Squeeze.

I has a corset.

It's black and shiny and squishes me in like a somewhat elbowy hug. I've never worn a corset before, not really-for-reals; as a young Rocky Horrorite, I poured myself into an oversize bustier to play a double-gender-swapped Dr. Frank, but given its lack of actual compression - and my lack of an actual waistline at the time - I don't think that counts. THIS corset is for real. This corset ain't even playin.

First-time corset application makes one quesion everything one once thought one knew about one's own questionabl-to-begin-with shape. I tugged, gasped, jerked, hauled, muttered, swore, and sweated, unattractively. Moon Base attempted gamely to assist at first, but his heart isn't in it. Trial By Clothing is not his fetish. Luckily, Trial By More Or Less Everything is yet another of mine, so I kept at it until I was about 80% sure I'd managed to put it on in a manner that wasn't doing irreversible organ damage. +1 for me.

The reason I obtained the corset in the first place wasn't for my own enjoyment, though. In two months, I'm headed to New York, where I'll visit my unbelievably attractive friend Billz:

...and shoot another sure-to-be-jaw-droppping set with my friend and admired artist Michele Serchuk. I'm quite excited about this shoot, if I do say so myself - and without blowing anything, all I can tell you is that it involves a fancy hotel room, this corset, and my famous 20-eye Doc Martens. Ladies, start lining up now, and leave your panties at the door, cause this shit is about to RIP THEM APART

I'm wearing the corset right now, actually. Word on the street is, you've got to wear them for an hour or two each day for the first however-many-days you've got them, so that you can bond with them or they can steal your soul via your pores or some crap. I'm not really sure. All I'm sure of is that it corrects my posture (which didn't need correcting in the first place, thanksverymuch, I balance books on my head for laughs), it looks not half bad when worn over a Portal T-shirt, and I wish Moon Base liked it better, because it makes me feel doublePLUSsexy.

Just something about feeling your liver bump against your esophagus that makes you feel ALIVE, MANNNN

Ink.

A third sitting with my main man Michael T. Gardner of Everett's Tattoo Garden.

Not only is he an artist of the highest caliber, he also knows to respond to all my weeps, wails, pleas and complaints with a friendly "Shut the fuck up," and that's a quality to be proud of.

This piece was begun a number of months ago.

(You'll notice the top bit is a cover-up. This isn't due to any lack of affiliation with the good Doctor of Journalism. That piece was very old and had aged poorly; I'm having it redone in another location after the back piece is completed. In the meantime, I'm making sure to stay extra weird, as compensation.)

Because I am surprisingly wimpy when it comes to tattoo pain, I tend to sit for no longer than two hours at a stretch; just enough time to make me forget what I'm doing to myself and start to say, in a sweaty, endorphin-induced haze, "Dude, that actually feels kinda good... Like, you're scratching my back, but, like, REALLY hard... Dude, I love you, man. You're the best." To which Mike answers good-naturedly, "Shut the fuck up."

I have lots of tattoos. I suppose I collect them, in a way. They're much more expensive than most stamps, and much more painful than, say, china cows, but there's something comforting in wearing your art collection permanently all over your body. A sense of ownership, of partnership, even, with the pieces, the like of which one can't have with mere objects.

Of course, I'm biased when I say that. I don't have any physical object collections. My fixation is on getting rid of things. I love moving the most - it enables the kind of wholesale, soul-cleansing bric-a-brac-ectomy for which I just LIVE. Nothing is safe from my rampage of practicality. Cherished stuffed animals; books I can't remember reading or wanting to read; touching birthday cards from faraway friends; Everything Must Go. Only once I've pared down my possessions to the things I am physically unable to part with - only then do I feel my job is done, and can I move forward contentedly, skin shed.

So I suppose perhaps that's why I find tattoos so comforting. I'll never feel OBLIGATED to get rid of them. No one can ever say, "Don't you feel like you have maybe one too many tattoos? Maybe time to cut down, take a few to the Goodwill?" They don't weigh me down; on the contrary, I find them liberating, comforting, like a weird, asymmetrical embrace. They take up no space in my apartment; only in the house in which I've got to live for my entire life, my weird, alien body, and if you've got to live somewhere forever, if you don't ever need to move, why worry about cleaning house, about purging? Why not just furnish it and decorate it as nicely as you're able?

I think about stuff like this sometimes in the midst of a tattoo sitting, while I'm making water-buffalo noises of agony, reminding myself in muttered epithets that I was the one who ASKED for this, and meekly acquiescing to Mike's genial request to "Shut the fuck up."

the fetish of the month

hey girl. why did you start a whole other darned blog? I mean srsly.

First of all, I would urge you to attend to proper capitalization. Just because you're me, doesn't give you any license to be sloppy.

I started a new blog because I've got things to say that I didn't feel right saying in any of the old ones, and because I thought of a pithy title.

is there really going to be a new fetish every month?

WHAT DID I JUST SAY ABOUT GRAMMAR?

I'd never restrict myself to just one fetish in any given month.

is this blog SFW?

I give up. Do whatever you want.

And... honestly, WTF do YOU think? Don't be a moron.

what makes you think you have any right to say the shit that's going to come out of your mouth here?

Someone once told me "write what you know." I wrote too much, ran out of things I knew, and have now had to resort to writing things I wish I knew, things I want to learn, and things I've heard of people who might know something about.

If you don't like it, either A. don't read it, or B. fight with me about it. I love a good squabble.

what else do people ask you?

Not a lot. Disappointingly. I hope that changes soon.