the nose too big and the mouth pressed flat, and said, "That's the one who turned up." Pell nodded and did not charge him for the cut.

Years later the shop became a phone repair stall, but the mirrors went to a pub in Hillsborough and were hung above the snug. On quiet nights, a regular swore, the glass still showed three men where there should have been one, and the middle one always looked as if he were waiting to be called.