The story of a lonesome ol'Jerome

*Andy's POV*

I followed Gwyn to the shower, and for the first time I got a clear view of the tattoos she had on her lower back. They were several lines of text, but she was walking too fast to make out all but the top one: 'The time is always right to do what is right' with 'Martin Luther King Jr.' right under it. MLK Jr.'s name had a dark red mark going through part of the 'Jr.'

Gwyn turned, squishing my view, and handed me a dark purple towel. "Ah..." She looked embarrassed and looked at the ground. "I figured you had noticed that already." Eh?

"What do you mean? Noticed what?" Was she really into African American activism? I mean, that was cool, I could deal with that. Just so long as she wasn't vegan and a fucking PETA member, I wore too much leather for that, it would drive her insane...

"Andy, why don't we just go shower, and you can help me wash my back, ok? Especially my lower back?" She was being weird. Definitely had to do with her tattoos. I will never understand women. Never. But ok, I will soap her up, read her tattoos, and then reassure her that I am fine with being an advocate for the rights of the oppressed, underrepresented, and discriminated against.

"Sure babe." I kissed her on the cheek and followed her into her bathroom. She had a shower curtain with a giant, cartoon skull on it. Her toilet seat had a red ladybug seat cover. As she bent to get the shower started, I read the second tattoo on her back: 'If you lose who you are, what do you have?' under it was the dark red scribble that went up into MLK Jr. I looked at it closer... "Gwyn, did Marilyn Manson sign over Martin Luther King Jr.?"

She laughed. "Yeah, he fucking did."

What an asshole! "That's kind of a dick move. Why the hell did you ink it that way?"

She frowned at me pretty intensely. Ah shit. I had said something. Fuck. "Andy, I'm a lot older than you, dude. Marilyn Manson gave me strength throughout high school. I remember, I wrote a paper comparing his work to Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. Antichrist, the song, is my personal theme song, ok?" I nodded. "While I support him, or any artist, doing whatever the fuck they want, and I may not have personally enjoyed listening to everything he has put out, and he is definitely a very weird guy insofar as I can tell from what interviews I have read, probably even a pretentious asshole, he is a hero of mine. So just as you save the lives of kids today, he saved mine. So that is why I had it inked just the way he did it. I was just grateful he was willing to sign it at all. Get it?" Uh... ok. Note to self: Gwyn is very sensitive about her musical taste. Especially about creepy old recluses. Does this mean she's not a political activist for African American rights? "Andy?"

"Uh, totally, definitely, of course. Makes perfect sense." I smiled, which made her smile. She tugged me into the shower, and it felt so good, but I let her rinse off first.

When we were soaping up, she passed me her black, girly, puff-thing, covered in some sort of fruity body wash. "Andy, can you get my back?" She looked at me kind of intensely, kind of worried and breathy. Fuck, what the hell did she have that she was so worried about?

"Sure babe." I washed her softly sloping shoulders, then went down and around and cheated a little, going to her breasts and giving a quick squeeze. The top of her back was bare, no ink. I soaped in little circles, then moved down, across MLK Jr's quote, across Manson's quote, and then came to the last: 'Stand for what you believe in, even if it means standing alone,' there was nothing underneath it. I stopped washing.

Notes

QOTD: what are you listening to right now (or last song you listened to)?

The Long Black Veil (the version from At Folsom Prison)- Johnny Cash


I guess I should clarify- Andy has been quoted as having said the last one, though it has been a well-known saying previously. The only other potential single person I've seen it attributed to was Sophie Scholl, a political activist in Nazi Germany, part of the White Rose, who was executed for being part of the resistance at the age of 21.