Piercing

“So?”

“So what?”

“So are we going to talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” This was a text conversation I’m considerately putting into conversation form, between Big Davey and me. I was zoning out and trying not to remember the way his lips closed over the head of my phantom dick, while I browsed instagram. My phantom dick had not made an appearance in the two days since it had been sucked to completion. In the time since I had told no one and while it filled my fantasies I wasn’t eager to talk about it.

Big Davey, on the other hand, was. “I sucked your dick.”

“I sucked your dick.”

“Okay, we’ve sucked each other’s dicks. So are we going to talk about it?”

We would not, because I stopped responding and messaged Autumn instead. “Big Davey is pissing me off.”

“:(”

“Whachadoin?”

“Stuck in math. You?”

“Sub in history. We’re watching Platoon.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. I guess he just really wanted to watch Platoon today.” The sub was the only one watching the television, everyone else was on their phone. I waited for her to reply and looked at more looks on instagram.

Big Davey hit me back, “Okay, so I guess you don’t want to talk about it.”

“They should call you big brain Davey,” Workshop your come backs next time, that was horrendous. “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes.”

“Okay, fine. Can we still hang out”

I ignored him for a little bit. On screen Charlie Sheen came face to face with the sexual violence of war and made me want to throw up. Had Sheen been accused of rape? Better google that. Looks like nope. (He would that next month, but by The National Enquirer, so take it with a grain silo of salt.) My phone buzzed in my hand again as Big Davey sent a question mark. Fine.

“Of course we can still hang out. I don’t not want to hang out with you. If I stopped being someone’s friend after they sucked my dick I might as well be a guy.”

“Harsh.”

“:)”

“Ditch your next class?”

“Nope.” Maybe. “Why?”

“I have to get my oil changed and it’s the best time to do it.”

“You want me to come with you to get your oil changed? You don’t get a lot of second dates, do you?”

“We’ve never hung out.”

“There was this one time :P”

“So we are going to talk about it?”

Then Bree messaged me, and Bree and I had only messaged a few times, “I’m gonna buy you a present. Ditch your next class!”

Well between the two of them … The bell rang as the sub watched war on a small CRT screen.

Bree was waiting for me outside the auditorium. “Lets go fast,” I told her, “I’m kind of avoiding Big Davey.”

She nodded like she got this, but still put on a matronly expression as we walked, “Don’t let things get normal. We don’t do normal.”

“What does that mean,” I asked as we absconded through the main doors.

“Normal, like the relationships other people have? Yeah, we don’t do those.” As if to illustrate she put her hand in mine as we walked. And to make the illustration clear, she only held two of my fingers.

Those two fingers I had put inside her less than a week ago.

“Okay, well how do I keep things from being normal with him?”

Bree shrugged as we got to her car, “No subterfuge, no prevarication, no avoidance. If that doesn’t work, I’ll sit on his face while you ride his cock and everything will get sorted out.”

“Wouldn’t that make it worse?”

“Don’t you think it’s worth a shot?” Bree grinned at me as she she sat down.

“Ouch!” It felt like … I don’t know. Pain. But in a part of my body that I didn’t know where it was.

Bree lifted herself off the seat, “I’m sorry! Did I sit on your hair?”

“My hair? No.” I touched it to make sure. Wait… “My hair isn’t that long.”

“I thought I saw some of your hair on the seat when I sat down.” She shifted around in the driver’s seat. Nothing.

“It’s gone whatever it was.” I put my seatbelt on, “So what are you buying me?”

“Okay, it’s sort of not a thing, but—” She started the car and put it in gear, “Do you want your ears pierced?”

No. Absolutely not. I would not like that at all. “Maybe?”

“I’ve got a thing with a piercer on Colfax, and I’m going in to get a labret. I mean, if you want …”

“You’re doing this now?”

Bree got us pointed toward the highway, and I braced for her to light a cigarette. Then I remembered that she didn’t actually smoke. I might have been riding with Autumn too much.

“Well her boss is in on the weekends and evenings, when they actually do business. I don’t exactly have parental permission.”

Ah. “This is the guy that did your nipples?”

“That guy my sister used to sleep with. Then she stopped. Then she started apprenticing at his shop. I don’t know if she still fucks him. Anyway, she isn’t going to need my parents to be present.”

“I’ll go with you, but I’m not getting my ears pierced.” I crossed my arms in the seat. “And I get to choose the music.” I reached for her (radio) knob.

You are not getting your ears pierced. I looked around the inside of the parlor. There were very good piercing and tattoo parlors. Some of them were even on Colfax. This was not one of them.

It wasn’t particularly dirty, or at least it wasn’t not clean. But the green vinyl sofa in the seating area was cracked and torn. The glass in the jewelry display case was chipped and taped. The tile floor was in good repair, but the tile had been laid some time in the 1970s.

And the art on the walls was really bad.

Like, really really bad.

Every example contained at least three tattoo tropes. Flames, skulls, eyeballs, bat wings, and any of the above but in faux-chrome.

I was introduced to Bree’s sister, Gwen. Gwen was in a tank top, had hair that had never been professionally dyed, a face full of metal, and the start of a sleeve. And she was absolutely gorgeous.

“I’ve got an hour,” she told the two of us. “What am I putting holes in?” She asked me.

“Umm, her lip.” I pointed at Bree.

“Are you watching?” Gwen asked me.

“Do I have to?”

Bree gave me a look like, “Don’t be such a pussy.”

“Okay, I guess I’m watching.”

