Let’s hear it for Half-Nekkid Thursday. My Right Nipple. You only get one nipple today because it’s half-nekkid, not wholly nekkid. You know, I was thinking about this earlier when I was talking to the very lovely and extremely talented chelsea girl, about when I got various tattoos and piercings. And I realize that the […]
Let’s hear it for Half-Nekkid Thursday. 
My Right Nipple. You only get one nipple today because it’s half-nekkid, not wholly nekkid.
You know, I was thinking about this earlier when I was talking to the very lovely and extremely talented chelsea girl, about when I got various tattoos and piercings. And I realize that the first ear piercing I ever got is thirty years old this year. And thus, a bonus HNT pic to go with my right nipple – here’s my left ear.
I was fourteen when I got my ear pierced for the first time. Not that big a deal for today’s youth I guess, but this was in 1976. Only one boy I knew had his ear pierced, and he was a hippy kid who lived in a winnebago with his mom, a stoned-out hippy artist. I can’t recall the kid’s name or the mom’s name, but the winnebago was called “The elephant”.
So when I decided at fourteen that i really, really wanted my ear pierced (inspired in part by kirk douglas in 20,000 leagues under the sea, but more by a scene in Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz in which the young king has his ear pierced as part of a magical ritual to unlease his latent powers), it wasn’t easy to find a place to do it – this was before the days of piercing pagoda at your local mall. And when my mother (who did not understand my urge to punch a hole in my ear but went with me anyway) took me to a local jewelry shop, the creepy old lady who pierced my ear looked like she was just about ready to refuse. She’d never done a male ear and seemed to deeply disapprove of the whole idea. She charged for two piercings even though I only got one, and honestly I think her disapproval did more to win mom over to my side than anything else about the experience.
I’ve had seven more ear piercings since then, and still have a total of six including that first. I’ve pierced nipples, penis, scrotum, with varying degrees of success. I’ve pierced my ear to show someone it didn’t hurt, to commemorate a particularly memorable trip (my first trip to london), and sometimes just for the fuck of it. None of the piercings have really been planned, they’re all whim items that just sort of happen.
Sometimes you just have to poke a hole in yourself. And every once in a while, I meet someone who just understands that.