So what would a week at I, Asshole be without sex or dogs, or sex with dogs? Or what would it be without a boring story about one of my horrible piercing experiences or puking or puking on a new piercing? Yeah, I thought so. It would be milquetoast.

Well…when I was seventeen and hopelessly stuck in Butt-fucking Egypt, Illinois, my mom took pity on me and my drooping gothic depression and let me visit a friend who lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Hooray! The big city and freedom from parental tyranny for Christmas break!

My friend was Very Cool and I really wanted to inpress him with how much cooler I’d gotten in the four months since he’d moved away. So I put on my best punk rock gear (“when I was your age, you could wear spikes on an airplane”) and listlesslessly ringed my eyes with as much waxy black liner as my eyelids would hold. Whoa, I was cool. Don’t fuck with me, man, I’m on a trip.

OF COURSE I ordered drinks on the plane; what seventeen-year-old flying alone doesn’t try this? I was flying ATA (“Your vacation airline”) and they had tropical drinks galore. I think I had three Malibus and passed out. When I woke up, I was in Phoenix, and it was dark.

My friend met me at the airport (“are you okay, Asshole?”) and my response to him was less than enthusiastic. He had explained his living situation to me before, but it hadn’t really sunk in til I got there. He had a roommate who paid more rent for the use of the apartment’s only bedroom. My friend slept in the living room, and to use the only bathroom we had to walk through the roommate’s bedroom.

It was an uneventful evening; we chatted and he made me a pot of mac ‘n’ cheese since I was ravenous from my airplane binge drinking. I scarfed the whole pot.

Ooooog….bad idea. I was queasy and the roommate had already gone to bed, which limited access to the bathroom. I had just gotten there and didn’t want to barge in. Did the kitchen sink have a garbage disposal? No? Unnnnhh…

I ran outside the apartment and exploded over the railing, into the courtyard. I wonder what the people downstairs must’ve thought when it started raining macaroni? My friend patted my back and looked over the rail at the steaming pile of noodles on the ground. “Wow. Did you even chew, Asshole?”

Next scene: 7 a.m. the next morning.

The roommate had left for work and my friend and I were still dozing, he on his futon and me on my blow-up mattress. We stirred and looked at each other.

“How do you feel?”

“Bleah.”

We heard the jingle of rabies and ID tags against a collar; the familiar sound of someone taking their dog for a morning walk. My friend rose and opened the door for a little air. The sun was coming up and I could see palm trees- Phoenix in the winter is beautiful.

Suddenly the dogwalker broke the peaceful morning silence in the coutyard:

“NO, SPARKY! Don’t eat that!”

I just can’t stop thinking about my old roommate today. Does that ever happen to you? This person you don’t give a rat’s naughty bits about just keeps floating around in your head, uninvited.

His name was Ward, which apparently (he said) was short for Burton. Mr. Husband worked with him for a whole year when we had lost our previous roommate, and we invited him to come and take her place. At work, Ward was punctual, tidy, helpful, respectful- you know, all that Boy Scout good stuff you look for in a roomie. Once he moved in, it was another story.

The first red flag went up when I saw his stuff. First, a dresser and a bed, fine, fine. But then, a box labelled action figures. I thought okay, perhaps he’s a collector. Whatever. But once the box opened, I saw they were all loose. Some were missing weapons, or even legs. He was twenty-six years old, and was obviously still playing with the action figures. Ward placed them strategically all over his bedroom. One lizardman was hung by the neck and used as a decoration (or handle?) for the string that turned on his closet light. Another action figure, a vampire, was placed too strategically in the kitchen. The vampire attacked the top of my mother’s head early one morning when she opened the refrigerator door.

Ward, who was always freshly showered and a snappy dresser outside of the house, was a chronic slob inside. We would wake up in the morning to discover that Taco Bell wrappers from the previous night’s snack attack were still strewn all over the coffee table and floor. He would depart for work in a cloud of noxious boy cologne, after consuming his morning meal which was always orange juice and cereal, eaten from a giant plastic cup from a fast food joint. Though he owned spoons, Ward always ate his cereal with a fork.

