Halloween Part I.

Halloween is officially upon us once again. It's always been one of my favorite holidays. I decided to ring it in with a couple shots of Patron tequila. I'd been saving it for...well, company, but I don't forsee company coming soon enough.

It took a little while to figure out a costume for this year. Yes, I'm 26, and I still dress up. What can I say? It's not too often that I have the opportunity to look like a girl. These are photos from last year. I did the whole schoolgirl thing - it was all stuff I had in my closet(note the cat tree in the background), which is what I usually do. Kind of cliche, but the schoolgirl thing never really goes out of style. I've never had much money to spend on costumes, but I do quite well for myself.

Last year was pretty cool. Shannon and I decorated the house. We got a Jolly Roger on eBay to fly on our flagpole(which wound up being a year-round thing). We spent a good chunk of time putting up what we originally thought were purple lights. After we turned them on, we discovered they were pink. Add some fake cobwebs and a fog machine, and the end result...well, it kind of looked like there were gay pirates living there, but the neighborhood kids loved it.

And then...Bryce. Ah, yes, Bryce. He was this guy I met online. We had been discussing my photography, and he seemed pretty cool. He asked if he could come over, and, after I consulted with Shannon, and he assured me he would bring a female friend so things would be a bit more comfortable, I accepted.

I will say, we did have a good time that night, just talking and drinking wine and having fun. Bryce asked me out, and I told him that sometime soon, we could do that. I'm not one to jump at a date with someone I've just met, and I wanted to get to know him a little better first. It was a good thing I did.

I had a couple of phone conversations with him after that, and learned some things about him. Apparently, the girl he brought with him on Halloween was his best friend. She was also his roommate. They were also doing the whole friends with benefits thing in between relationships. The best part of this - they had a kid together. Okay...so you live with this chick...you're having sex with her...and she's the mother of your child. Yet, it's not a relationship. Good to know.

In the meantime, Bryce had given me a little photography job to do. Nothing major - just to take some photos of a restaurant for a commercial he was making. I did it, and sent him the photos. We got to talking, and considering the obvious, I decided not to go out with him. He then proceeded to berate me for a good while, about how he couldn't use the photos, this, that, and the other thing. yes, he turned out to be a complete and utter douchebag. This, of course, is pretty much standard for me. Bryce, however, slipped under my radar, and that's what pissed me off. Well, if nothing else, at least he didn't get my pants off first.

Less than human.

It's been a long weekend, with nothing of any great note to report. I spent most of the day blowing off all of the stuff I needed to do. I got as far as buying cat food, and said, "Screw it". So, I did what I usually do when I'm shirking responsibility - I went and edited photos.

Photography is a hobby of mine. I take pictures of everyday things - trains and water towers seem to be a recurring theme. These are all from my last trip up to Jersey. I spent an obscene amount of time riding Amtrak from Fort Lauderdale to Penn Station, taking photos out the window. This was almost a year ago, and I only recently got around to editing the photos.

It was kind of a rough trip.

I had to go to Jersey to see my lawyer. About four and a half years ago, I was a passenger in a car accident. Long story short, after three surgeries, seven months of physical therapy, and discovering that I am allergic to nearly every narcotic painkiller known to man, I now have two four-inch long plates and 16 screws holding my left arm together.

Anyway, I had to go deal with more legal nonsense - namely, a visit to a doctor for the insurance company. I am absolutely terrified of doctors. I have good reason. The first doctor I dealt with for my arm completely screwed up. First, he gave me a synthetic bone graft, which didn't take. Then, he put in plates that were too small. Basically, the screws he installed were coming unscrewed(they had nothing to hold on to since the bone graft didn't take), and my arm was gradually falling apart again. I told him it still hurt and that I couldn't lift anything. His solution - more painkillers. Lots of fun. Finally, I told him I was getting a second opinion. His response - "I wouldn't do that if I were you". It sounded like a threat. This guy is supposed to be a doctor. He's supposed to be a healer. Instead, he more or less threatens me.

