WITH JEFF MIDDLETON
***image1*** SFR: You and your wife Kitten have owned and run Aware Piercing and Tattoo for 6 ½ years. What prompted the decision to close up March 4 and take off [to San Francisco]?
JM:
Well I got my MBA last year so I'm just ready to try some different stuff, maybe going into a little bit bigger business type things, taking my understandings from doing this and having been in this industry for 12 years and trying to further different industries with the sensibilities I've come to know, the business philosophies I've come to understand.
Is Jeff your given name?
My birth name is Jennifer. It's short for Jennifer.
Is there a difference between owning what could be construed as an alternative service business and something that's more 'mainstream?'
I don't think so. When it comes down to it, it's pretty much all the same principles and ideologies to make anything run. I think a lot of big businesses are negating a lot of different people and a lot of different areas they could probably be a little more progressive in, and that's what I'm hoping to bring to the table. I'm articulate, I'm smart, but I have a really diverse background and I want to be able to bring that into the fold.
Talk to me a little more about that diverse background. How did you end up in this industry?
When I was graduating from UCLA-that's where I got my sociology degree, and I was also on the track team-I just really didn't want to do something very traditional, very typical. I wanted to break out of my student-athlete mold. I had been getting pierced, so I went in, applied at Gauntlet in Los Angeles, and it just started to kind of roll from there.
Are there any things about Santa Fe that make having this type of shop more or less difficult?
It is unique in the sense we're trying to provide this service, very professionally, in a state that has no regulations. I've been in contact [State Rep.] Rhonda King, [D-Bernalillo] and have been helping to go towards helping regulate the industry-not from an artistic sense, just from a health sense, a safety sense-so we're all on the same page, so our customers aren't, you know, getting something they didn't ask for when they come in. That's something I think any shop needs to be super, super aware of, and very vigilant about.
Since you do tattooing and piercing and some people freak out on that has that presented a problem?
No. Now every little town has a piercing place or a tattoo shop. It's definitely become more of a bigger business. The most interesting part is I've had less issues with customers than I have with other studios and shops in town. I came from a city where there was a really strongly knit group of people who would get together and talk shop, and here in Santa Fe it feels much more disparate. I thought it would be very different in that way, that we would all come together with more of a sense of community.
Did that contribute to you guys deciding to leave?
Not directly. The lack of the sense of community has been a little bit of a bummer throughout the years we've been doing this. We do feel kind of like we're pioneering something out here, we don't have a lot of peers to play stuff off of. It doesn't seem like there's much of a sense of 'Let's all come together and make sure everyone's safe and doing the right stuff.'
You guys seem like the most queer-friendly shop in town…
The whole modern piercing movement came out of pretty much a hardcore S&M movement in the early '70s in major cities. [In LA] it was very queer-identified; you could see through piercings, 'Oh this person is queer.' So it was a marking and a symbolism. And it's been very important to have that here as well. First and foremost we see ourselves as a queer shop. I think it is important; I don't think there's many places you can go to what you know is a very queer-friendly vibe where you know it's going to be safe and cool.
What modifications have you had done?
I've got my earlobes stretched-they've been up to an inch and an eighth, but they're at 7/8 right now. Got my septum pierced-that's my favorite piercing. I've got an upper lip and a lower lip. I've had my tongue pierced. I've my lips pierced about four or five separate times. I've had a middlebrow piercing. I've had a really big dermal punch piercing, cartilage piercings-two of those. I've had my naval pierced, nipples pierced. I've my hood pierced a few times, a vertical hood clit piercing. I think at one point all combined I've had about 20-odd pieces.
I don't have a single thing pierced, I don't have any tattoos, 'cause I'm a big wuss-could you explain what the appeal is to someone like me?
I think it's something that has an ancient quality to it. There have been so many cultures that have done this for so long, marking their bodies to delineate where they're from, or rites of passage. I also think it helps us because we don't have any fear-based rites of passage in our culture-it's all based on material objects and money; as you get older you are bestowed things like cars and money rather than markings showing where you've been. So I think a lot of us yearn and crave to have something that shows we can endure a certain amount of pain, that we are really in control of our bodies, they are our own to do with what we please. And then once you do it, it's hard to describe, but something changes. And then when you see it, if it's right and it was meant to be there and it was a good experience, then it just becomes part of who you are.
