There's an art to prison tattooing. Both in the actual work and the composition. That's how I found myself holding a piece of cardboard over burning styrofoam cups. All for a lousy teardrop. Well, that wasn't completely true, it was barter for some fake papers. I exhaled slowly, careful to blow the bluish-black smoke away from the rising flames and ash from the cups.

"Hell, I don't know, I've never thought about it," I finally answered. "And if you pull up that web site that makes porn star names I'll tattoo 'bitch' instead of a teardrop."

That got me an eyeroll... as if I were the one being obtuse. Names, names, names. What's in a name? Shakespeare and Gibson had it right -- whether we're talking about flowers or zeros and ones within the machines. If we were being honest, it would be "bitch" or one of the other labels frequently applied to me. Isn't that what a name is? A label?

"Azalea. Azalea Sanders," I decided. I carefully scraped the soot and ash off the cardboard into another cup, and spat in it. Fully Dressed snorted, and made some comment about the 'Z'. I ignored him; hell, this was a guy who went by Fully Dressed and wanted a fake prison tat for street cred -- hardly an authority on misnomers. We called him Fully Dressed because, rain or shine, whatever, he was always fully dressed. Never a t-shirt or shorts, or even sandals. And people call my fashion sense weird.

I took the needle and dipped it in the tar-like ink. Needle was a generous *name* for a ballpoint pen with a sharpened staple straightened out and taped to the end, but for what we were doing, it was authentic.

"Don't be such a pussy," I muttered as he jumped. Honestly, I'm not sure if was getting stuck by the staple or my ash falling on his shoulder, but I didn't much care either way. Man up, fake con. The point of this was silly, but it was true that a prison teardrop was worth much more than one done on the street -- and it was 'the deal'. So I kept going, sticking the staple in, and scraping it against the wall of the puncture as I pulled it out, lining the hole with black styrofoam soot.

We hammered out the details of my papers as I worked, once he stopped jumping around like a virgin on prom night, until we were both satisfied. Despite the swollen, red skin, the teardrop was well formed, and had the tell-tale ink stains and rough edges of prison work. Fully Dressed was now one Bad Mother Fucker. I tried not to snicker at the thought. I grabbed my bag and we exchanged a fist bump before I left; the papers arrived several days later.

It was the last time I saw Fully Dressed.

I suppose, in death, maybe names are more important, and so I was sad to hear that Cedric Risher was killed in a run-of-the-mill drug deal gone wrong. I'll never know if his new teardrop gave him a false sense of confidence or bravado, but then again, Azalea Sanders never knew a Cedric Risher or a Fully Dressed.