Anyway, I went and got my second opinion, and sure enough, my arm was about to fall apart. The new doctor went and took marrow from my hip, and installed all new hardware. He did a beautiful job sewing me back up, too - I have a six inch long scar on my arm, which is barely noticeable(it's also since been covered with a tattoo). My arm is never going to be quite the same - I lost much of the range of motion in my arm. I can only turn it about 30 degrees at the wrist, where it used to be a full 180. You can feel the plates through the skin, which can be lots of fun for creeping people out, but I can't say it does much for my self-esteem.

Besides that, going to Jersey meant staying with Mama and - I don't know what to call him at this point. He would be considered my stepfather, but the term "father" is one I have never found a use for. He's my mother's husband, in the legal sense of the word, but he's never been much of a husband, either. He's just the asshole my mom has been married to for the past 21 years. They married when I was five. My biological father left when I was too young to remember. All my life, they refused to give me any sort of information about him. I don't care to know the man, but there are things that I would like to know - medical history, my ethnic background...and if he had any other children. The one thing I ever heard about him was that he had been married five or six times after Mama, so in all likelihood, I have half-siblings I will never know about.

The guy my mom is married to...I never understood why. For as long as I can remember, he has looked down upon women as lesser beings...less than human, I suppose. This was especially the case for me - not only was I female, but I was not his biological child. I was never seen as more than his personal servant, at best, "Daddy's little tax deduction". Mama worked all the time, and I was left to clean the house, prepare his meals, take care of my half brother(his son), and summarily got my ass kicked if I showed any thought of my own, if I ever wanted or needed anything...I was nothing in his eyes, and I still am.

We aren't speaking at the moment, and haven't for quite some time. Once I grew up and moved out, the only time I ever heard from him was when he wanted money. Leeching off of Mama just isn't enough for him. I miss Mama dearly. Every single day since I last talked to her, I've wanted to call her to tell her how much I love her, and to beg and plead for her to get a divorce. I've wanted to tell her that for as long as I can remember. I just don't know how.

Conversations At Work - Prometheus

After Mike finished his tattoos this evening, I had to tell him all about the little girl who wanted to get tattooed. This is, more or less, the conversation that followed -

Mike - "That last girl decided to name her Jesus fish after me"(I'm not sure what the proper term for it is - the customers always call it the Jesus fish).
Me - "Well, it's appropriate. You did play Jesus at the Boat Parade last year."
Mike - "Yeah. It's still weird, though."
Me - "Girls are weird."
Mike - "Tell me about it."
Me - "Vince and I were talking about girls who name their boyfriend's penises the other day. I never got that."
Mike - "Me neither. None of my girlfriends ever did that. I guess as long as she didn't give it a name like "Sprinkles", it would be okay. Even if she did that, I could live with it...if she gave it C.P.R. afterwards."
Me - ""Sprinkles". Hey, she could call it something like "Mr. Giggles"."
Mike - ""Mr. Giggles" is a clown name. If she called it that, I'd tell her to get the fuck out of my house."
Me - "Yeah...but I'd say that "Sprinkles" is a clown name, too."
Mike - "It's not as bad, though. I'd be fine with something like "Spanky"."
Me - "Very imaginitive. I'd figure you'd come up with something like "Thor" or "Apollo" or something like that."
Mike - "Yeah, but all those Greek guys had tiny wieners."
Me - "Dude, they were having sex all the time, though. Of couse, half the time, it was with other dudes...And Thor is Norse."
Mike - "If I were going to name my wiener, I'd call it "Prometheus". I was reading about him, and he stole fire from the gods."
Me - ""Prometheus" is an excellent penis name. I'm just not sure you want anything to do with fire being so closely related to your genitalia."

You know, it's amazing just how strange our conversations get when it's slow.

They keep starting younger and younger...

Today was a pretty typical Thursday at work, for the most part. Vince was off, Adam is on vacation for the rest of the week, and Laura left at four. Mike had a couple of tattoos to do on these 17-year-old girls, so I was holding down the fort up front. And then, I did something I never expected to have to do - I dissuaded someone from getting a tattoo.

Now, I usually end up making a face if someone wants to get their boyfriend's name or something like that(we had a lady come in the other day asking about covering up two exes' names - and showed us two others she had already covered), but we don't really try to talk them out of getting tattooed. This was a little different, though.

You see, the girl who wanted the tattoo was four.

