and what can top the banditos...SACHS PIERCING AND TATTOO PARLOR!-saturday, 6/24/06

we drove around albuquerque obviously in a daze from our close encounters in madrid, and finally we found a holiday inn express on coors blvd. we were looking once again for a place to get the ears pierced, but had no luck with finding a mall.

we drove into the plaza thinking we might be able to find an ankle bracelet for pam like the one i had gotten the first day there. however, all of the indian traders had packed up and gone home, and there were only a few shops open. we sat out in the plaza in front of the church and just talked. a family was on the bandstand and the kids and parents were rolling around engaged in a game of make believe. it was just after dark, and it was cool and just so nice to sit outside.

we wandered into a few more shops, and in the last one we went into i solved the problem of the piercings. anytime you see people with colored hair, you know you are in luck to find the unusual. if ANYONE knew where to get yourself a piercing, these kids did. sure enough, the recommend a place called SACHS up on central avenue in nob hill, which is just above the university of new mexico. it was a clean place and was open until 11 PM! we had already been in this territory the previous sunday when we cruised central avenue looking at old route 66 architecture.

i looked at pam, hoping she wouldn't put the nixy on this idea. needless to say, this was not exactly what she had had in mind i am sure. but she said ok. i actually wanted to go, just for the experience of it. besides, what the hell else was there to do for 2 old broads in albuquerque on a saturday night.? pam sucked it up. i told her we could wait and get them done in richmond, but she said, no, we said we were going to do it here, so let's do it. i couldn't believe it. i knew i was pushing the outside of the envelope to think she would agree to that one, but, damn, she is a trooper. you gotta love her!

we went through town, getting detoured and stuck in and out of traffic trying to get there, and then we had to park up the street and walk down to the place. we walked in and were surprised that there was so much business going on. we were greeted by james, who had 2 huge, gigantic gauge earrings in each of his ears. on the wall was a huge, disgusting picture of two tongues with a barbell piercing them together! pam looked like a scared rabbit, and i wasn't sure i was going to be able to get her through the whole thing. but she didn't say anything, and she filled out the papers that we had to fill out for the new mexico department of health to get this done.

they wouldn't let us get pierced using our own earrings, so we had to buy a pair of surgical steel earrings with a bead on it to do the piercing. billy was going to be our surgeon du jour, but we had to wait while he did a lip piercing on a person ahead of us who had brought her child to the fandango. in the interim, i had to go back to the car when i realized that i had left both of the cameras in the car. we got up and looked at the display cases of jewelry that you could buy for your body art. pam didn't know much about piercings, so it was up to me to educate her as to what she was seeing.

it is hard to believe that ANYONE would pierce some of the things we saw jewelry for. i finally pointed out the WEINER with the barbells in it and i thought pam would probably faint. not only that, but the ones for nipples and the most unbelievable one, which was the wonderful jewelry that we could choose from to PIERCE OUR TWATS! this involved a slight discussion of exactly what benefit any female might have as a result of doing this to herself.

probably the most hilarious moment came when we turned to another display case and then noticed the typed message taped to the top of the glass: "please do not expose your genitals while comparing yourself to the jewelry." apparently some enthusiasts couldn't help whipping out their dingles to compare what they had with what was offered! just thinking about the possibility of witnessing that type of encounter was enough to send me to another planet!

finally, billy came out, but he got sidetracked by a dude who was trying to get another gauge put in his ear. he had come with wife and kid, and after it was determined that he would have to go to the tattoo parlor next door to get the size gauge that he wanted, billy took us back to the "operating room."

billy himself was a hoot. he had tattoos, a baseball cap over an apparently bald head, and his own piercings, including a long barbell through one ear, a gauge in the other, and two eyebrow piercings on one side. i am sure all of this hardware was designed to take your attention away from the fact that he was missing one of the main front teeth. he was literally bouncing all over the room, talking more nonstop than even i could ever hope to do! he told us about the old grandmother who had come in and gotten her ears pierced for the first time and had brought family members with her! he thought it was cool that the two of us were doing this as a 50th birthday bonding experience.

he showed us everything he was going to do, and he marked the ears first before he pierced, and told us to look in the mirror to make sure they were placed where we wanted them. pam went first, as she was getting a third set of holes put in. she was a little concerned about whether or not it might hurt. billy asked us if we knew what of the 6 possible areas for piercing was the most painful. i knew the answer because i was about to get it done: the cartilage in your ear. pam was a little surprised at this, but i already knew, since i had had one done on my 40th birthday.
he used this little tool to hold the ear in place and then he pierced it with a hollow needle thing. he explained that by doing it with that, it cleared out a bigger hole, and didn't just punch the earring in like they did in the piercing pagoda places.

it didn't really hurt either of us much, and billy took our picture together after we were done.
we marched out on to the streets of albuquerque and back to the car, a couple of crazy old broads with new hardware in our ears and yet another wild tale to tell.

we went back to the hotel room and pam finished off the night by polishing all of our silver jewelry. then she yanked the covers up to her neck and just laid there like a little kid, and i snapped another silly picture.

geez, what a day! :)