Neo-traditional tattoo of a moustached man with slicked-back hair holding a straight razor, set against an orange circle on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Neo-traditional portrait with straight razor on forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A bold portrait of a man with slicked-back hair and a thick moustache, wearing a dark jacket and holding an open straight razor in front of an orange circle. The face and hands are filled with flat yellow, ochre and green tones, with heavy black outlines and light shading that gives the features some dimension. The colour is strong against the pale skin and white surface, and the design sits centred on the lower arm.

Neo-trad Forearm Portrait Man Moustache Jacket

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The strop hung off the back of the chair for thirty-one years, and on the last Friday in March my hands still knew its swing before I thought about it. Mr Lusardi used to say you could hear a dull edge before you saw one. That morning I heard only the gulls fighting over the bins outside and the radiator knocking like somebody wanting in.

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Harbour Row had stopped needing us long before the council sent its letter. Sid Okonedo still came every Tuesday at eight, hung his jacket on the hook by the door and sat with his chin lifted while I worked the lather up in the brass bowl. He liked the hot towel, the slow pull of the blade and the sting of bay rum at the end. He never looked in the mirror. He watched my wrists, the way Lusardi had taught us both to watch a barber, as if a shave were a promise being kept.

On the Friday he did not sit down. He stood at the window with his back to me and tapped the glass where the old orange disc of the sign had been painted over. "Give it here," he said, and held out his hand for the razor. I told him the lather was ready. He said it was not the lather he meant. I gave him the blade, handle first, the yellow scales worn smooth where Lusardi's thumb had rested for decades, and he opened it with a flick I had never managed.

He shaved me. I had not sat in that chair since I was nineteen, and the hand at my throat was steady as a spirit level. When he finished he wiped the blade, folded it and set it on the counter. "Now you can go and be a customer," he said, and dropped a coin in the jar for the last time. Outside the gulls had gone quiet, and the light on the glass was the colour of an old sign nobody came to read anymore.