Perceptions were smashed and presumptions torn asunder earlier this week as it was discovered that Mark Howland, a boring straight guy, has both nipples pierced, placing him in an entirely new light than before.
“Mark is a friend of a friend, and I always just thought of him as a perfectly nice but boring straight cis white dude,” explains Summer Díaz. “Then we ended up at the same beach gathering, and suddenly everything changed. The dude has double-pierced nips. Like, what?”
“The discovery was destabilizing, disorienting, raw. Also invigorating, exciting, and inviting,” Summer adds. “I mean he’s still all of the things I originally thought, but now I have to accept the possibility that there might be more.”
Witnesses attest that a majority of those present were shocked and awed by Mark’s casual nipple bars gleaning in the sunshine, however, none inquired after them directly.
“It’s not okay to just ask someone about their body,” says Summer. “That’s why I tried to ask more innocuous questions, like if he had ever been in a band and/or cult, if he has an alter ego that lives only by night, or if he’s even a little bit gay.”
“But he just told me that he played trumpet in high school but kinda gave it up in college, doesn’t have an alter ego but ‘does Halloween some years’, and has only experienced straight attraction,” she adds. “In other words, the mystery grows richer still.”
When asked directly about his adorned nipples, Mark, who works in accounts payable and receivable at a small law firm and lives with his girlfriend and their Labrador mix, took a sip of his Blue Moon and shrugged.
Happy Pride to Mark, specifically!
