Better Living Through Plastic Surgery - Part I

I was remembering, the other day, as I lay prone in my bed, with no madeleine in sight, those books in the late eighties, early nineties. The body modification books - urban warrior - or some such, the vanguard of the tatoo-piercing craze, before it became predictable to see the lower back tat peeking out of the low slung jeans, carved in twain by the victoria's secret thong, as she sips her cosmo, but I digress... Those books were to be obtained by somewhat furtive measures, and revered like porn, which in a sense they were. All those bodies, with appendages sometimes slashed and pierced then tatooed. Dude, that was some cool shit. Immitation being the sincerest form of flattery we set about "modifying" our bodies, ourselves, a tatoo here a belly ring there, thereby stripping it of all edginess prior to 1991. I got my first tatoo at 19, a sun, on my shoulder, get it. Right. My mother pitched a fit and practically signed me over at the Hell's Angels. I pierced my navel the following year. Guess which one I still have, writ large on my shoulder? Ah, the permanence of youthful indiscretion.

There are still no less than four tatoo/piercing shops in my neighborhood, the rage of the mundane continues unabated. Sometimes I am wowed by the art I see, but mostly it's oh honey, no.

Back then I thought it was hardcore, and I thought I'd take a stab at it. No. You know what's hard core? Liposuction.

All those body modifications, ball bearings dangling from nipples and testicles, branding and shit, aint nothing compared to invasive surgery. This is what I was thinking as I lay prone in my bed, trussed and oozing, through my vicodin haze. I may have garbled something incoherent about being hardcore, and I may have cackled, or squeaked, before I fell back into that strange plane of opiated dreams.

Man, it's really weird.

One minute you're on the gurney and they stick the IV in and you think, huh, that feels funny, and then they give you a shot of some really awesome narcotic and you giggle madly and are just trying to form a witticism of can I has some more, please through the cotton wool of your tongue, when you are roused, jostled, herded out to the waiting car and sped off to the parents to convelesce in the country.

Where I nap and watch Wimbledon, can't read, been to dopey, but I swore off the vicodin yesterday as I hadn't pooped in three days and was itchy.

I am livid black and sallow green, with striations of sulfur and scarlett from my knees to just below my breasts. I feel as if I have been pummeled and then pummeled again by a brawny gangster with a sack of oranges. My skin is numb in patches, eerily spongy in others. Muscles tug at odd intervals and my ankles have swollen to the size of grapefruits. The surgeon is pleased with my progress and clearly pleased with his work. I have to wear, god help me, this horrible, horrible, crotchless girdle contraption for the next three weeks ( I bought two) it zips and snaps, is nigh on impossible to bend in, I don't really walk, so much as crab along...

That is hardcore. Hardcore in the name of beauty and sustaining the illusion of youth. Am I a cutting convert, getting there. It's hard and painful and it sucks, it will be months before my body really settles.

So how do I look?

Fucking fantastic.