My Tropical Island Corona Bubble

"Tu camiseta, por favor."

From his gestures I understood that he wanted me to remove my T-shirt which was a problem as I was not wearing a bra. I considered going upstairs for my bikini.

"Pero no tengo... como se llama... bra... brassiere," I tried to explain.

"No importa. No voy a mirar tus tetas. Soy un profesional," he said in a friendly way. I didn't understand all of it, but I realised it was probably okay to trust my tattoo artist's professionalism and take off my T-shirt without further ado.

Sebastián worked on my shoulder for some minutes before breaking the silence:

"¿Como te llamas, chica alemana?"

I realised I hadn't even told him my name.

"Carolina."

"Carolina. ¡Que linda!"

"¿Te gusta mi nombre?"

"Sí. Mi mamá se llamaba Carolina."

"¿Tu mamá?"

His mother's name apparently was Carolina.

"Sí. ¿Te molesta el humo?"

I didn't understand.

"Eh... no entiendo."

"¿El humo?"

Sebastián exhaled a massive cloud of smoke and waved his hand in it.

"¿Te importa que yo fume?"

I understood that he was, finally, asking me if his non-stop smoking bothered me, which it did, frankly. After spending hours and hours in this tiny, smoke-filled room in strong physical pain from his needle and with eyes, throat and lungs sore from smoke. At last, he was asking me this question and giving me a chance to tell him how much I disliked his smoke in spite of my deep gratefulness for his help and the free tattoos. But my polite side got the better of me.

After a long while I managed to say "No", but probably in a less than convincing way.

"¿Sí? ¿Te molesta?" he insisted.

"Un poco," I admitted, which was an understatement.

"Es malo. No puedo trabajar sin fumar."

The poor addict was simply unable to work without smoking, and he stated this in a very definite way that made it clear to me that he was not going to politely offer to refrain from smoking while working on my tattoo. He did have another suggestion though.

"Tienes que fumar tú mismo. Entonces no es tan malo."

I didn't get that at first, so I had to resort to one of my useful phrases.

"¿Qué? Hablas muy rápido."

Please speak slowly.

Sebastián grabbed his pack of unfiltered cigarettes and offered me one.

"No gracias."

He shook his head.

"¿Son demasiado fuertes para ti? Tengo algunos con filtros en la tienda."

He left and came back with a carton of Camel Blue cigarettes. He broke the seal, took out a pack and offered me one.

I was moved by the way he took care of me. And even though I had never smoked before and knew from a singular experience that kissing a smoker tasted like licking an ashtray (even though I had tried the former rather than the latter), I took out a cigarette and held it between my fingers.

Evidently, that wasn't smoking. Sebastián grabbed the cigarette and put it between my lips. He flipped his lighter and held the flame to the cigarette in my mouth. I cautiously drew in a little smoke which immediately make me cough.

"No puedo tatuarte si toses, chica," he smiled.

I coughed some more and had tears in my eyes that must have been red already from all the secondhand smoke. Sebastián's voice was calm and patient.

"Te enseñare a fumar. Tienes que inhalar."

Sebastián put down his tattooing machine and concentrated completely on teaching me how to smoke. My mouth was filled with this bitter, chemical taste. But as the cigarette smoke was all over the room already, it didn't bother me that much. I drew a few times on the cigarette, and after the third or fourth time I managed to do so without further coughing. Then Sebastián showed me how to suck in some smoke, keep it in my mouth for an instant before pulling it down into my lungs.

My lungs were burning when I had managed that successfully three times. I desperately wanted to put out my cigarette, which was only half smoked. I reached for the ashtray and put it out.

"Aprendes muy rápido," Sebastián commented appreciatively.

"Gracias," I said in a hoarse voice and emptied my lungs of the last smoke.

"Ahora que tú también eres fumador, mi humo ya no te molestará," he concluded with a satisfied grin and started torturing me with his tattoo machine again. I understood that my little problem with his smoke was solved now that I was smoker myself.

Now and then local customers entered the shop. Sebastián then left me in the chair and went to serve them. Sometimes for ten or fifteen minutes. I listened to a lot of worried conversations about the coronavirus, understanding bits and pieces of it.

Coming back from the shop, Sebastián brought a small TV set and found some news channel with fast-speaking anchormen and -women and lots of footage of crowded intensive care units, coffins, and people walking around deserted streets wearing face masks. As the same news kept coming back, I started to understand more and more.

