esrosedotblog

SILVER EAR

Last summer I celebrated the 25th anniversary of my ear piercing.

Sorry to be giving you this news now but I just figured it out.

In a random, and seldom, moment of introspection, I asked myself how long the hole has been in there.

I was shocked and surprised to find that I had passed my ear-hole's silver anniversary without a card, a call, or even a mention.

You can't see it actually. There is a ring in it.

It is there though.

Way back in the 'old days' when everyone was getting them, I was on an early wave.

It was a craze! You had to have one.

You cannot imagine how revolutionary this was. People fainted when they saw a guy in an earring. So much the better.

This was after long hair had become a regular thing. We needed something new to rev up the revolution such as it was in 1980.

They were a statement!

I had two statements actually.

One was that I was avant garde and the second was that I was gay.

There was some confusion on the gay point however.

The early opinion was that gay went left and straight went right. So, I went left.

But then, a lot of het men were confused and got it on the left side. Straight boys have always been confused when it comes to fashion statements. So, the gay branding part got lost in the wash.

I think I got my piercing in an earring shop in Provincetown in 1980. It was our first year of renting a house there. Maybe I got it on Newbury Street in Boston. I know that I let the hole close once and had to have a second one done. Then later, I had a third hole put in a little higher on the lobe and let the old ones close.

A lot of piercing.

All the years I worked, I did not wear an earring to my training sessions or work with clients. I was closet with it.

But, when I retired, the ring stayed in.

It is still there.

For many years I had a large collection of studs and rings.

I still do, actually, but it is inactive.

I just have the one gold wire hoop.

Yeh, I know, a 70 year old guy with a gold earring.

But today, it is a modest and almost insignificant adornment. Look at the earrings now! The diagram at the top is a short tour of the options for drilling.

Anyway, this earring hole is mine. I earned it. The earring will stay to the end.

I don't want to have another re-piercing. Three holes are enough.

But now that I look at the diagram, I am thinking; maybe something along the top.

NEW INFO: Shit. I think maybe I got the piercing earlier than 1980. So nix the 25th and add a couple of years. It might be 30. But I am not going to delete. The spirit of the thing is true.

And this is a memoir not an autobiography!