“Have you got a stud yet?” My twice-divorced girlfriend leant in conspiratorially, eyebrows waggling. “You justI glanced over at her latest dating-app beau who was busily flipping snags on the barbecue. A nice enough bloke, but “stud muffin”? Nope. Well, the muffin bit, maybe, I thought, eyeballing his paunch.My pal suddenly whipped up her shirt.
My chum then suggested I join her at a piercing party the following weekend, so we could get identical ear decorations as the “ultimate sign of our friendship”. The answer is yes, apparently, because piercings are the new tattoo, the new vajazzle, the new all-over spray tan. A whiff of hydrogen peroxide suddenly flashed me back to my teenage ear-piercing ordeal. One of my surfie girlfriends numbed my earlobe with ice before another skewered it with a sewing needle. The ensuing infection took months to heal. My only perfume? Eau de disinfectant. Needless to say, I did not feel an urgent need for any more “holesome” fun.