Member-only story
TW: Violence, suicide, self-harm
Jo, my roommate, sits topless on a wooden chair. Our other roommate, Jackie, sterilizes a needle by holding her lighter under it. She jabs it into Jo’s nipple and Jo screams — Jackie can’t get the needle through. She pushes it and it is slow; the nipple resists, resists, gives. The needle slips through and so does the hoop. Soon, the other is done too.
Jo laughs.
I turn away.
Badass! One of them cheers. Jackie smiles, admires her work. She wants to become a professional piercer one day. She has nipple piercings herself and various earrings, an eyebrow piercing with black points, a hoop in the right side of her nose, a tongue ring about which she makes all the stock good-kisser and if-I-was-a-lesbian jokes. Jo similarly has a nose piercing, but on the left side of her nose, and she has other piercings, too — a tongue piercing with a green ball, various ear lobe piercings.
Soon, she and Jackie will have more piercings, but that they’ll do themselves: rook, conch, tragus, cartilage. Jo will let Jackie pierce her eyebrow, Jackie will shove the same needle through her own ear. They’ll start to pierce people at parties, ask me to help get the plastic balls onto the ends because I won’t let them pierce me. They’ll entertain the thoughts of getting hood piercings because they’ve heard how good it…