Ward was also very clumsy. One time, while he was preparing breakfast, he spilled his juice all over the kitchen floor (“Oops, I forgot to tighten the lid before I shook it.”) and gave it a couple swipes with one of my dish towels. The sticky residue remained on the floor for days, eventually turning into a big grey dirt-coated spot until one of us got fed up and cleaned it up properly.

Sometimes Ward could be fun, though. When we needed a fourth he would play board games with us, or cards. He was usually too busy for this though, since he was almost always with an engaged woman that he was secretly in love with. She was a giantess, really, about 6’5″ or so. I could clearly see the connection between her and all of the “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” posters in Ward’s room. I mean, who doesn’t lust after fifty-foot women, right?

The Giantess was also rich and bitchy, and spent her spare time riding horses around. Her horses probably prayed that they would go lame, so they wouldn’t have to lug her giant bones around anymore, or listen to her whiny voice. I had the misfortune of working with her at a coffee/gourmet foods counter at a Cost Plus. One of the Giantess’s confidantes at work secretly despised her, and so told me what she was cooking up behind my back. The Giantess wanted to move out of her parents’ house, but needed a roommate. Who did she want? Why, Ward, of course. Who cares if he still had eight months to go on our lease? The Giantess succeeded in luring Ward away, which was actually somewhat of a relief. It would have been great timing, in fact, if our other roommates hadn’t bailed on us at the same time, leaving us holding the bag for some steep rent. But it was all right. The house was quiet again.

Before Ward moved out, I had known what the Giantess was up to for a couple of weeks, which made things pretty tense at work. One day, as Ward was packing his things at home, I clocked in and saw her behind the counter right away. She was sweet as usual.

“Well, helloooo, Asshole. How are you today?” This was the breaking point for me.

“Don’t you ‘hello’ me. I know what you’re up to, you jerk. I’ll thank you to never speak to me again.” For a giant woman she had a very small mouth, and at that moment the little hinge of her jaw swung shut with a petite snap. The Giantess huffed off. I knew what I told her was impractical, since we worked together, but I just couldn’t stand her any longer.

She narced me out to the boss (how lame for a twenty-five year old woman to handle a problem this way) who called me into her office. I explained the whole thing (she knew Ward; he had worked at her store a long time before transferring to another one) and the boss was fairly sympathetic. She told me I could quit that day, and she would still give me a good recommendation, because I was a good worker and she knew that the Giantess and I couldn’t spend another shift together.

Later, I heard that Ward moved into the same apartments as our other roommates who had bailed on us. They told us that they had seen Ward, and that he was happy and actually had a girlfriend, even. I think they were making that part up.

I’m hoping this will be the end of thinking about Ward and the Giantess. Sometimes you have to exorcise things to get rid of them, don’t you think?

To say the least, I had a very dysfunctional relationship with my stepfather when I was growing up. He would get in my face and say things like, “It doesn’t matter how well you hide things. I know what you’re up to and I will catch you.” When I was about fourteen I figured out this simply wasn’t true- I mean, how could any one person be everywhere all the time? And his desire to control me only led to the creation of a brilliant liar. How could anyone behave themself in a situation like this, where it’s just assumed you’re up to something all the time?

My sophomore year I had a friend whose reason for existing was to fit in with the cool clique. Kelly was a great person; she was intelligent, funny, and had a lot going for her in her own right. But she simply wouldn’t rest until she was in with the cool kids. And, as her best friend, she was determined to take me with her. I knew I was not “popular” material, but I thought it would be a fun ride.

One night, her mom and dad left us alone at her house with her fuck-up older sister who was newly dropped out of college and sitting around doing shots of vodka with her friends. I had just come up from the rec room in the basement where one of the sister’s friends and I had just finished feeling each other up. When I surfaced into the dining room, I saw that Kelly had joined her sister and was now getting a drunk on herself.

“Hey, Asshole, join us. We’re playing quarters.”

