and the names of the Taboo Crew, who have monikers like “Punk Mike” and “Ray the Rat.”
But I opened the door anyway and was greeted by a skinny guy whose appearance indicated that he might have gotten lost on the way home from Woodstock many years ago.
The walls were covered with tattoo designs. Two black women in their thirties perused the designs. I looked at them too, because I was nervous and needed something to do.
Woodstock got paperwork ready and took my ID, while teasing me about whether I was over eighteen. As I stood at the counter and signed the paperwork, he said, “You want your tongue pierced, right?”
“No!” I said.
He indicated that he was talking to one of the two women, who indeed did want her tongue pierced.
“Is this your first piercing?” one of the women asked.
I told her yes, and that I was scared.
She was too, and had her friend with her for reassurance and hand-holding.
Woodstock came over to tell us that Jessie, the piercer, would be back in a minute. (Jessie! Yay! At least the name was a good one.)
“Will it hurt?” said the woman who wanted the tongue piercing.
“I won’t feel a thing,” cackled Woodstock.
Soon, Jessie came back, carrying fast-food bags. She was thirtyish, with a spiderweb tattoo on her neck and a piercing through the cartilage at the bottom of her nose.
She took the woman back for the tongue piercing, the friend tagging along for moral support. There was lots of laughter, and in just five minutes, out came the woman, wiping her eyes. “I did it!” she told me.
“Congratulations!” I said.
“And you cried,” said her friend. “I am going to tell everyone.“
Jessie said she was going to set up for me. When she came and took me to the back, I saw sterile needles in packages, two small corks, and stainless steel earrings (medical implant grade, I was assured), along with cotton balls, alcohol, and such.
“Is this your first piercing?” Jessie asked.
“Yes.”
“Ooh, I love to pop a cherry.”
She cleaned and marked my ears, then let me look in the mirror at the proposed position of the holes.
I leaned back in the big black leather chair that looked a lot like a dentist’s chair. Jessie put the cork behind my ear, counted to three, and punched the hole. It hurt, but just briefly.
She put in a small stainless steel hoop. I bounced out of the chair and over to the mirror. I had to look. I was pleased. The hoop curled modestly around my earlobe like it had always been there, like it belonged.
I climbed back into the chair. Jessie followed the same procedure on the other ear, and I was done.
I expressed my pleasure with the piercing, paid her, tipped her, and promised to send any other piercing virgins I could find in her direction.
The eye sockets of airbrushed skulls stared after me as I left. Woodstock, walking toward the shop, said, “She do a good job for you?”
“You bet,” I said.
I checked my ears in the rearview mirror before I pulled out of the lot.
Lookin’ good.
