I've still got two sittings left

It's not finished, so if you're looking at the arm, that's why it stops where it stops. People look. I'd rather you just asked.

Taulima is the arm one. The leg one's the pe'a and that's a different animal, that's a grown man getting walked out to the car by his brothers. Mine's just the arm. Top of the shoulder down to the wrist, and the wrist band goes last. Six sittings, and I've done four.

My mother's brother set it up. You don't call and book it like a haircut. Somebody who's owed something has to go and ask for you. The family pays. My uncle drove down from Salt Lake in March to ask him face to face and drove back the same night because he had work Monday.

We're not from down here. I grew up in West Valley, out past 5600 West, and played line at Hunter. My mom moved down the year I went in. Half the family's still up there. The rest is here, which is how any of this ends up in a garage off Alondra in the first place.

The man's a tufuga. He works out of the garage behind his mother's house, and he's got a job at a body shop Tuesday to Friday, so it's Saturdays. He's about forty-eight. Forearms on him.

It's not a machine. It's a comb, the au, and he taps it with a striker, and there's nine or ten combs laid out on a towel, all different widths for different parts of it. Shirt off and two guys stretch the skin flat while he goes. A sitting runs three and a half hours, four if he's got a rhythm going. He takes his ring off before he starts and puts it on the shelf by the radio.

I asked my uncle what it cost because I wanted to put in on it, and he wouldn't tell me for two months. Twenty-six hundred, plus my aunties doing the food for all six, and the food isn't a small part of it. They do it right. Cases of drink, the whole thing.

He told me what every row is called the first day and I got about four of them. There's a section under the shoulder that's my mother's side, her village, and I can tell you that much for sure. The rest I'd get wrong, and I'm not going to get it wrong in front of you.

You're not supposed to be alone for it. First three sittings my uncle had the folding chair by the door and my cousin Sione sat on a bucket. My mom brought a cooler she wouldn't let anybody else carry out of the car.

Good part is you're on the floor for it. Mat on the concrete. Nothing to check.

I called him sir the first day and he told me not to do that. Then I did it about nine more times, and by the third sitting he'd quit correcting me. I still say top for a guy I haven't talked to since 2024.

He's got two box fans and in August he's got them pointed at himself instead of at you, which is correct, because he's the one who can't make a mistake.

Fourth one was the eighth of August. Ninety-four degrees, which for Carson is a lot. My uncle had to run my mom to LAX, her cousin passed in Kearns and the service was Sunday morning. Sione's on at the port at four. I don't know where the stretchers were.

So by six it's him and me, and he's got maybe forty minutes left on a row he doesn't want to leave half done. I held the skin myself where I could reach it. He pulled the door down because the sun comes in low there and gets right in his eyes.

He finished it and wrapped it and said I had good skin for it.

That was the first time for me with anybody. I was in four years and a year and a half of that was Vicenza driving trucks, and there were chances if a man wanted them. I'm not going to walk you through it. He put his hand flat on my chest and left it there a while. It happened on the mat. Neither of us said much after.

He gave me the aftercare sheet, same as the other three times. Laminated. He's got a stack of them by the door.

I sat in the truck in the alley a while before I started it. Then the 405 north. I stopped at the Chevron on Carson Street and bought a blue Gatorade.

You can't get the wrap wet for a couple days so I didn't shower Sunday. Monday I'm on at five and we run the freezer side Mondays, in and out of it all shift. The knee's got about ninety minutes in it before it starts telling me about it. They rebuilt it at Fort Sam in 2021. Guys in my company called it my government knee. In the cold it clicks about every fourth step and then quits once I'm moving.

I change in the stall at work, not out by the lockers. That's not a thing. Lot of guys do that.

My auntie wanted a picture of the arm for the group chat and I sent one. Sione put six thumbs up under it and asked if I cried.

My uncle called me that Sunday to see if I was good for the fifth. I said yeah. He said the man's booked out to February so don't mess him around, and I said I wouldn't. Then a month of nothing.

Labor Day weekend there was a first birthday over on Dolores for one of my cousin's kids, the big kind, tent up in the yard. He was there with his wife. Everybody's tied in some way down here so that's not a surprise. I got a plate and sat with the guys from my uncle's side by the fence. At some point he came over and shook my hand and asked how the arm was healing. I said good. He said don't pick at the shoulder, and then he went back over to his wife.

Then Tuesday night he texted me. Sat the 26th, 8am, eat first. That's the whole message. I read it four or five times.

A tufuga doesn't finish another man's work. It stops three fingers above the elbow right now, middle of a row.

I take the ibuprofen before instead of after. I put a towel in the truck Friday.