holes.

The day I graduated high school, I got my nose pierced. I remember the rush I felt as I entered the tattoo/piercing parlor in an otherwise nondescript strip mall mere minutes after leaving my congratulatory family lunch at our regular haunt. The monarchs in my stomach were crazy a'flutter and I was flanked on either side by my besties, there for moral support. The chili con queso was still thickly layered on my esophageal glands when I signed away the regular future functioning of my sniffer and endured one huge pang of guilt. Before I knew it, I was punctured. I left the shop with a new hole in my face and the sexy piercer's phone number. Twas an ordinary silver ball that adorned my snout that day and let it be known, I was one cool cat. Pretty kitty. Foxy feline. You get it. A tomcat.

I'd lived my whole life up to this point as an upper-middle class white girl with a duo of endangered, overbearing vultures (read: parents) endlessly preying on my frequent lust for reckless abandon. There was plenty of dead meat for them to gnaw on between my past-curfew drunken returns home and the car I allowed an acquaintance to total, and I'm happy to say I fulfilled the middle-child obligation of making their lives a living hell. Needless to say, I spent a majority of my high school dayz in the slammer. Kidding, my room. Grounded. My rebellious streak had always been present, and anyone close to me knew I loved the element of surprise. Over the course of my senior year, I asked my parents multiple times for permission to pierce my nose and each time I was brutally rebuffed, sent away to scowl in my room with the lights off, music blasting. They were SO UNFAIR!

I'd dreamt of having a nose-ring forever. I thought it'd make me seem older, more experienced, bad-ass. My fantasies were filled with delusions of grandeur surrounding a metal rod slicing through my prized cartilage and with college on my horizon, I could think of no better time to shock my kin. And so I went.

I think I knew even before the deed was done that I was, in a word, fucked. My parents are no push-overs and I don't think I've ever actually gotten away with anything scandalous. Except that one time I smuggled a male caller across the border of my room via window. Now its public knowledge. Regardless, I knew ma and pa would be P-I-S-E-D when they saw what I'd done with their perfect creation. What was I thinking?

 I made it overnight before I was forced to look my elders in the eye. I'm fairly certain my mother's jaw completely unhinged upon seeing my new addition. It wasn't until I scooped her tongue back into her mouth and she was able to speak that she promptly chose not to in favor of the dramatic turn-around and storm off reaction. Ah, disappointment. Worse than the pain of death. I got out of there real quick-like, only to receive a phone call from my father mere moments later requesting my presence at an impromptu family lunch. His cool, calm voice was reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter's and I knew immediately I was to be verbally skinned alive. News travels fast.

Insert Jaws soundtrack here. Daaa-dum. Daaa-dum.

Before my bee-hind hit my chair at the table I was promptly instructed to remove the stud within 24 hours or I was not permitted to leave home for college. That thing was out of me faster than you can say "over-reaction", and I'm relieved to say I made it to Austin three months later. Its been four years though, and over the past few weeks I've been feeling sporadic tinges of regret that I'm inching toward real-life and have no extra holes to show for it.

I have two more months to live as a carefree young radical and damnit, I'm taking advantage of it.

Mom, Dad; it'll be out in two months. Pinky swear.