Into the Lion's Den


Sometimes the lights all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been
    - Robert Hunter, Truckin'

As you know, I was scheduled to give a talk at the APP — their 10th anniversary no less — about “extreme piercing and heavy body modification”. You'll hear more from Jordan when his articles on it go up, but I went into the whole thing with a great deal of trepidation and mixed feelings, not knowing how it would be received (would I be accepted? rejected? booed off the podium?) — and I must admit that I drank about five beers before (and in part during) my presentation to calm my nerves. In all honesty, the entire thing is a big scary blur that I don't entirely remember, and that's more because of my deep dislike of public speaking than the alcohol.

Either way, it seems to have gone well and a lot of questions were asked afterwards (thanks to Sean for keeping things going) that were centered around some of the concerns people have about BME (minors, DIY issues, and so on). It was a fully packed room, and at the end there was an extremely flattering standing ovation. I don't know if people were just flattering me or if it really turned out that well — as I said, big scary blur — but I received a lot of nice feedback and most of all I really liked hearing from the people who approached me to say “I'm one of those people that really didn't agree with BME, but now I understand where you're coming from and why you have that stance.”

On Thursday night was the Prom (a formal dinner-and-dance, sort of like the ModProm that Rachel hosted a few years back), so we got all dressed up for that — I even wore a full-on tuxedo. There were a series of joke awards, and then the APP's real awards as well… I was floored when I received the President's Award.

Me?

I didn't know what to say, I was really blown away that the APP would recognize me like this — as those of you who were there could probably tell, I very nearly became one of those people that starts bawling their eyes out on stage! It was really an immense and emotionally overwhelming honor and especially to get it in the company of people like Jim Ward and Michaela Grey and all the others (far too many to name) that I grew up in this industry around and have both worked with and occasionally sparred with was really amazing. Being around both the first generation of people who created all this and the current co-conspirators was wonderful and it felt so much like family… a really genuinely warm event.

For once in my life I didn't feel like an outsider.

A few people said to me after all this how nice it was to see that the APP is finally coming around to “my way” of thinking on this subject — as much as I think my ego would love for that to be true, I don't think there has been any fundamental change in the APP's stance (nor should there be)… I think that it's closer to the truth that we've all just realized that we've been on the same path the whole time, fighting the same fight for the same people.

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Wow Shannon, that's really annoying! What is it, 1997 on Geocities? Retroweb is NOT cool!

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