My muse walked into the shop the other day. It was the first time she’d been into the new place. I’ve only been there since the middle of February. That’s not much time at all on the scale of things. Her timing was perfect; for she is, after all, my muse.

I had just started drawing the filler bits on the Japanese half sleeve and chest panel piece that was going onto the Italian bassist. Tattoos, much like ideas, can be quarrelsome. The main piece, or pieces for large work, are easy to build and complete. The worrisome bother is in the details. Just how do you fill in an extra 5 cm of blank skin around the back of the arm pit without it looking wonky?

Rock and roll job giving a rock and roll lifestyle? My fucking ring. I’m as cloistered as a monk with all the drawing I have to do for the custom work people are wanting. Still, I wouldn’t do anything else. This is who I am. This is what I do.

“Hey Jonny,” she says to me, “I haven’t heard a rant from you in a while. How’ya keepin’? You alright?”

“All the better for seeing you, petal,” I says to her. “You’ve brightened a rainy day.”

“How’s the last bottle?” she asks. “Is it gone?”

“It is, aye,” I reply. “Has been dead for a while now.”

“I thought so,” my muse responds. “That’s why I brought you this.”

She pulls from her jacket a bottle of Black Bush. She means business. She is my muse, and as such, is sensible enough to not set the bottle down in the sterile work area that I have set up. She does, however, set it on the shelf where I will have no choice but to see it every time I refill the needles from the pigment cap.

It stops me. I don’t buy whiskey any more. Not unless it’s a present for someone else. I only drink shorts in the pub when it’s a special occasion, like a birthday. But it always appears. And when it appears, I rant. It is uisce beatha without a doubt. For me it is rant juice. I’ve an espresso cup decorated with crows that was a present from a close friend. I’ve given it good use since I’ve been back on this island. It’s never held a drop of espresso, but its held gallons of whiskey. It always sits beside me when I write. My muse chose to refill it for me.

“Do my rants mean that much to you?” I ask her. The poor Italian is now getting confused. He knows that something is going on, a continuance of an important past, but he doesn’t know what that past is. That’s alright, though. I’ve got 10 hours tattoo time to tell him a story and help him understand.

“I learned more in spending 30 minutes reading your rant on quantum physics than I learned in three years at the university,” she says. “It does mean that much to me.”

“Alright love,” I say to her. “I will take this bottle and write with it.”

One of the lads from Big Rock Candy Mountain has been after me for a while to write something for the site. He seems to like what I say. I remember the girl with the deadly boobs clapping her hands and saying to me: “Yay, good, I love your stories.” I still have to write a book so I can dedicate it to her as promised. I’ll start first chance I’m able.

Now, what is written will be true, but it won’t be the way that things happen. Truths are brilliant, but the truth involves a lot of scuttery shites in the jax the morning after. That doesn’t make for good story telling, not even in the bawdy ones.

So this, the first of hopefully many, is dedicated to my muse. My wee platonic French girl with the spirit of an angel. She, who sits and listens and laughs. She who asks attentive questions. She, with her cerebral little maid’s outfit, dancing around in front of me flirtatiously. My soul does a jig every time I see her.

And so I sit here doing my part for the peace process in a much more satisfactory way than any amount of talks in Stormont could ever accomplish. I sit drinking a protestant whiskey and ramble about how much I love a woman who will never be mine. Her heart belongs to someone else, and I’ve got the wrong plumbing for her tastes. Suits me perfectly. It allows us to share a lack of pints and ogle women together. It allows us to share dreams and bounce ideas off each other. It allows us the company of the opposite gender without all the problems involved with pheromones and the exchange of body fluids.

See, consciously or not, we all assess our lives. We all tally up our dreams and goals and check them against where we are at in our lives. If the balance is good, we’re happy. If not, well, we’ve all been there at some point in time. Some times there is a perfect balance, and that is where my muse is. I love her for her ability to love and laugh. That is why she is my muse. My wee French petal. The woman that brings me whiskey. La femme qui m’ammene du whiskey. My muse. She brings me rant juice. I shall thank her in the best way I know. I’ll rant for her.