Dragon Lady

Posted on December 2, 2005 in Encounters Strange

I thought she was black, an African American with that curious skin disease which turns patches of the skin muddy white. The borders ran along her scalpline and around her mouth. She got closer, into focus range for my uncorrected eyesight. She was green — and red. A white woman covered with an intricate tattoo that even rolled over her eyelids.

I didn’t stare. I treated her politely when she spoke to me. Smiled. My mind scraped for words. “How do I describe this? What is that pattern?” I scanned her in glimpses when it was appropriate, got my best look when my facial surgeon’s nurse called my name. She also stood and grabbed her things.

“Not quite yet,” I teased. “My turn first.”

She returned the smile. And laughed. I sized her up. A small woman with brownish blonde hair that had been bleached at the tips. The top of her head had looked like a closely cropped afro to me. Her bones were delicate. And all over her face and hands were these leaves and reddish buds.

The nurses all knew her by name.

I half hoped that she would leave at the same time I did so that I could study her designs more. What were those omnipresent tattoos supposed to depict?

Later, I told a friend that I wanted to ask her if she was bipolar. I struggled to find words to sum up what I had seen, describe the whole. Maybe the tattoos ended at her cuff and collar, my friend suggested. “She might be trying to be a bouquet of roses,” I hazarded. “Or a rose bush.”

“You’re bad,” my friend said.

I’m still haunted by the confusion, that face blanketed by a tangle of incomprehensible color and jagged, curving lines. I call her back to mind and what I see is a human being re-rendered as a comely iguana. A creature churned out by a computer animator experimenting with textures atop of contours. Dragon Lady. That is what I shall call her.