It's been months and months since I last posted. Here's my unoriginal observation: In fact, everything has changed. And, also, nothing has changed.

This week I took out my septum piercing.

Or actually Sam took it out. Very carefully, with needle nose pliers and some serious wicked tweezers. I was petrified that she would slip and my nose would get torn. It didn't. She was very careful and it came out painlessly. But I feel the loss. I really feel it. I didn't realize how much I liked the feeling of its tiny weight. And the pleasantness of gently tugging on it while reading a book in bed at night. Or just absently running my fingers over it, moving it around back and forth and around and around along the ridge of my septum. It was the last of my facial piercings. I got it *after* I had taken the rest out for my sister's wedding. I felt then that I was ready to take all those out, and that was fine. This one is different. It's the end of something.

I don't remember much about getting it done, except that it hurt. It was more sharp and nervey then others I've had; not pleasurable. And the healing was not easy. The hole was weepy for a while and it smarted and stung. But then, it healed and I had a custom platinum ring made which was tiny and solid and fit snugly. I had never planned to get a septum piercing. It always seemed so aggressive. And I thought most people with them looked like cows. But then, suddenly I liked it. It felt elegant and androgonously feminine and a little dark. A good representation of me. Even when I wore very professional and normal clothes I felt like there was a glimmer that I wasn't. Normal, I mean. Professional, yes, and capable, absolutely, but not mainstream. Not like everyone else.

Sometimes I would forget it was there. Or I thought so, anyway. I was always surprised when someone would ask about it. The stupid shit like 'oh, doesn't that hurt' and 'why did you do that.' I would always try to patient and say 'no it doesn't' and 'I just like it, I think it's pretty.' But it annoyed me that people would ask. Kind of like, to me, this is the whole package of me, this is one part of my appearance: It's all part of my presentation. But I guess that's the thing. It meant something. Not something I was in any way interested in sharing with some stranger on the train.

Things are different in New York. More conservative. Obviously, I guess. But it's also where I'm at in New York. If I was living my old life perhaps it wouldn't be happening right now. But that's thing - I'm not in my old life. I'm nowhere near my old life. Now I'm here sweating this crazy program, feeling totally stressed out and anxious and unsure and insecure. I've heard it said that as a reporter you are not there to project yourself into the story. When you talk to people you don't want to stand out. You want to present a blandness that doesn't indicate anything about yourself or your beliefs. That makes sense to me. I am always very careful about how I dress when I go to cover something. But I'm generally careful about how I dress. I believe appropriateness for all occasions is imperative. I like everything about composing the right aesthetics of self. I always have.

But then I found myself thinking about the 200+ J-school students who are all about to graduate with me this year, and the 200 from the year before. And the 200 from NYU and Berkeley and even the hundreds of B.A.s who aren't going to graduate school. We're all looking for the same job. I can't help but think that the septum ring could give someone pause. Just enough of a pause to look elsewhere. Most people haven't lived in San Francisco, and even there some people still have no real way to understand piercings. They see it and read anti-social or rebellious or angry or deliberately ugly. Or -- what do I know? Something else all together - threatening? Its the otherness that I like, but it's not a rebellion. That's the thing most people don't seem to understand. I have always been drawn to otherness, its where I fit, but not because I want to piss people off. It's just how it is has always been for me.

That's what this whole pursuit of a life where I can be other and happy in myself and still fit in and professionally make a living and reap the benefits of a mainstream existence is about, And I don't want to wake up and someday realize I've made so many compromises that I don't like myself anymore. This whole thing, though, has been so much about being very sure that one sort of life (my old one) was not fulfilling/interesting/challenging/safe and that I wanted to find a diffferent life. I'm still not sure what this next one will look like or feel like. But the longer I look into this abyss, this abyss looks back at me. I'm changed by it. And I guess I do still approach the mainstream as though it were an abyss. So here I was looking into it and this little ring in my nose was somehow holding the whole thing in balance.

My first assignment for my National Reporting class was to call up these guys from Local 78, a construction workers union, set up a date and follow them around for the day. This meant hanging out with these working class guys and going to all these construction sites all over the city with them. I realized that I was dreading them asking me about the piercing. I knew they would ask, and I knew I would be annoyed and I knew they would make some kind of assumption about me and I realized that I didn't want to give them that kind of power over me. I didn't want them to know or think they know anything about me except that which I told them. (I've been struggling enough with the whole class thing about being a student at Columbia. God, I hate that knowing tone people get when I tell them I'm in school 'at Columbia.' But it's the same tone I would take - and STILL do take. Because it's mostly true. These are a whole different breed of people. I still can't quite figure out how to process them. And still, I won't deny that there is a certain thrill I get when I think to myself: I'm a student at Columbia! Me! At the most prestigious journalism school in the country!) With your ordinary working class person, they ask me about the piercing, I answer them and we move on. It's when I'm in a situation when I need something from someone - I need these guys to answer my questions and take me behind the scenes - that's when I get resentful. With middle-class (and above) people - they don't ask. They just see and have their reaction. That's even worse, in a way. So, I guess its something about making things easier. Or staying in control. Here I must note my own hypocricy - everyone knows that I am incredibly judgemental. Very much so. And I do go by my first impressions of things very often. I assess people by how they look and how they act and treat them accordingly. So it's not like I can demand some different treatment from the rest of the world. But still, I guess, I do.