I sat down and took a couple of shots when it was my turn.

“Oh, shit!” Kelly said, looking at the clock on the wall.

“What?” I said.

“The float meeting! It starts in five minutes!” I had forgotten all about that stupid thing. I was just getting a good buzz on and Kelly wanted to ruin it by spending the rest of the night attaching little strips of tissue paper to a giant hawk that was made out of chicken wire. Since the popular kids always participated in corny activities like this, Kelly wanted to be there too so she could get her name in the yearbook next to theirs. It was a short walk to the neighbor girl’s house where it was being hosted and we talked along the way.

“What did you and Eric do in the basement?” The question exploded out Kelly as soon as we were out of earshot of her house and her sister’s friends.

“Oh, you know,” I said, too casually. “We just messed around and stuff. Kissed.”

“AND?”

“And, he took it out.”

“Took what out?”

“His penis.”

“Ack! are you serious? What was it like?”

I had to think about that. It was pretty different than anything else I’d seen. “Well, it was…sort of like a hot dog.”

“A hot dog!”

“Yeah, a peeled hot dog.” Kelly laughed pretty hard at that.

I don’t remember much of the meeting. It was tedious work and the cool kids gossiped about those of their cadre who hadn’t made it. I remember they were glad to see Kelly but mostly ignored me, except when the class president asked me if I was drunk.

Finally, Kelly felt she had fulfilled her bowing and scaping quotient for the evening and we headed back to her place. I was, sadly, sober again. The evening culminated with she and I climbing into her parents hot tub with our clothes on, much to the amusement of her sister’s friends. I was due home at nine and so walked the three minutes back to my house. My stepdad said “hello” to me when I walked in. I was still dripping a little.

“Did you have a good time?” he said, walking towards me.

“No,” I said, and hung my head, but was careful to maintain eye contact.

“What happened to you?”

“Oh, Dad. The meeting was at Erica’s house. Everyone was kind of ignoring me and then a couple of the popular guys pushed me into her pool. Everyone laughed.” My eyes brimmed with tears.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said sympathetically, without a trace of suspicion.

“I think I’m just going to take a shower and then go to bed.”

I stepped out of my squishy shoes and went up to my room. I guess he thought it was pretty likely that I was that unpopular. I had cheap thrills aplenty after that night, once I realized how to get away with it.

One of my earliest memories is of running around my yard; I must have just turned four. The sun was really bright and it was that brisk warm sun/cold breeze thing that happens in the spring in the Midwest. The dog, as usual, was tied up next to her little house. She was a pretty nice, average dog from what I can remember. Sort of honey-colored and looked somewhat like a labrador. Unfortunately for her, I was your typical unnice kid. The ground was beginning to dry out from the previous winter’s snow, and I looked down and saw a patch of dirt that cracked when it dried. I picked up one of the dirt clods, testing its weight in my grimy hand. I threw the clod up into the air- POW! it exploded when it hit the ground. Very exciting. Would the same thing happen if I threw the dirt at the dog?

POW! “YOWP!” said Heidi the dog, and ran for cover in her house. I continued to pelt the roof of her doghouse with the clods. I picked up a particularly large one and aimed it. I released, and suddenly, the wind changed. The dust from the exploding clod flew back toward me and got in my left eye.

Oh, pain! I couldn’t even see. My eyes watered until I started crying from the stinging. I rubbed and rubbed, trying to make the pain go away. Finally, I ran into our teeny trailer where my grandma was chain-smoking and watching her soaps, as usual. When I came in and showed her my eye she put on her Very Serious Face, which wasn’t that much different from her Usual Serious Face.

“Oh, gurl,” she said in her Southern drawl, tsk-ing and shaking her head. “You shouldnta rubbed it. Now Ahm gonna have to take you to the doctor.”

My memory skips the car ride there. All I know next is that two nurses were holding me down in a chair (they were taking no chances since I had punched a nurse a few months before for the crime of attempting to draw blood). The doctor was leaning over me saying, “Now, Asshole, you’ve scratched your eye from rubbing it. I’m going to put these drops in your eye and it’s going to sting.”