A couple came into the shop with their little girl, who had clearly been crying. The conversation went something like this -

Mom - "I was wondering...my daughter really, really wants to get a tattoo, and..."
Me - "Well, I do have some temporary tattoos, if she'd like some of those."
Mom - "Actually, she wants to get a real one."
Me - "How old is she?"
Mom - "She's four. Her dad and I both have tattoos. I just got another one, and ever since, she's been crying because she wants one, too. She doesn't like the temporary ones because they come off. She doesn't believe that real tattoos hurt. I thought it would be a good idea to bring her to a tattoo shop, so someone could tell her how it works."

Mind you, I'm usually not great with kids. This...this was kind of a special case, though. She was very shy, and still wiping away tears because she couldn't get a tattoo until she was a big girl. I walked around the counter and crouched down to her eye level.

"Have you ever had to go to the doctor and get a shot?"

She nodded, very slowly.

"Now, was that any fun?"

She thought about it for a minute, and then shook her head.

"Well, that's a lot like getting a tattoo, except a tattoo is lots and lots of needles...do you still want one?"

After a minute, she nodded.

"You don't want a tattoo. It hurts a whole lot. It's like getting lots of shots from the doctor. Maybe when you're a grown-up, you might like to get one, but I don't think it would be very much fun."

Her mom asked again, "So, now do you want to get a tattoo?"

Finally, she shook her head "no". I handed her a couple of the Halloween tattoos we had at the counter, and blew up one of the Silver On The Mount balloons we just ordered(we have a helium tank and everything). Needless to say, Mom was very grateful for the chat I had with her little girl. That kind of made my day.

Origin of the Diner Napkin Philosopher.

It all started long ago, in a land far away - okay, so it was six or seven years ago, and it was the Brookside Diner in Hanover, New Jersey. Take all the magic out of it.

Back in the day, I had a group of friends with whom I would visit our friendly local diner. This was pretty much a nightly thing - if you don't go into New York, there isn't much to do in Jersey on a Tuesday night. You either get drunk, or go to the diner. Sometimes, you get drunk and then go to the diner, or on special occasions(like Tuesday), you get drunk at the diner. John, the owner, was quite fond of us(probably because we must have put his kids through college on just the coffee we ordered alone), so he'd let us bring a bottle of wine to enjoy with our...well, usually coffee. Of course, a cheap cabernet goes beautifully with disco fries.

Anyway, I have always been the quiet one. This isn't to say that I didn't participate in the conversation, in my own way. I would just quietly sit there, jotting down things that people would say on napkins. I am, after all, a people watcher by nature.

Taking things horribly out of context can be so much fun.

I have saved many of my diner napkins from over the years. These are some things that come up in conversation when your friends are a bunch of gamer geeks that work for Starbucks(myself included - I was a Starbucks Soldier for five years), all of whom are completely and utterly sleep-deprived.

• "Keith likes his women like he likes his Scotch - twelve years old".
• "The queen of non-perishable food"
• "Allan...why were you naked at Mom's funeral?"
• "Tweety - the anthropomorphic dildo-headed bird"
• "Thirteen Scottish men fighting a gay dragon"
• "Should we, or should we not, listen to the advice of the galactically stupid?"
• "Bryan went chasing after some big nasty dead dude"
• "Assless leather pants for ALL!"
• "If you mix diesel fuel and gasoline, you get one of the most explosive compounds known to man. Do not do this."
• "Beware the moose at night"
• "Yes, my name's Hef. Yes, I am related to Hugh. Yes, I do have his reputation...no, not really."
• "Kean University - the "K" stands for "Kwality"(later, this also applied to Shannon's Plymouth Reliant K - that is another story in and of itself)"
• "Lunch Money - the game with Catholic school girls beating the crap out of each other"
• "Glen is not an omelet"
• "Keith is not a rabid wombat!(this one is a repeated topic of conversation)"
• "The little Palitan that couldn't"
• "You can shag anywhere in the museum - the Neanderthal exhibit?"
• "Hef is the man boob god"
• "There's nothing like a blowup doll to hold your beer for you"
• "Pissing off fire escapes onto small children"
• "Don't trust the stuff leprauchans try to sell you."

