Lose Yourself [refrain]

Now I know more about piercings than I ever imagined I would. Or wished to. I mean, I have... let me see, I think it's five — holes pierced in my body. All in my earlobes. All in my lower earlobes. You know, the part that's just a thin bit of skin; not too many nerve cells. And even there, the piercing hurt.

Until my transient drinking buddy T, in Memphis, showed me his picture, I had no idea that men pierced their penises. I would have thought that was the one place on their body they wouldn't let anyone near with a sharp object. Much less a pointy object. Much less a pointy object whose purpose is to punch a hole.

I'm still working on visualizing the logistics. Is there some sort of vice grip, perhaps velvet-covered, that holds Mr Johnson in place?

My readers have been educating me. First, Kristine wrote from Kingston:

I wanted to let you know that my last boyfriend, P, had a Prince George — the proper name for the pierced penis thing. I wrote about it on a contest form and won a $100 gift certificate to a local restaurant. Although I can't imagine how a woman could receive a wound that required stitches, I did get numerous bladder infections and refused to accommodate the thing any longer, after which P tended to leave it lying around my house in some weird passive aggressive act of defiance. When my concern that one of my children would find it (and even worse, possibly recognize it), reached a pitch, I took it and threw it into Lake Ontario where, I'm assuming, it rests comfortably.

I feel like I've led such a sheltered life.

Then Tony from Glasgow clarified the royalty issue. And some of my logistics questions:

It is of course, not a Prince George, but a Prince Albert, named after Queen Victoria's husband, who famously had one, although at the time it was not a fetishistic adornment but merely a convenience to aid one in wearing the latest figure-hugging breeches without frightening the animals. However, knowing the Victorians and sex (especially the aristocracy), it is not beyond the imagination that such a fashion had its beneficial side effects.

To think we think of Queen Victoria as a prude.

I inquired of Tony whether he might clarify the... mechanics issue. Does one, er, tie it down? He continued:

Regarding the mechanics, the Victorians used a ring in the piercing, which they then put a piece of cloth through and tied the penis down tightly next to the inner thigh so that it would not be visible through the cloth of their breeches.

A ring, did you say?

I once knew a girl in London, who started dating a mutual friend, and I remember her telling me with great excitement about his "King Edward." Only after much confusion about varieties of potato did I realise that she meant "Price Albert."

So I'm being educated about the monarchy as well. And though, as a rule, I do enjoy loading the database with the minutiae of popular culture, I'm done with piercings, both as a personal practise and as a post-graduate course.

What I really want to know about is tatoos. Because, though K and I did spend some time here

when we were in Memphis, we didn't get our tatoos.

Yet.

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