The drops hurt worse than the dirt. I struggled against the two nurses and cried. I had to open my injured eye to let the drops in, and once they were in I saw colors like when you press against your eyes too hard. Then the doctor stuck on a bandage that was like a giant Band-Aid for eyes. He said one more thing before beating it out of the room: “You’ll have to keep your eye shut for two weeks.”

So there I was, with a giant eye patch- a four-year-old pirate. I remember being scolded on the way home by my grandma, who was convinced that the entire world was dangerous and unsanitary. I think she was glad when she could prove her point about this, no matter whose expense it was at. “Ah guess you’ll think twice before throwin any more dirt around, gurl.”

There was a cold snap again, which was typical for that time of year in Michigan, and the tiny cyclops was kept indoors. My grandma spread some newspapers on the kitchen floor so I could blow bubbles over them. I stood in one place and listened while she descibed what happened to someone on the phone. “And she has to wear an ahh-patch for two weeks.”

To this day I am an A+ winker with my left eye.

It all started when I got Nothing’s Shocking by Jane’s Addiction. There I was, thirteen years old (and highly impressionable of course), out in the middle of what might has well have been BF Egypt, and I got my hands on a Jane’s Addiction album. There was Perry Ferrell on the inside of the tape case, with a ring through the middle of his nose. Holy shit. I was familiar with body piercings because I had been fortunate enough to befriend a nineteen-year-old Bohemian who managed to get out of Tiny Town, Illinois and lived to come back and tell the tale. He showed me his nipple ring on request one day. “See,” he said. “My nipple’s always hard now.” Whoa. But, I had never seen anyone with a ring like Perry’s. That was it for me- I knew that I also had to punch holes into my body as soon as possible.

I had a couple of flirtations with nostril piercings, but when I turned sixteen I decided to get done up by a professional. I went to the only tattoo shop in town that also boasted body piercing via the blinking neon sign in the dusty front window. I came alone, and unsure of what to pay for such a service, I brought forty bucks. I walked in and saw the proprietor sitting in a swivel chair watching daytime television. I remember it was playing Oprah before she went respectable.

“Hello.”

He grunted at me and said, “What can I do for ya, girlie?” He was probably in his late thirties and grizzled like those bikers who have seen some really hard living. Tattoos covered his hands and crawled up his arms until they disappeared up his short sleeves. “I would like to get my nipple pierced.” This made him put down the fried chicken he was gnawing on and take more of an interest.

“Which one?” I hadn’t thought about that.

“The…left one. How much do you charge?”

“Twenty-five,” he said, and exhaled a large plume of smoke. He walked to the sink and gave his hands a washing that seemed like a mere formality. Then he got out a piercing gun.

*Sound of needle being ripped off the hi-fi*

I know, I know, this is bad. This is where sane people turn and walk out. I had never seen a true piercing shop and I didn’t know that it was supposed to be done with a needle under more sanitary conditions, to say the least. What can I say? I was only sixteen.

“Hold still,” he said. I have had dozens of piecings and I now know the difference between good and bad piercers. The good ones talk you through the whole process, count you down, and tell you to exhale as the needle goes in. The not-so-good ones say, “hold still.”

*KA-CHUNK!*

“MAA-OWWW!!”

Suddenly, I had a gold stud through my nipple that was designed to be in someone’s ear. Yikes.

“Now, you’re going to want to put a hoop in that in about twenty-four hours. Good luck.”

I showed my boyfriend later that night, who had managed to escape to the big cities of Pittsburgh and Jacksonville, Florida at one time.

“Oh, Asshole,” he said, shaking his head sadly. Didn’t you know you’re supposed to have it done with a needle? You better be careful. You’re going to end up with a cauliflowered nipple. I saw it in a magazine once.”

I didn’t stop there, though. I knew I needed more holes…I wasn’t going to be content until I could be used like a sieve. I didn’t realize til later that my experience should have showed my I had enough holes in my head already.