19 year-old protagonist Andrea is spending the summer with a boyfriend five years her senior, tattoo artist in-training Dixon. Driving by the beachside as they often do, Andrea shouts ‘Cajun!’ out the window to the homeless drifters, almost an insult but not quite. Dixon pulls up to a two-story shop for lease, inspecting its potential to become his new tattooing studio. _Tattooizm, _he says it will be called. He joins Andrea on the hood of his car and puts his hand into her shorts, pleasuring her. After her climax he says he wished that momentary satisfaction on her face would stay awhile.

Dixon picks up Andrea every morning and takes her to his apartment, where they have sex incessantly and watch TV until it’s time for her to babysit her brother. Dixon’s thighs are covered with practice tattoos, and Andrea has promised to let him tattoo her on their first anniversary. But the relationship has made her uncomfortable and discontented – she’s dulled by so much sex and she’s drifted apart from her only two friends. Dixon has turned her into something she doesn’t like – she’s so desensitized that she pleasures herself under the covers on the couch next to her brother, covering up her escaped moan as sickness and running to the bathroom to sob. She promises herself a new life free of Dixon when she begins college classes in September, with colored pens and running shorts and study sessions. Dixon suspects he won’t be seeing much of her soon, and he entreats her to let him put one small tattoo on her thigh. She assents, reflecting grimly that she could yes to just about anything asked with the right words.