Word rapidly spread around the high school that one of the girls had an “empty.”
Her parents had gone on holiday and left her alone in the house. Trusting her to look after their most valuable assest. So, it was surprising she was hosting a party for our entire high school year group, and everyone was invited—at least, that’s what we’d all heard from a friend of a friend.
I’d known the party house most of my life. It was an imposing, red sandstone building on the edge of a golf course. Oneof the most prominent houses in town and even larger than the four-in-a-block council flats that are so common in Scotland, especially in the part of town where I lived.
As a child, I’d walked past the party house many times. At that point in my life, I was obsessed with cars, especially the British racing green Jaguar E-type parked in the driveway. I dreamed I could have a car like that one day.
As a teen, I knew it as the house where the most desirable girl in my high school lived—although I assumed she was more unobtainable than even a Jaguar.
My buddies and I always went to parties pre-loaded with Dutch courage, just in case we got into a situation where we had to talk to a girl. That way, we wouldn’t care if the girl turned and walked away while we were mid-sentence.
The night of the party, we each drank a large plastic bottle of strong cider on the golf course. From our position at the edge of a bunker, we could see groups of people arrive—the girls in their protective, giggling groups and the boys secure in their protective bravado and bluster.
As soon as I got inside the house, the heat, noise, and cheap booze combined to make my head spin and my stomach heave. Everyone from my year group — and even some from the senior year — had turned up. Someone had even brought a DJ unit with amps, speakers, and a strobe light.
People surrounded the DJ, who was wearing dark sunglasses and sporting a pink feather boa. A mass of teenage bodies jumped in unison to the latest tracks by Status Quo. A band that boys loved and girls could endure. It felt like the house was expanding and contracting in time with the music.
This was our equivalent of a celebrity event. Everyone was watching everyone, waiting for the raw ingredient of a story that could be spread around the school on Monday morning and exaggerated with each telling into a legend.
I signaled to my buddies and mouthed, “Kitchen” as if I’d been a regular visitor to the house.
When we finally found the kitchen, I had to lean against the only piece of wall that wasn’t covered in solid wood cabinets. My legs were barely holding my body upright. Falling over drunk would brand me as a “lightweight” who couldn’t drink like a man. I’d revert to a child, rather than maintain my transitional status as a man-child.
I closed my eyes and imagined swimming in an ice-cold pool. I hoped this would calm the churning in my belly and quiet the buzzing in my ears. All the cool people from school were at the party. Being one of the few students who chose Latin as a subject meant I was a geek, which automatically limited me to the outer fringes of the cool group. A big public misstep would banish me from my peripheral status sine die.
As I swayed back and forth against the door like a slow-motion boxer, I sensed someone was standing in front of me. I took a big gulp of air, steadied myself, and opened my eyes.
It was the girl of the house.
And she was standing in front of me. Me, a Latin geek. The school’s most desirable girl. And she was standing close enough that I could smell her shampoo. Herbal Essences Aveda. The very same stuff I used on my collar-length hair.
We had things in common. Who’d have thought it?
She reached forward and held my left earlobe between her thumb and forefinger. I could smell cigarette smoke on the sleeve of her shirt.
After a short pause, she said, “You’d look good with an earring. Want me to pierce it?”.
I was close enough to notice her snub nose crinkled when she smiled. Something I’d never seen in real life, just in American movies.
What answer could I give besides an emphatic “Yes, please”? I was sixteen. And she was wearing a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt that gave hormonal boys brief glimpses of her belly. An expensive, tanned belly.
The girl, who I now regarded as my future wife and a ticket to popularity at school, reached into a vegetable basket and picked out a potato. As she was cutting it in half, I realized she was also drunk. I thought this might be a bad idea. But,chickening out would be social suicide. And an embarrassment in front of my future wife.
I felt her slide a chunk of potato behind my left ear —presumably to minimize the chances of pithing me like a laboratory frog. After a few failed attempts, she managed to punch the needle clean through my earlobe.
The girl of everyone’s dreams wiped the blood off my ear with a damp tea towel, took a gold stud out of her ear, ran it over her tongue, and then threaded it through my bloodied, throbbing lobe.
I’d truly arrived.
The next day my ear was the color of a baboon’s butt and oozing pus. Turns out potatoes are not particularly sterile. Nor are second-hand earrings. Or used tea towels.
My ear was so swollen that the gold stud was buried deep in inflamed flesh. My father, an ex-boxer turned steelworker, looked at my ear and asked, hopefully, “Fight?” I nodded ambivalently as he punched my arm playfully and said, “I hope the other guy looks a lot worse.”
My long-suffering mother sighed, probably for the hundredth time that day, just like every other day..
Back then, seeing a male with a pierced ear was rare. It was still a symbol of rebellion, worn by pirates and freaks. As a result, my pierced ear instantly elevated my status to borderline cool. However, one of my so-called friends told me that men with earrings in their left ear signified they were attracted to me. Right ear if you like girls. This worried me for a long time. Back then, there was no internet to check the veracity of his claims instantly, not by me or by other kids looking for an angle to attack a boy who’d moved closer to the center of the cool group. Of course, once the girl sobered up, she went back to mainly ignoring me. Our moment had passed.
As I aged out of school and into the workforce, I cycled through different styles of earrings: faux diamond studs, black ceramic dots, and gold hoops of varying sizes. But once my hair started to turn grey and I finally accepted that my pot-belly wasn’t just for Christmas, I knew it was time to take the earring out and never put it back in. I was afraid I was on a dangerous path to becoming a sad caricature of a middle-aged man.
None of this has anything to do with me regretting not getting a tattoo, but it’s essential background.
I’ve wanted a memento mori tattoo for the past few decades. In particular, a Mexican sugar skull on the inside of my arm. An ever-present reminder that all life has to end and life is too precious to get upset about other people’s impaired driving, poor restaurant service, and the other First World Problems that annoy.
Here’s the rub — I’ve thought about getting this tattoo for far too long. But, been held back by fear.
Fresh ink will not get me back to being borderline cool. No, that’s now an impossible ask. Instead, most people would assume I’m having a late-onset mid-life crisis. As I might.
Perhaps I’ll stop bothering what people might think and get it done. But then again, a couple of months ago, I saw a guy with a faded tramp stamp tattoo on the small of his back. The fact that it was some military insignia didn’t stop it from being a horrific sight.
My fantasy tattoo is undoubtedly far from as bad, but still. Who knows how time will change my perception of it?