• And my personal favorite - "Football teaches good, old-fashioned American values, like taking other people's property, and wearing tight pants while you do it."

Yes, I am aware of the fact that I have some very, very strange friends. After 15 cups of coffee, you'd be strange, too. of course, I'm not sure who would be considered weirder - the people I associate with for saying this stuff, or myself, for writing it all down, and actually holding on to these things over the years.

There was, however, one instance where one of my notetaking ventures came to good use. In 2005, Shannon and I had an ill-fated Memorial Day party. I'm not up to going into detail right now - let's just say that our other roommate turned it into a frathouse kegger. One of our friends in attendance(not one of the drunken frat boys) was Jayson. After all the "kids" passed out, Jayson, Shannon and I sat in the living room, just talking. It wasn't a diner, and it wasn't on a napkin, but I was once again taking notes on the conversation. I saved those as well.

On July 21st, 2006, his 23rd birthday, Jayson died of renal failure. He had been born with a liver defect, and had two liver transplants earlier in his life. Jayson was gay, and had never been able to tell this to his family. He felt that he couldn't - his family would have disowned him. Because of this, he was very depressed, and lived a very self-destructive life - he drank heavily, and got into ecstasy and things like that. In the end, as we had all feared it would one day, it killed him.

We didn't see much of Jayson the year before he died. The photo is from the last time we saw him. He came to visit Shannon and I at the porn shop just before we moved to Florida. This is typical Jayson - trying on the "Breast Enhancer Strap-On Breasts" and mugging for the camera. This was one of our last happy memories with him, as were the notes from that conversation. Even if it is just a couple pieces of paper, some random words and phrases I scribbled after a night of drinking, it is still something to keep his memory going.

Somebody give Santa some boobs to look at.

The guy from the Miami Herald came to the shop today for the photo shoot. That was...interesting, to say the least. They showed up right after I got into work(actually, while I was cleaning the bathroom - one of the glamorous parts of the job. I bet you won't see that on Miami Ink).

Anyway, this isn't a typical "sweetness and light" Christmas shoot. This is going to be the cover for this year's Dave Barry Christmas Gift Guide. For those of you who aren't familiar with him, Dave Barry is the satirical writer for the Herald, and every year, has his gift guide - with all the really horrible gifts. Last year's was fantastic - who wouldn't want the Marie Antoinette action figure? How this involves us - this year's featured crappy gift is those fake tattoo sleeves. I'm sure you've seen them. They're those mesh sleeves with cheesy tattoo designs printed on them. We had a pair on Mary, our shop's manequin(yes, the shop has a manequin, and her name is Mary. Vince and Laura, his wife and the shop's front end manager, got her at a yard sale, and her name was carved into the side of her head). We eventually decided that they were too cheesy, even for a manequin. That, and we actually had customers coming in to the shop asking if we sold them.

Anyway, they got a whole bunch of shots with Vince and Santa Claus. Santa(a.k.a., the photographer's brother's best friend) was seated in Vince's tattoo chair, and the pair of them made lots of horrified faces. We then got Santa over to the couch, and situated him with a tattoo book. She randomly opened it to a page, and, of course, when she hands it to him, the first thing he sees - tattooed penis. Laura seems to be quite good at opening to the page with the naked dude. Of course, we all get a good laugh out of this, followed by me with, "Okay, guys. Somebody give Santa some boobs to look at".

I will have more details on this coming up very soon. I'll have the link once they publish the article. That, and I'm almost positive that there will be photos of the shoot(yes, I was running around with the camera, taking pictures of the photographer taking pictures) on the shop's website.

Porn shop anecdote - Hot, sweaty Domino's Pizza

To give you a feel for what my life experience has been, let me introduce you to Venereal Staine.

Before I moved to Florida, I worked in an adult bookstore for a year and a half - the Cupid's Treasures in Kenvil, NJ. My best friend, Shannon, and I lived upstairs from the shop, and we both worked there. It was a crappy job in and of itself, but it did afford many opportunities to be completely and utterly annoying. It's always more fun trying to shop for adult entertainment when the theme song from Benny Hill is being looped in the background...over...and over...and over...

Needless to say, we spent a lot of time watching customer's reactions on the security monitor.