Gwen took us into the back, and drew a curtain between us and the door. Snip/snap she had a pair of gloves on and was looking over a tray full of needles in plastic wrappers. Bree had flopped into the chair like she had the hots for the dental hygienist, and was smiling in the little mirror next to the chair.

Gwen prodded her bottom lip a few times, the rubbed it between her fingers thoughtfully. Then in a few seconds she had Bree in some kind of torture device. Forceps with a hole in them for shoving a needle through. Bree didn’t make a sound when the needle went through, and she had a new stud in her bottom lip in the time it took me to grimace.

It looked super cute.

Then everything had been thrown away and we were back out in the waiting area. Bree and Gwen were talking and I wasn’t getting my ears pierced so why were we still here?

We weren’t still there, we were getting into Bree’s car and heading back, late, for 4th period.

At lunch Autumn got up and rushed over to me, and then stopped. “Oh.” And we came back to the table together.

“What? What’s, ‘oh’?”

“I just—it’s nothing. You didn’t get your ears pierced.”

“No, I don’t want my ears pierced.”

She sat down, a lot farther away from me than I would have liked, “Well I didn’t know that, okay?”

I didn’t understand where all this tension was coming from, and tried to reflect on it as I got up to get a bowl of Raman. I had brought a Raman bowl with me, the kind you get a h-mart with the Japanese you don’t understand in big bubble letters. There was a canteen to fill it from at one side of the cafeteria and while I was filling it I watched Sarah and then Bree comfort Autumn. Then I watched Autumn throw her lunch away and run out the doors. Sarah went after her.

I sat back down and waited for my noodles to cook. I had no idea what was going on and no one would tell me.

It wasn’t until I was in 6th period that I reached into my bag for my calculator and my fingers brushed a little packet. Curious I pulled it out and found a pair of earrings and a cardboard backing.

They were cute little tyrannosaurs, made out of some kind of clay, and bright green.

The bell hadn’t rung yet, so I threw a quick apology to the teacher and went to the bathroom, earrings in my fist. At the mirror in front of the sink I held them up and tried to figure them out. The tyrannosaurs didn’t have a lower jaw, and the earing post stuck straight out of their upper jaw. I pulled one off and held it up to my ear. Oh, it looks like it’s chomped on my ear! It was absolutely darling.

I didn’t know you could get cute earrings.

Well I did. You could get little kittys and unicorns and stuff. And they could be cute in the kind of way that people look at you and think, “she has unicorn earrings. Cute.”

But this was…

Goddamn. I wanted to try them on and see how they looked on me, and I couldn’t because I didn’t have my ears pierced. I don’t want to get my ears pierced, I just want to wear these earrings!

I had an excusal for my last class, and I got into my mom’s car from the loading zone just as the bell was ringing and binding the unfaithful. I said a careless prayer to those who did not have psychologist appointments.

We listened to NPR, it was my mother’s turn on the radio. I learned that a 2 year old, Montana power company, that had never built more than 100 miles of line, but with ties to the Secretary of Energy had been contracted to fix the Puerto Rico power grid, (without a bid). I learned that the people of Puerto Rico were very surprised by this. I learned that they would rather not, thank you. I learned that they would like a power company with expertise in rebuilding 10 million miles of lines. Just as I was getting sick of learning the segment ended and I learned about The Lion King broadway show.

I kept the earrings clutched in my fist the whole time until I walked into Dr. Malmon’s office and carefully put them down on the table in front of me.

He stared at them for awhile, then picked the packet up and turned it over in his hands. Gravely he nodded to himself, then put them back on the table.

We both stared at them for a bit.

Finally he said, “Are you asking me if you should?”

I shrugged and didn’t really look at him. Instead I told him about the dress, and the boots, about the shrug, about the way I had found friends.

I didn’t tell him about the sex things—any of the huge quantity of sex things—I had done. I would of course, I could tell him anything. In good time.

Instead I finished with what had happened that day and the most heartfelt shrug I could manage.

“You think,” the doctor summed up, “That Autumn got Bree to take you to get your ears pierced. Without a parents permission. But more importantly, without your permission. So that she could gift you these earrings?”

“I don’t know any other way to see it.”

“How do you feel about that?”

I closed my eyes and leaned back on the couch. With my eyes still closed I said, “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”

“About the earrings?”

“About all of this,” I gestured to myself, and the room, and the earrings, and the orgy club. “Why didn’t someone tell me about the fun stuff.”

“The fun stuff?”

“The fun stuff about being a girl.” I opened my eyes to glare at him. Dr. Malmon opened his mouth but I went on, “No one said that I would like wearing a dress, or that I look hot in heels, or that there were—” I picked up the earrings, “—good earrings. earrings that I would want to wear. Dresses that I would want to wear.”

“Would you believe me if I had told you?” I gave him a rueful look and stopped my instinctual response which was to flip him off. “Maybe a better question is, ‘would it have mattered if I had?’”

That was actually kind of a stumper. “Maybe?”

“Well there isn’t anything we can do about it now, is there. What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t really want to get my ears pierced,” I started. “I’m not happy about not being asked if I wanted them pierced. I don’t know why Autumn freaked out after not asking me. I have to have a talk with her about that. So what I’m going to do is walk out of here, text Autumn that I need to talk to her during tech, get into the car with my mother, and politely ask her to take me to get my ears pierced.” Dr. Malmon started to interject and I interrupted him, “I don’t want to get my ears pierced, but I really want to wear these stupid fucking earrings.”