And Sebastián explained things I didn't understand by speaking slowly, repeating and rephrasing. Gradually we ventured into conversations about the situation in the country and our personal lives.

It turned out Sebastián who was 39 -- treinta y nueve -- had once been a student activist in the capital on the mainland. He had got into trouble with the authorities because of his political activities and had lost his wife and baby daughter (and the outer joint of his index finger) in a suspicious car accident that had never been thoroughly investigated by the police.

For six years now he had been the island's grocer and lived reclusively without conflicts with the government.

In the course of the afternoon, I smoked three more filter cigarettes. And while I still hadn't quite become fond of the taste, I liked the calming effect they had on me. And Sebastián's chain-smoking didn't bother me now.

At dusk, I realised that I hadn't eaten since breakfast. Sebastián had worked his way down my left arm to the wrist with colourful flowers and green leaves from the island.

"Tenemos pescado fresco para comer esta noche," he said, reading my mind. We were having fresh fish for dinner like all the other days on the island.

Sebastián took out a medium-size fish from his fridge. We cleaned it, fried it over an open fire in his courtyard, and ate it with boiled potatoes and fresh fruit.

We spent the evening on the porch, drinking beer and I was getting a taste for the cigarettes. Smoking them myself tasted much better than breathing in secondhand smoke.

The following days went like that. I spent hours in the tattoo chair, and Sebastián set out to cover my whole body with tattoos. He worked his way up and down my legs, arms, back and ass. A large, reddish snake meandered around my right leg, monkeys played on my back, and my belly had been transformed into an inviting, sandy beach surrounded by lush palm trees.

As Sebastián had said, the smoke didn't bother me as I had now become a smoker myself. Within the first week I was up to smoking 15 or 20 a day.

One day, Sebastián put a sign on the door that he was gone for the day but that the customers could take what they wanted from the shop and write a note about it. He left the door unlocked and we went for a day trip to the hills where he showed me the vegetation and animal life that inspired his work as a tattoo artist.

He brought a spear that he used for fishing in the shallow water of a secluded bay I didn't know of. I watched from the beach, smoking cigarettes, as I was still not allowed into the ocean water because of my freshly tattooed feet and legs.

We carried Sebastián's catch, and the fruits and vegetables we had picked, across the hills and had a feast in the courtyard.

The day of Till's and my planned departure from the airport at the capital on the mainland came and went. I only realised it two days later as I wasn't thinking much about Till or life back home.

The old harbour captain had a radio that he used to communicate with the mainland. The ferry was suspended until further notice. But we managed, apparently, to send a telegram to my mother in Germany, informing her that I was safe and in a good mood.

I made great progress with my Spanish and was soon discussing complex subjects and using past tense with Sebastián whom I also managed to teach some English and German. We were together all the time, constantly talking to each other.

7. The Relationship

The daily tattoo sessions continued. I was fascinated by the pain inflicted on me and enjoyed Sebastián's care and professionalism and his gentle hands on my skin. After three or four weeks the tattooing had got an erotic quality. At least that was what I felt.

My urge to have sex with Sebastián grew to a point where I was about to burst. But I wanted it to be romantic and still wasn't sure enough of my Spanish to be sure to find the right words for this important subject.

One afternoon Sebastián was working on a not-yet-covered spot on my right inner thigh. He touched me in a way that made me beg for him to put his dick inside me:

"¡Sí! ¡Tocame ahí! ¡Es tan bueno! ¡Quiero sexo contigo!"

'Touch me there. I want to have sex with you' is probably not the most romantic or poetic phrase in the Spanish language. So I tried to rephrase:

"¿Cómo se dice...? ¡Quiero que tú me folles!"

Sebastián smiled at my vulgar language. He kissed me on the mouth and asked me where I had picked up those words.

I wanted desperately to have sex with him right there and then in that chair. But he took the time to put out his cigarette, carefully turn off the machine, and cover the tattoo he was working on. Then he took me to his bedroom.

We had a long foreplay. Sebastián was intimately acquainted with (nearly) all parts of my body and had an amazing skill in finding and pleasing my erogenous zones. He entered me with his solid dick, and we came simultaneously.

Lying in bed, smoking, we admitted to each other that we had both been extremely attracted to each other for a long time.

