Safety Pins.
I have spent the morning reading about myself. I do not mean that I have been perusing the archives here. I mean someone has written a profile of me. Do I find it interesting? Do you really have to ask?
The secret to happiness is being able to look oneself in the mirror without regret. I have none.
I am talking to a young lady with purple hair, thick Cleopatra eyeliner, a Misfits shirt, a spiked collar, and ripped fishnet stockings under torn denim short shorts. She is a real looker. Her legs are covered with pentagram tattoos. She is more into Doc Marten’s than Crocs. Her name is Amy. That is so punk rock.
This place is for the birds but Amy is nice. She tries to look tough but it is all show. It is all an act. She is as sweet as can be, though she has a foul mouth. She must have grown up on the West Bank.
She has a Westwego accent, which would explain a lot. We should have a pool of what drugs she is addicted to. She lives in a coven house in the Marigny, in the shotgun behind the mule stables on North Rampart Street. She has the back apartment. Rent is $925 a month.
She has money, dollar bills, fives, tens, a twenty, safety-pinned to her Misfits shirt over her bosom. She even has a 20-Mexican peso note, complete with its portrait of Benito Juarez. Those twenty pesos are worth $1.03 at current exchange rates. “It’s not much, but, I’ll take what I can get. It’s something,” Amy says.
Do you know why Amy has money safety-pinned to her bosom? The safety pins are not a punk aesthetic, they are a New Orleans tradition. When it is someone’s birthday, friends, strangers, everyone, they pin currency to the clothing of whose birthday it is.
Amy is twenty-eight today. There is a lot of water under that bridge.