The story of when Tankboy pierced his nose, a saga.

Once upon a time I was actually super hip and ahead of trends. For instance, I was the first guy in my high school to get my ear pierced back in the day when guys with pierced ears were either gay or one of The Lost Boys. I must like sticking things through my skin because a few years later I pierced my nose at a party, and this is the story.

My freshman year of college my friends and I would gather at the White Trash House – which was inhabited by three gorgeous Amazons and one stouter gal with great humor – to watch Quantum Leap (don't ask, it was an early '90s college thing, everyone watched it) and drink beer. Sometime we would do silly stuff like get dressed in drag for no reason at all. Every night was dominated by drinking games and never really kicked into high gear until the bars closed and all the kids who were cooler and older than we were would make their way over to keep imbibing whatever beer and/or drugs were available until sunrise or later.

So we needed to fill the time between the end of Quantum Leap and the closing of the bars with something. This effort is what usually got me into trouble.

This particular evening my girlfriend took off early because we had a fight (though I think she was actually looking for an excuse to bolt so she could hook up and then hook up with one of her fellow theater majors¹…never date an actor, trust me) and I was left with nothing to do but drink beer, shoot the shit and try to figure out ways to make myself even cooler and more hip than I already was.

So I ended up talking to Jen Johnson – the White Trash gal I was crushing on at the time – and she was telling me how much fun it had been when she pierced her own nose a few weeks before. I was sold. If this hot older girl said it was easy and it would also give us a shared experience to talk about then by all means, shove a pin through my nose!

Well, it wasn’t that easy. Apparently there’s a lot of flesh in-between the outside of one’s nose and the inside of one’s nostril and the force Jen was using wasn’t quite sufficient to make it all the way through. She pushed and jabbed and shoved for a good five minutes and the pain grew to be excruciating. I think I mumbled that I needed a moment to compose myself and headed to the bathroom to splash some water on my face.

And then things went blank.

Apparently the bathroom was occupied by my friend Jim Schifeling (a.k.a. “Little Jim” since our group had a number of “Jims”) who amazingly never had a problem when it came to pooping anywhere and at any time. He said I barged into the bathroom, started to lick the soap dish and then proceeded to keel over…pinning him against the toilet while my legs were braced against the door forcing it shut and effectively blockading anyone from gaining entry into the bathroom. He started hootin’ and hollerin’ (because Jim in fact does hoot and holler, there’s no other descriptive term appropriate to his exhortations) and after a few minutes of struggle finally got me into a position that allowed other folks to gain entry to the bathroom and come to our aid.

By this point I was semi-coherent again and Jen was fed up with the time the whole thing was taking, since the guy that she actually had the hots for had shown up and I was detracting from her time with him, that she just grabbed my head and shoved the needle the rest of the way home thus completing my first non-ear piercing experience.

The next morning I woke up in a haze, I think Jen took pity on me and let me sleep in her bed, though this may have just been an excuse for her to force the guy she liked to take her to his place, and I made my way back to the dorms. I was really groggy so I rang my girlfriend and she came down to collect me right away. The first words out of her mouth were, “What the fuck did you do to yourself?”

The second phrase was, “Hey, that’s kind of sexy.” It was totally worth it.


¹I didn’t know this at the time and didn’t really figure out until years later that this was going on and she probably wasn’t the most faithful girlfriend I’ve ever had. To be fair though we were both still teenagers “exploring our sexuality” and this created some ambiguity from time to time. Plus, the guy she was fooling around with that night? I fucked his girlfriend* a few years later and actually started up a little relationship with her behind his back. Was that nice? No. But it sure felt good.

*This is not as mean as it sounds. I did like the girl.

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Tonight is the Chicagoist Happy Hour where we say thanks to our readership by providing free booze and scintillating conversation that will eventually degenerate into drunken, yet intellectual, buffoonery:


I will be there and it will be fun. And free booze?! C’mon, who doesn’t love free booze?

Tomorrow I’m hosting The Assembly’s record release show at Double Door. You can print out a ticket that gives you a discounted entry here. More details tomorrow, but you really don’t want to miss this. These guys write great anthemic pop songs and are destined to be huge.

UPDATE: I just found out that later tonight, after the Chicagoist shindig, I will be guest spinning at Schuba's with DJs Yin and Yang! This should be a lot of fun. It's the last night of their residency there, so all bets are off!