Realism tattoo on a lower leg showing a shaded grey portrait of a man in large glasses, crossed Chap Stick tubes beneath him and the words HECK YES above.

Portrait with crossed lip balm tubes on a leg

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A shaded portrait of a man with curly hair and large square glasses, mouth open, sits at the centre of the design. Below him two crossed lip balm tubes are labelled Chap Stick, with a small pale round shape beneath them, and the words HECK YES run across the top. The portrait is rendered in soft black and grey shading with red tones around the edges, on a limb photographed against a dark background.

Realism Forearm Man Portrait Glasses Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Terry Ostler had lost the Dunmere Parva produce show nine years running, always to Mrs Blackett and her marrows, which were the size of toddlers and smelled faintly of gin. This year he arrived at the church hall with a plan and a carrier bag, and the plan was not vegetables.

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The judges sat behind a trestle table under a banner about harvest. Terry laid two lip balm tubes on the cloth in an X, the way his late father used to cross the oars on the mantelpiece. Mrs Blackett squinted over her bifocals. "That's not produce," she said. Terry nodded slowly, as if she had finally asked the right question. "No," he said. "It's a lifestyle."

Behind him the room went quiet. Someone's child stopped chewing a flapjack. The vicar tilted his head and waited for the rest of the speech, and Terry, who had practised it in the car, found he only had two words left in him. He lifted his chin, pushed his square glasses up his nose, and said them to the whole hall at once. "Heck yes."

Mrs Blackett awarded him the rosette out of sheer exhaustion. He pinned it to his jumper and walked out into the car park, where the wind was coming off the fields and his lips, for the first time in years, did not sting at all. He drove home with the rosette on the dashboard and both tubes in the cup holder, where they rolled gently every time he took a corner, as if they were applauding.