Recently, I had two particular experiences. I was wading my way through Penn Station during Christmas crazy rush hour. I was miserable and wanted to get home and away from the crowds. While waiting on the packed platform for the A train to sweep me away, I saw three yong boys. They were in their early twenties. All skinny and mod haircuts and thin indy band T-shirts. I found myself looking at them for some kind of recognition. But they looked right past me. Septum ring or not, to them I was just another grown-up. And, the more i thought about it, the more it was clar that they were right. I am a grown-up. I don't spend my time going to shows, hanging out all night with young hipsters, experimenting with drugs, reading existential philosophy books and sleeping with young girls. I haven't done that in many years. Just the opposite. I'm oriented towards a grown-up life, whatever that means. It's strange being past 30 (I can't even write my real age) and it's completely a different experience than being 22. Or even 26. I mean, what would I have in common with 22 year olds? It made me re-consider the whole symbolism of my septum ring. Just who am I claiming allegiance with? And why? Soon after that, my old friend Mary, with whom I did do all those early 20s things, and her very mainstream husband, came to visit. I took them to the East Village for dinner one night and then on to a bar. I could feel the two of them retracting from all the hipsters slouching around the neighborhood. And through their eyes, I had to admit the same feeling. I was being critical and removed from these youngsters. How ridiculous the whole scene was, how much I had no interest in being part of it. How little it had to offer me. They all seemed so incredibly young. I had nothing in common with them. Yes, this is a generalization. Regardless:

In San Francisco, where I was once part of the late-'90s dyke world, I was just as removed from that scene. Not entirely though, and all my firends there are people with whom I shared that younger experimental time. It was comforting and very much my experience as much as their's to be making some kind of new life out of that one. We're all 30+ and striving towards a new existence that allows for who we were and who we want to be now. Here, I don't see that. Even the lesbians I know here have had a less crazy period and are therefore not in the same developmental place as me. This strange never-never land of transitional between-ness. So somehow, this septum ring has been an indicator of my position. And try as I might, I don't see my fellow transitioners here. And that's odd to me, that I would be seeking some evidence of same-ness. Some girls (or guys) who are in the same boat as me. I guess that's not odd, really, I just have to make peace with feeling like searching for same-ness is weak. That's just Gid talking, I guess. And all my cellular-level Nietzchean beliefs.

Given that my time is not spent sceneing around the Lower East Side, I had to consider what my time is spent doing. Going to Columbia, dealing with my old negative habits, hanging out with Sam and friends and interviewing people for various stories I'm writing. Nowhere in there do I spend time with pierced tattooed ex-freaks (except for Sam, of course). The reality is that how you dress is who you are. I've read that in women's magazines? business manuals? Sex and the City? The advice is always to dress as who you want to be. And then you become it. In an ideal world, I want to be perceived as exactly that - an ex-freak who is nonetheless professional and interesting and making it. My septum ring became that little signifier. (None of my tattoos are visible when I'm in long sleeves). But here, an ex-freak is a subtlety that most people aren't spending a lot of time considering. I remember so clearly one time many years ago when I was waiting tables at Millennium a business woman and a man (probably her husband) came into eat. They were both wearing suits. I didn't think twice about her. I read her as a rich lawyer-type. She had short nicely styled blond hair. Her nails were manicured and short. She had on expensive shoes and her fashionable leather briefcase was leaning against her chair. At one point I went over to check on them and she had removed her suit jacket. She had a sleevless shell underneath. Her arms were completely tattooed with green swirls of ivy. The tattoos were pretty but old. I know that my surprise showed on my face. I saw her see it. Next time I went back to the table she had put the jacket back on. It was an intersesting moment. It made me much more interested in her, but maybe she saw me as judging, or maybe she felt like I feel when I look at these young kids now: "You are not me."

This week when I started my Magazine Writing class with John Bennet, editor of non-fiction at The New Yorker, he asked us all to submit a short autobiography. I hate these assignments because I always feel shitty about the huge gap of professional life in the years between college and working at Wired. I never know how to try to explain it. Especially, since two years of it were spent in a Saturn return, immense and bottomless depression. I ended up glossing over any explanation, writing that I moved to SF after graduation because I was excited about the underground arts and culture scene going on there. Next line: I remained excited about that scene until I wasn't anymore and was instead bitter and jaded. At this point I started taking journalism classes and eventually got an internship and job. True enough, and I felt fine about submitting that to him. When I got to class that night and looked at him, this man who's been working at the New Yorker for 30+ years and realized he had absolutely no concept or access to anything about the euphemistic undeground arts and culture scene I was emerging from. And I felt like a phony, because without my septum ring, I just look like any other girl. Without that septum ring, I feel that I have erased any possible acknowledgement about how different that world was/is from the one he lives in. The one I so desperatley want to be in. But I had to admit that his awareness of where I'm coming from is less important then his abiltiy to help me get a leg up on where I want to be.

That evening, as I left that class feeling overwhelmed by all the emotions being around all my privilged classmates and teachers, I saw a girl get on the train with her septum pierced. It was the first time I had seen anyone on the 1/9 with any facial piercings. She was in her mid 20s, kind of thick with black pants that were a little too tight and looked relatively normal i.e. like a Columbia student. Her septum jewlery was the open ring kind that can slip up into your nose. It didn't look particularly good on her. The more I looked at her, I thought she looked kind of dirty.

When I met up with Joe Cantagelo and John Modica for my tour of New York City's construction sites, I felt relieved that I didn't have to have the septum conversation. They were nice guys and I happily spent the day with them, chatting and learning about the world of labor unions. Would they have treated me differently with the septum ring? I have to admit I was fine with not knowing.

It was easier.