Dear Goddam Diary,

Yesterday I felt SO funny because I have been wanged by my occasional inner ear vertigo and I got so desperately nauseous I took some Dramamine. You cannot spell Dramamine without DOOM or something, because it knocks me out every time. The struggle to stay awake on the bus and the resulting stoned feeling can only be compared to huffing glue out of empty Mountain Dew soda cans while no one is paying attention in the back of sixth period art, or SO I HEAR.

This made me think of my art class, of course, where I met one of my high school boyfriends in a haze of glue and bad thrift store polyester. The short version is that we had a great summer relationship and saw lots of concerts and ate a lot of fried meat. It is notable that this is the first summer I experienced vertigo, as well, which came after a quick secession of head injuries. Can’t complain, though really, because some people (me) think that uneven pupils are FASHION.

He moved away, and we broke up, and I carried on with my last year of high school, which involved continuing my mission to turn myself into a human pincushion. WHAT? It was the ’90s. In a previous episode I recounted my absolutely ignorant and boneheaded attempt at getting my nipple pierced. After this failed attempt I had my nose pierced by a proper shop in Colorado and knew what to look for after that–or so I thought. 

I decided to go for the ultimate badass hard-to-the-core piercing. YES. I would get a hole popped in my junk drawer. I called up a local shop that was less scary crusty old tattooed dude, and more “hey we’re so hip” and made sure they did it properly with needles. Another bonus: unlike Chicago shops I knew they would not card me. I brought a friend with me for moral support, another lonely young punk who I would drive around with for hours, listening to Damaged and throwing bottles at people out the window.

We showed up at the appointed time and the shop looked clean and the hole-pokers were friendly. My friend sat with me by my head like I was having a baby on a bad TV show.

“Okay,” the dude said. “I have to tell you I’ve had training on this, but have not actually done this piercing.” I shrugged.

“Go for it,” I said.

In the end, it went well and was a really standard and good piercing which healed well. Months later I moved to Seattle, and was happy to have a fresh break. My ex-boyfriend who I had spent the previous summer with was making noises about moving to Seattle and getting back together, which horrified me. We parted on good terms, but I had lived through probably my worst year ever, and I wanted something new. My roommate, who had developed a friendship with him and what looked like a fatal crush on him, invited him to move in with the caveat he would sleep in her room. Fabulous! My ex-boyfriend, who was clingy and whiny on a GOOD day, was going to be underfoot constantly.

After kind of avoiding serious conversation for the first few days he finally cornered me late one night about getting back together. It was already midnight and I was sunburnt and wiped from sightseeing in Seattle in August, the only reasonable month here. What should have been a ten-minute conversation turned into one that lasted HOURS. I watched snails and slugs ooze across the sidewalk and up and down the walls outside our apartment and considered what a terrible metaphor it was for the conversation I was currently mired in. I could not be moved; no, I did not want to try dating again. I smoked constantly, incessantly, a habit I had not yet kicked and one he hated, to keep a barrier between the two of us.

He cried. He was always a crier, which, fine, but it was a little disconcerting sometimes. Once he had shown up at my house, completely unbidden, in full face Eric Draven makeup (I know, WAT). I look back now and realize he was kind of a proto emokid.

Finally, I had squashed any last hope he had about our reunion and rejected any limits he tried to set on my activities, dating or otherwise. He sniffled and said, “Well, can I ask you something at least?”

“What.” I was tired as fuck and thought I could hear the birds waking up.

“I…uh…I heard so much about your new piercing.”

“Yes?” I said, staring at him through a screen of angrily-exhaled smoke.

“Wellll, can I see it at least?”

My only answer was to grind out my last cigarette and bang back into the apartment.

 

IN OTHER MF NEWS

Maybe I’m in your Really Simple Stalkzors, I dunno, but I am also resuming Blogher today at some point. The article is written, I just have to mark it up and publish it. I will link later, since friends who have my back more than I have my own (read: lazy) think I should pimp more.

Also on my list is NEW BANNER YEAH BOOOOY.