The Bod Mod Squad

I went out for coffee with my daughter the other day and the guy behind the counter sported a spike through the bridge of his nose. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Get this—later, my kid said I was rude for staring. Well, isn’t that the point? Tattoos, scarification, piercing. You can’t tell me this stuff is for introverts.

I’ve seen nose rings and cartilage grommets, but the spike guy hit a new mark. This wasn’t piercing, this was a puncture wound. It seems to me that the trend in post-punk street-wear is to appear as if you have been through a horrible metal shop accident, or perhaps some kind of ritualistic torture. That’s probably the Hellraiser symbolism of all the needles and nails and chains. Young adulthood is torture. I certainly wouldn’t do it again. But if I had to, you can bet I wouldn’t drive a railroad spike through my face. The braces were bad enough.

Self-mutilation is not just for ne’er-do-wells any more. Good girls are getting into the act now. They’re into what they call “cutting.” Imagine feeling so pent-up full of rage and fear that you just had to… make a little mark. It’s still creepy, but sanitary and precise in an upper middle-class sort of way. When I was 15, you couldn’t get me near a razor. That was my counter-cultural message.

When nose rings became common, not so very long ago, people wondered what might be next. Scarring? Branding? Amputation? No one would have predicted the popularity of thorny, armadillo-scale-like subcutaneous implants. The other week in a St. Paul record store I saw a guy who has artificial devil horns implanted on his forehead. He told me he didn’t know who Joni Mitchell was. He recommended Enya, and then I knew for sure he was Satan’s helper.

How do people without health insurance manage to afford this kind of elective surgery? Can you sneak Grandpa’s tackle box over to the Piercing Pagoda and say, “Gimme the Full Metal Jacket?” I once worked with a guy who had bolts installed on either side of his neck. He said he could identify with Frankenstein’s monster. I guess the idea is that by handicapping yourself socially and physically in this way, you become somewhat like Mary Shelley’s sensitive tragic outcast, who was misunderstood and scary and able to withstand pain. Who did not have a place in this world. Except the guy I worked with did have a place. Even a title. He was my supervisor.

Then there are tongue rings, nipple rings, and rings in even more sensitive places. I’m used to seeing them now, like cell phones and hip huggers, but I still don’t understand it. Even back in my experimental days, when I took a fascinating stranger to bed, I didn’t want it to be a Jim Rose Circus matinee. (Though I might have made an exception for the cannonball guy, who probably knows a lot about thrust.) No, in my day all I needed to make a daring statement of personal rebellion was a box of hair dye and a pair of scissors. Or a baby.

I guess I know what bothers me about industrial bodywork, though I hate to admit it. I’m not supposed to get it. I’m not cool. My 14-year-old daughter tells me she can’t wait until her 18th birthday. She’ll get an eyebrow ring and a fire-breathing Chinese dragon emblazoned on her shoulder blade. At least it’s not her boyfriend’s name tattooed on her rear-end and antlers implanted on her forehead.

I’m counting on this whole craze being played out by then. My guess for what’s next on the bod-mod horizon is total body deconstruction. Flaying. Removing decorative patches of skin, possibly to give to one another as prom gifts or to be grafted onto one another, bringing pinkie-spit swears to a whole new level. Or perhaps the removal of the body altogether. If you’re just a pale gray brain floating in a jar, that way you know you’ll truly be appreciated for who you are, your soul, the sum total of your ideas and deeds rather than what you look like, or where you live and how you dress. Fashion Rule No. 1 has always been “Less is more.”

Writer, performer, and femme fatale Colleen Kruse is at mscolleenkruse@ hotmail.com.