I moved in with Sebastián and after dinner each evening, sometimes earlier, Sebastian locked the door to the tienda, and the focus of his diligent work on my body went from tattooing to sex.

The tattooing had reached the more sensitive parts: my tits, the soles of my feet, my armpits. Everything was covered eventually, which was at times painful. Sebastián gently shaved my hairy pussy and tattooed me there. He worked his way up my neck to the chin.

I had Sebastián pierce my nipples and septum with rings. And I started wearing a pair of large hoop earrings that had belonged to his late wife instead of the small studs I had been wearing to keep the holes in my earlobes open during the backpack trip.

As I vetoed having my face completely covered with tattoos, we made the compromise that I got a multicoloured flower garland that stretched from the ear and into my right cheek without fundamentally changing the look of my face.

Running out of space, Sebastián suggested that we shaved off my long hair to tattoo my scalp. I really consider my hair part of my personality so, again, we had to compromise. I got to keep a long blonde mohawk at the centre and Sebastián shaved and tattooed the sides above my ears with colourful flowers and animals.

My new healthy diet of fish and vegetables (supplemented with unhealthy cigarettes and strong espresso) made me lose all the kilos I had gained since high school. Back in Germany there were dresses in my wardrobe that were now too big for me.

The tienda's supply of light (and all kinds of filter) cigarettes was exhausted by May. All that was left was a pallet of the strong, unfiltered brand that Sebastián and everybody else on the island was smoking. So I switched to those, which was easy now that I had become a trained smoker. The only irritant was the small shreds of tobacco that I constantly had to remove from my tongue with two fingers. But Sebastián said I looked sexy when I did.

Finally, Sebastián had filled the canvas, me, which had been completely blank back in March. After a few weeks of skin recovery, I was able to swim with him in the bright blue ocean and finally enjoy this major attraction of the island. My tattooed skin was still too sensitive to tolerate direct sunlight, so I used high-protection sunscreen from the supply at the store and covered myself with clothing. Working on my tan wouldn't have made much sense anyway, as my whole body was now one huge tattoo.

In early June I didn't get my, otherwise clockwork-regular, period. Sometime in April I had run out of the birth control pills I had brought from Germany and in the heat of the moments we'd had unprotected sex more than once. I told Sebastián about my likely pregnancy and from the big smile on his face and the light in his brown eyes I could tell that he imagined a future with me and our child, or eventually children, on the island.

I didn't. And no matter how little I wanted to disappoint him, I had to tell him the brutal truth. I needed to be back in Germany well before the end of the twelfth week counting from the start of my last period in May.

By then, the global pandemic seemed to have eased off somewhat and the ferry had arrived at the pier a couple of times without bursting the corona bubble Sebastián and were living in. But my pregnancy did.

8. The Departure

We were standing at the pier, smoking our last cigarettes together, as the ferry docked one Saturday in late June. It was time for last kisses and a final ¡Nos vemos! even though we didn't know if we would actually see each other again.

Sebastián hadn't been able to hide his frustration that I was not going to stay with him on the island to have our child, and a distance had emerged between us. Part of the proximity and intimacy was gone. And from the perspective of a professional tattoo artist, Sebastián probably considered the work of art he had left on me finished.

I stood by the ferry's railing, waving, for much longer than it made sense as I saw Sebastián, then the pier, and finally the island disappear in the distance.

As I arrived on the mainland, it became clear to me that my appearance had changed. A lot. The non-talkative islanders had got their share of Sebastián's tattoos themselves and had quietly watched my gradual change into being a completely tattooed woman. They just greeted Sebastián's novia completamente tatuada with a friendly nod and a smile, noticing the progress in the local artist's work.

From the reactions, the finger-pointing, the staring, and the catcalling on the mainland I understood that I was now perceived differently compared to a few months earlier.

On the 11-hour flight from the capital back to Frankfurt I cried a bit as I desperately longed for Sebastián and our life on the island. And a cigarette.

At some point at an altitude of ten kilometres above the Atlantic, it dawned on me that I was now thinking in Spanish. I thought of the life inside me that I was going to kill and wondered how my life would be different from now on. For a moment I recalled my departure from Germany six months earlier. The name Till briefly occurred to me, and I realised that I didn't remember his face. Then the thought was gone.