Last summer, we had a “Tattoo/Body Art Convention” here in Toronto. Practitioners and aficianados came to the city and quite a fair number stayed at our hostel. A man from England by the name of “Twist” has just booked a return visit. It will be good to see him again. His email message asked if “we remembered him.” Remember him? Hell! He’s unforgettable!
Twist is a professional “Piercer”. He puts metal inserts (jewelry, I suppose you’d call it) in various parts of the human anatomy. Some of them are what they term “exotic” piercings. These are the one’s that are in parts of the body I wouldn’t let anyone near with a sharp intrument - or with anything else for that matter!
Twist himself has piercings; lots of them! He once told me how many and I was absolutely astounded at just how many he had! I don’t remember the exact figure but they would be sufficient to set off airport alarms. When I first laid eyes on Twist, the first impression I had was “serial killer”! But once you get to know him, you realize that it’s merely your own prejudice at work. He’s gentle, intelligent, articulate - and, oh yes,? quite outrageous!
I hate to mention this (so don’t let children read it) but there seems to be an upside to adorning your body with metal studs! Twist has ladies around him like flies on honey! He practically has to beat them away with sticks! I was almost tempted to get a few myself for that reason.? But what if it has nothing to do with his piercings? What if it’s just Twist himself? I’m not going through all that pain just to find out!
Australia Day: 26th Jan 2007
After staying here for anout 2 weeks and attending several of the social events held, I decided that it would be good to do something really big for Aussie Day this year, and boy did it turn out to be big! I wanted to have a reallyy traditional day, with beer (lots of it), food and good old aussie sentiment and felt that only a true australian coiuld deliver it!
Like many people I’ve met overseas, I’ve been awawy from home for about 9 months and wanted to have a day that made us (aussies) feel right at home (even though it was about -25 degrees outside (!, I don’t think that my mates back home will believe me when I tell them that I spent australia day in the snow!). It took a lot of time and organisation on my part, but all that work paid off in the end, and we had what many of the australian guests told me was probably one of the best australia day’s they’d ever had!!!
The festivities started at about 5pm, when everyone was shown the true extent of an australian’s drinking capabilities by successfully finishing two kegs in about 5 hours. The traditonal barbie outside, as well as meat pies (!) followed, and the (very raucous) night continued with some aussie drinking gamesa (our favourite pasttime!). Finally, after a night of beer, cold chisel and stamping (don’t ask), our green and gold cast made our way to Philthy McNasty’s to continue the shenanigans. We final;ly staggered back to bed about 6am, ready for the inevitable hangovers that were to follow when we eventually woke up!!!
I just wanna say thanks to everyone who came for making my job so easy and enjoyable :- it definetely was one of the best australia days (apart from the fact that we are on the other side of the world). Also cheers to the staff for actually allowing me to hold it in the first place:-TOP NIGHT!!!