Now, back to our lovely friend over there. One of the former employees had gone to a porn convention(yes, they really do have porn conventions), and had obtained a signed poster of adult star Veronica Caine. It was signed, "To the gang at Cupid's - Hot, sweaty lovin'! Veronica Caine". The poster hung on the door to the office for years, and no one really gave it much thought.

Anyway, Shannon and I were sorting through the folder we kept all the menus in, trying to find a real pizza place(NOTE: Domino's is not real pizza. I'm from New Jersey. I know real pizza) among the dozens of menus from Domino's Pizza. I'm still not sure why we had so many - every time someone ordered food, they would shove the menu in there. We had duplicates of everything. It was a mess.

After we finally found real pizza, we decided to sort through all the menus and dispose of the stockpile we had from Domino's. It was a slow night, as they usually were. We always found some sort of little "art project" - setting up product displays for upcoming holidays(because nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a bunch of red and green vibrators wrapped in tinsel), rearranging the products so they actually made sense, adding stupid captions to the "Community Spirit" calendar we had hanging in the office, etc.

And then...we remembered Veronica.

It started harmlessly enough - we cut out pizzas from the Domino's menu, and taped them up over her boobs, followed by the big, bold, "Always hot! Always fresh!" We stuck the Domino's logo over the autograph, so it now read, "To the gang at Cupid's - Hot, sweaty Domino's Pizza".

From then on, we would add things to her at random. Shannon changed her name to "Venereal Staine". Coupons were great for this purpose. Lynn, the lady who worked during the day, found the words "Vapor action" in a VapoRub ad, and pasted it over her crotch. We added "Eat free for a week!" from an ad for some sort of contest, and "extra cheese" from a pizza box. For some reason unbeknownst to me, there was a tomato in her bra. It got a little weird after a while.

So yes, this is what happens when you sell adult novelties for a living, and have entirely too much free time on your hands.

Santa Claus is coming...to get tattooed.

Once again, Silver On The Mount Tattoo is going to be in the paper. This will be the third time the shop has been featured in one of the local papers since I started working there in November of last year. Publicity is good...even though, more often than not, it tends to be a bit weird.

The most recent article was the most normal one. I had attended a safe piercing practices course in August, and I was interviewed by the Sun-Sentinel(the paper for Fort Lauderdale). I guess it was a slow news day. Basically, they asked me what I thought of the class. I told them I had thought it was informative, and that it is imperative that we do all we can to keep our customers and ourselves safe. However, I neglected to mention the fact that a good portion of the seminar was more like a sales pitch than anything else. They had this guy from an autoclave testing supply company speaking, and he kept carrying on about his $250,000 sterilizer.

Of course, what I found most amusing is that the Sun-Sentinel published the fact that I have 31 piercings.

And then, there's the Boat Parade. This is a major event every year in Fort Lauderdale, just before Christmas. Last year's theme was "Broadway On The Waterway", and the shop did "Jesus Christ Superstar". We lit up the boat like crazy - the guys made these 40 foot high angels(they wove Christmas lights into these great big fishing nets, and we hoisted them up the mast), and had rope lights spelling out the name of the shop on the sides of the boat. We dressed up Mike - who was an apprentice at the time, and has now been tattooing for a while - as Jesus(I think he may have gotten a little too into the costume - we now have a sheet of religious flash with one of his Jesus photos stuck in the middle of it). As for me...I got to be some sort of go-go dancing angel. Yes, laugh at the photo. But we won. The shop won Best Overall for a commercial vessel(meaning one that advertised a local business, etc. - there was a seperate category for showboats).

Anyway, back to our upcoming article. A photographer from the Miami Herald came by the shop, and asked about doing a photo shoot with Santa Claus. It sounded just right for us - Vince(the shop's owner - he's my mentor, and has more or less become like a father to me) loves Christmas, and he loves publicity for the shop.

This isn't going to be typical, lovey dovey Christmas fare, though.

Apparently, the photographer wants to get a shot of Santa in the tattoo chair, getting a sleeve done. Somehow, this all relates to those cheesy fake tattoo sleeves(which, for some reason, we have customers looking for from time to time). I'm not quite sure what to expect.

This is going to be an interesting shoot. I'll have more info once it comes.