Black and grey realism tattoo of a turntable with a vinyl record and tonearm across the back of a hand.

Turntable and vinyl record on the hand

Realism · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A turntable with a vinyl record and tonearm covers the back of a hand. Smooth gradients on the record and dotted texture on the platter give the design a three-dimensional look. Partial script lettering is visible at the top of the frame on the forearm.

Realism Hand Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The needle skips in the run-out groove at twenty to two, and the whole hall hears it, a dry tick like a clock someone forgot to wind. You keep your touch light on the platter, the way Maurice taught you, and bring the pitch fader down a hair. Four hundred people are still shouting for one more, and the damp on the ceiling is dripping onto the bar.

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Maurice sold you the record from a box outside a chapel hall in Bradford, the sleeve split along one edge, the label gone soft with damp. 'Don't play it loud,' he said. 'Play it honest.' Nobody has heard the B side in twenty years, and you have been saving it for a night when the room is ready. Tonight the room is ready, but the vinyl is the thin sort that wears under the stylus, and the grooves near the centre have already gone pale.

So you lift the arm and set it down a little further in, past the scratch, and the bassline comes up thick and slow. Somebody near the front starts clapping on the off beat. Then a woman in a green dress takes the chorus, badly, and the hall takes it off her, two hundred voices with no record to follow, singing the words back at the walls.

When the track fades, the arm swings back to its rest with a small, satisfied click. Maurice is at the door with his coat buttoned, not looking at you, nodding at the lights going up. You wipe the record with the cloth, slide it into the split sleeve, and it still smells of his pipe. Outside the rain has stopped, and the car park is full of puddles holding the sodium lamps.