I often wondered …

I often wondered …

I often wondered …

I often wondered and still do wonder about Claire’s loneliness. Even though we both shared a history of sexual assault, our particular circumstances and the way it shaped our lives could never be the same. We shared proximity in our pain, but we lived it in disparate ways.

Claire seemed impervious to pain, both emotional and physical. Our creature comfort the last couple of years was getting piercings together. She had been living in various boroughs of NYC for grad school and then law school, and I’d see her when she came home from school breaks here and there. We’d see a movie together, or get some appetizers at Ciao! or The Ale House in Ithaca, or our nipples pierced. I don’t remember precisely when I get my earlobes pierced—my first ever piercing—but probably sometime in my preteen years. Since that piercing many, many years ago, I’ve never had another bodily piercing.

Claire and I were texting about what we should do when she made it back to Ithaca, and during the course of the conversation, she excitedly suggested we get piercings. I thought she was kidding at first and that the idea was a bit far-fetched—it’s quite outlandish from our usual movie date—but I also thought fuck it, why not? Claire had several ear piercings already, and she planned to expand upon that. I had no idea what I wanted, and I fretted about it for weeks leading up to our piercing date. I settled upon a helix (the namesake for the piercing is also its location on the ear). The piercing itself hurt, but I enjoy a certain amount of pain.

The next piercing date we had, I got a tragus (again, name and location are synonymous), and Claire got her nipple pierced. I’d never given much thought to nipple piercings other than how tacky—and, to be honest, downright trashy—it looked to have both nipples pierced (both being the modifier in that sentence). (It made me think of a shirtless Matthew Lillard—probably one of his most notable performances was in the movie Scream—with his tongue hanging out and shrieking a breathy and wet “aah”—like you would at the doctor’s office, and they’ve got a wooden tongue depressor shoved down your throat to check you for strep—while pinching and flicking his nipples. Gross. I don’t know why I conjure this particular image when I think of nipple piercings, and I have no idea if I’ve even seen Matthew Lillard doing this in one of his movies, but that’s immediately where my mind goes.)

Claire and I were always in the same room together when we got our piercings (both for moral support and safety purposes). Claire took her shirt off and lied on the table while the piercer examined her nipple and placed two black Sharpie dots on either side of it. I gazed in awe at how perfectly round and perky her breasts were. My breasts have always been the same size—quite large, regardless of weight loss or gain—and I’ve never really liked them. When I lie down, they immediately retreat to my armpits instead of remaining in place like smaller, firmer breasts do. (I never admired my big breasts like others have—mostly men, but also women with smaller breasts—because I associated their bigness with the fact that I’m overweight, and although big breasts are enviable, being overweight is not, so I dissociate my admirable breasts from my unadmirable body. And yes, I am fully aware that this is internalized fat phobia. If I had Sydney Sweeney’s figure, then I’d be impressed with my breast-to-body ratio.) I stood next to Claire and held her cold, clammy hand (they were always cold and clammy). Her breasts and stomach were covered in goose pimples. I asked her if she was nervous and she said “no.” The goose pimples said otherwise, but I believed her. Claire’s expressions were always impeccably self-contained. I never really had any way of knowing exactly what she was thinking or feeling. She was impenetrable in that way. I was both puzzled by this and covetous of it.

Claire barely winced, if she winced at all, when the piercer skewered her nipple. I was freaking out internally and asked her if it hurt and she tittered—no pun intended; it was indeed a light, subdued laugh—and replied “no, not really.” I could tell the piercer was impressed by her tolerance of the pain–the only other body piercing that has the potential to hurt more than a nipple piercing is a genital piercing; they’re both erogenous zones–and I was impressed that she was my friend.

The third piercing date we had, I decided I wanted my nipple pierced. I liked the way Claire’s looked, and as I had ascertained from the act of getting it pierced, it didn’t hurt all that much. She barely flinched! Plus, I was growing more confident in my body, and I craved the exoticness a nipple piercing would lend to my sex appeal. I also decided I wanted a daith (it’s in the crux of the ear’s helix). The piercer asked me which one I wanted to get pierced first, and I went with my nipple. Although I didn’t think it’d hurt too bad(ly)—based on Claire’s experience—I figured it’d hurt more than a daith, so I just wanted it done. Give me the bad news before the good news. More than I worried about the pain, I worried my nipple wouldn’t get hard and what I, or the piercer, would have to do to get it there and how awkward that might be. But my fears were put to rest as soon as I took my shirt off—the combination of the office being air conditioned and me being nervous influenced my nipple to be cooperative. I don’t know if the guy piercing my nipple was new to piercings, or if I just had exceptionally nice tits (I doubt it was the latter but one can fantasize), but his hands were shaking like a washing machine on spin cycle as he measured and dotted my nipple. As I lied naked from my waist up and watched him approach my tender nipple with trembling hands, I got nervous. He told me to take a deep breath before he jabbed the needle in my nipple, and for some inexplicable reason, he stopped halfway through. A paroxysm of pain erupted from my stomach and swept outward through my extremities. My body felt like it was experiencing its own earthquake. The piercer told me to take another deep breath so he could finish the piercing, but it was hard to focus on my breathing when my entire body felt like it was coming apart. I took a slight breath in and he slowly, like a train approaching a station—or maybe quickly; at this point, the pain had overtaken my senses and everything seemed to slow down—pushed the needle through the rest of my nipple. As he turned around to get the piercing jewelry from the counter, I looked up at Claire and mouthed *what the fuck?! *

I lied on the table, still topless, as he did my daith piercing. It hurt substantially less than my nipple, but it still hurt. Claire was next, and she got a rook, which goes on the inner edge of the uppermost ridge in your ear. The piercer had a hard time with Claire’s piercing, and she bled a lot, making it even harder. Still though, she remained phlegmatic. Even as he jumbled around in her ear, causing her to bleed more and more, she smiled and reassured him that everything was satisfactory. I watched, horrified. Without moving her head, she glanced in my direction and widened her eyes as if to say mirror what I had mouthed earlier: what the fuck?! But I feel like it was more to reassure me than it was herself.

Claire and I left that appointment bleeding and sore. And to my surprise, the pain in my nipple dissipated quickly, but the pain from my daith throbbed in my ear and in my head. When I got home that evening, I took a picture of my tit and sent it to all of my close friends—it was not unsolicited, I had asked them all beforehand if they wanted to see it—and we beheld its attractiveness.

Eventually Claire would text me that her rook piercing just fell out one day. And I’d end up cutting my daith out of my ear with a pair of pliers. I took myself to convenient care afterward because I had a large, fleshy lump in my ear surrounding one of the piercing holes that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I figured it must have been infected even though there was no purulent discharge, but the doctor informed me that it was a pyogenic granuloma. Apparently it’s a fairly common reaction at the site of minor injuries, injuries such as piercings. It’s a small, benign growth filled with blood vessels. The doctor gave me a steroid cream that I needed to swab on it for a few days. He said that it may disappear, but it wasn’t guaranteed. Ironically, the growth looked and felt like a nipple. I did as the doctor instructed, and my ear nipple eventually shrunk into oblivion. Getting piercings together was the most intimate experience we shared, and we’d never (have the chance to) get another piercing together. As we continued to build and expand on our piercings, I wondered when or if we’d decide we were done.

I often wondered …

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