A perfectly wretched cocktail first made in the 1930s, designed with the idea of separating young women from their virtue.

I knew a prim and pert girl in high school named Elizabeth who would leave heel-marks on the ceiling after two of these abominations. . . followed by 20 or so minutes of ruinous projectile vomiting. Pink Ladies would induce nymphomania and nausea with equal ferocity. I would help her stagger home and ring the doorbell and run like a fucking thief. Her parents hated me.

In Japan these pussy drinks are very big, as is karaoke, some bars locking you in from midnight till five in the morning to try out your pipes on classics like the Divinyls’ I Touch Myself and Meatloaf’s I Would Do Anything for Love. A lot of cocktails are added for intestinal fortitude, as well as to clear the throat. Some people go bat-shit with karaoke -- the right amount of whiskey-balls and the most reserved Japanese salary-man will get snot-flying plastered and tear into Cameo’s Word-Up with all of the gangsta’ brio he can muster.

There are many oddball names for things in Japan for products aimed at the American trade. There are also stores that sell unusual things that can best be described as niche tastes. We found a shop that sold nothing but John Lennon glasses; another that only sold pink lingerie -- bras, panties, merry widows and thongs -- all in hues ranging from baby powder pink to screaming-hooker fuchsia. In Harajuku all manner of places sell the baby-doll pink tights to teenage girls, as well as the ubiquitous "Juicy" sweatpants that only women going at least two bills seem to shoehorn their ample asses into over here. Sorry baby, if you tip the scales at 200 pounds, you’re not exactly the "Juicy" tight-clothing wearing demographic. Yesterday a plus-sized gal was power-walking down Damen Avenue sporting a cameltoe you could lose your keys in.

Eroticized images have been around for centuries in Japan, as well as brutal and aberrant varieties of porn and comics. The female figure is at once revered and fetishized, not so differently than it is in religious art and American skin magazines. Who can blame us -- nothing is as beautiful as the female body.

As a kid, I made the nuns crazy because I loved drawing naked women. Zahftig gals with stiff nipples and a neatly manicured bush. They would go bat-shit and send me to the shrink, call my mother and make me go talk to the priest. I started drawing naked nuns and then they really went out of their minds; one of the brides of Christ even beat my ass with a knotted rope, telling me I was going to hell. I should have said, "Oh harder, hot Mama. . . I’m almost THERE," but I was in sixth grade and didn’t think like such a perv yet. I remember saying that it would be okay to go to hell, as long as there were naked women.  Every time I pass a group of nuns now I graciously tip my hat and say, "Top of the morning, good Sisters. May all your sons be Jesuits."