before I thought of a suitable comeback to her non-answer to my question; rooting around in my jeans pocket with my free hand, I finally found a weathered, chamois-soft George Washington—which I ceremoniously placed on the bar next to her half-empty bottle of beer. That made her smile—and reveal a set of teeth dotted by inset specks of silver. By now, the sight of her drilled and filled front teeth didn’t shock me as much as it might’ve only a couple of minutes before.
Picking up the faded bill with a jingling hand, she snubbed out her cigarette with the other before saying, “Of course it hurts...but the thing people never bother to ask is how much or just how bad. Or not; hell, some women can birth a baby and walk out of the hospital an hour later. It’s all a matter of what a person can stand above and beyond this”—she fluttered her hand, letting the rings and chains attached to her finger-bases and wrist-bone flash in the too-bright bar lights—“before you put the first stud or hoop in, you know?”
“I faint when I get a splinter,” I tried to joke, but now that she knew my interest in her was at least marginally more serious than most of the people who gawked at her, she wasn’t about to let the subject drop. Reaching toward my head with her right hand, she smiled that glittering smile of hers and said as her thumb and forefinger made encircling contacts with my earlobes, “Let’s see if that’s true,” before pinching the dangling nub of flesh between her beige-lacquered long nails.
The pain was short, sharp, but not enough to make me faint...more like a little nip from a small animal that’s been frightened.
“See?” she smiled as she withdrew her hand, leaving me to rub my earlobe in annoyed silence (I wasn’t about to yelp for her, if that’s what she expected). But when I saw the blood-smear on my fingers when I stopped rubbing my ear, I began, “Hey, that’s not funny—” until she cut in, “Wasn’t meant to be. Just giving you your dollar’s worth.”
“Too bad I don’t have an earring to put in there...feels like you’ve poked a hole in it,” I grumbled before finishing the last of my own beer. While my bottle was still upended, and the slightly warm brew coursed down my throat, she said, “I’ll bet it’d look good with a stud. Some gold or maybe silver...if you’re brave. Some claim silver’s a ‘dirty’ metal. But since you didn’t faint...maybe getting it done wouldn’t hurt so much either—”
Wiping the foam off my lips with my free hand, I shook my head No Way before saying, “Sorry, I think I’ll just go find some peroxide or iodine to clean this...I’ve heard that professional piercers use needles....”
“They do...say, I’ve got some antiseptic in my car. The least I can do is clean it up, ’kay? It’s on me,” she added before getting off her bar stool with a jingle and a metallic whisper of swaying chains, then padding off for the bar’s double doors without turning her chains-and-stubble-covered head to see if I was following her. A quick glance at the smoke-grimed bar mirror revealed that I was now sporting a huge, ruddy bead of blood on my earlobe so, after paying for my beer, I hurried after her, all the while assuring myself that I’d only let her sterilize the wound and not shove some hunk of metal through it—even as I patted my condom-carrying pocket in time with each step while picturing all the other places those chains and loops of silver might lead to.
I pretended to believe her claim that she’d forgotten her piercing kit at home; she only lived a short drive away and anyhow, my earlobe had actually stopped hurting so her jibe about “maybe getting it done again” didn’t sound so ominous anymore. At least as long as she stayed away from the really sensitive parts.
Her place was a walk-up, above a store of some sort. Dark walls, dark furniture, swallow-your-feet-to-the-ankles-thick shag carpeting. Couldn’t see too much in the forty-watt bulbs she used in the lamps, but even if they’d been one hundred watts each, I don’t think the place would have seemed any brighter...it just smelled dark. Warm-dark, like blood and spices and burnt wood shavings. No radio or stereo played, yet the place was filled with sound; with each step, each movement of her head and arms, I found myself bathed in that metallic tintinnabulation until my brain echoed with the jangle and clinking noises, so much so that I had to strain to hear her instruction for me to sit on the sofa while she got her piercing kit, of her warning that “This’ll sting a bit.”
I was expecting pain when the peroxide-soaked cotton ball hit my torn lobe, but the sensation was only another tiny nip, followed by a lingering after-burn that wasn’t as painful as it was...exhilarating. And the jingling around me seemed so loud I had to shout out, “You’re right, it doesn’t hurt at all,” but she didn’t seem to mind the loudness of my voice, for all she did was smile before snapping open the latch on her piercing case and withdrawing something that nipped and stung yet didn’t hurt-hurt once I closed my eyes and relaxed on that dark upholstered couch, letting her pull up flesh with shivery-cool tugs of her long-handled tongs and give it a little stinging nip before releasing the tongs and moving on to another untouched patch of flesh.
The first thing I was aware of when I awoke was how...complete I now felt; that I was pierced didn’t matter because of what was now an extra part of me. Cool metal filled the still-throbbing holes in my flesh, tiny bits and loops and studs which rested against the surrounding nakedness yet somehow took away all previous feeling of vulnerability I’d associated with being bare and exposed. Even the spots which were usually the most sensitive hurt no more than the more typically pierced areas like my earlobes...and while I was no bigger anywhere on my body, the metal adornments made me feel larger, stronger, more complete in the fullest sense of the word.
It was only after I’d found and caressed each new metal-plugged hole in my body that I began to remember, in tantalizing, maddeningly incomplete fragments, what she and I had done during and after the piercing...the sight of her pale, chain-crisscrossed nude body with the clanging, tiny loops of silver bisecting her nipples and inner and outer labia; the rough-ribbed sensation of her chains running against my own bare flesh, the individual links and studs grinding into my skin; the little white-hot nip of stimulating pain as she lifted up my penis and pierced the tip with...at that point, my memory was murky-vague, or somehow I didn’t have a clear mental picture of her holding anything at all in either hand even as I’d felt that exquisite pinch-and-tear—
Turning over on my side on the well-padded comfortingly-shaggy carpet, I felt her sleeping beside me, her breaths coming up so softly that they were inaudible in the still-dark room, her ornamented flesh pleasantly warm under the cool ropes of confining chains...and when she didn’t stir as I slid my hand over and around the small patches of metal-free flesh, I felt confident enough to unclasp one of the chains from the ring adorning her navel, just so I could feel a little more smooth, unencumbered skin—
And even though she began to writhe slightly while I worked to undo more and more of her chains, she said nothing so I felt confident that my actions were pleasing to her; by the time I’d freed her breasts and swollen labia, she began to moan softly, her breaths coming in short, moist hitches, so I quickly began unclasping the silvery bindings which imprisoned her cheeks, her rounded bristle-cover scalp...by that time, her back began to arch upwards as her legs spread slightly, invitingly, so I paused in my labors to begin kissing her unfettered flesh—
—but as my lips touched her skin, it felt almost cold, not warm like I expected it to fell...nor was it as silky-smooth as I remembered it to be. As I pulled my lips from her, I could still taste the surface of her skin—and when I poked my slightly swollen, studded tongue out of my mouth and licked her be-ringed lips, I felt flakes of loose skin which didn’t come from my lips—
My fresh piercings ached as I scrambled to my feet and felt my way across one wall, searching for the coffee table and lamp I thought were there; by the time I’d found the table and lamp, I knew I was bleeding in spots, but the pain still felt...good, in a way I now found too hideous to contemplate. And when I clicked on the lamp and yanked off the shade, I forced myself
