Bastard Life

“I want to get my clit pierced.” 

She stared down at the marred counter rather than up into his dark eyes. “My clitoris,” she stammered after. Maybe “clit” was too colloquial. What was the proper way to ask for what she wanted? She quickly scanned the walls of the tattoo parlor/piercing studio, landing on an image of a impish Devil Girl with a spiked tail stuffed violently up the ass of a innocent-looking Angel Girl. Maybe “clit” was okay.

“You’re not ready.” 

When she looked at his face, she saw that he was grinning—the lines deepening around his eyes. He liked her. She could tell. She’d guessed that when he’d pierced her ear, his breath on her skin so she could feel the heat. The flash of pain had been over in a second—far too quickly—the whole experience taking less than ten minutes from the time she handed him her neatly folded cash to when she walked out the door onto the glittery grit of Melrose Avenue.

Afterwards, she’d spent hours sitting on the fire escape of her apartment, touching the silver hoop in the middle of her right ear, twirling the metal, holding it. She had the usual ear piercings from when she was a teenager, but this one, high up on her ear, felt different. Somehow the new hoop there had made her life the tiniest bit less lonely.

Weeks had passed before she’d had the nerve to go back. She was a good girl, after all, with a respectable job and a decent salary. She wore sensible clothes, low-heeled pumps, suitable for work in an accounting office on the Miracle Mile. Piercing/Tattoo studios weren’t places her friends visited, or discussed, or fantasized about. Nor were the boys who worked there. Tattooed boys who made her heart race.

She requested nipple piercings next, standing in front of the counter wearing a white t-shirt and a white bra, chinos from Talbots, glossy brown penny loafers. He gave her a hard look this time, as if he didn’t believe what she’d said. Not someone as normal—or in her mind, boring—as she was. Embarrassingly normal. The freckles on her pale skin. The sleek dark hair that would not hold a curl. Slim-hipped body. Hardly any curves.

“You’re sure?” he’d asked once he’d taken her into the private room, and she had tried to look brave as she removed her shirt and sat down, flinching when the sticky plastic coating on the chair met her skin.

Her breasts were extremely sensitive. Wearing the right—or wrong—bra would create such pleasurable friction she could almost climax. So when he rolled her dark pink nipples between his gloved fingers, she’d had to stifle a moan. Her eyes were closed the whole time. If she stared at him, she might say something. Something she’d regret? Perhaps.

Something she wished she’d said now?

When he’d told her to prepare herself, she’d licked her bottom lip, sucking it into her mouth, something she did when she was scared. “You’re sure?” he’d asked again, right before sliding the needle through, and she’d simply said, “Yes. Please.” 

For a month, a solid month after her nipples had healed, she’d been able to make herself come by tugging on the sterling rings adorning her tits. Just a little tug to start, working harder, imagining him pulling them with his mouth, biting into her. On weekends, she’d started wearing tight t-shirts without bras, loving the way her decorated breasts looked beneath the stretchy fabric. Yet soon the ache started up again. That and the loneliness. 

Her belly button was next. She didn’t have to get naked this time. She lifted her shirt, let him see her nearly concave stomach. His breath here made her clench her thighs together under her knee-length plaid skirt. 

“Breathe, baby.”

She looked down at him, startled. Had he called her baby?

But he didn’t repeat the word. Didn’t act as if he’d said anything unusual at all. She wondered if he understood the big picture—they were working down her body in a silver-studded game of musical parts. If he did, he kept quiet, professional in every sense. She watched his head bent over her, and thought of telling him that at night, she envisioned him fucking her asshole, the gloves, the lube. The tears that would streak her face when he thrust in deep.

He’d only touched her with gloves so far, and somehow they existed in her fantasies. Every last one.

There weren’t many places left. She could have gone with her nether lips. But why wait? She was going to have her clit done, and she knew exactly how it would feel. She’d done the research online, understood the procedure.

How many times had she imagined watching him slip on the rubber gloves? Smelling that sweet sickly scent of antiseptic. The sensation of him touching her through that barrier, coaxing her clit to attention before slipping on the clamp.

“Not your clit,” he said, looking at her. “The lips first.”

Her eyes widened as he slid a photo album forward. Here were close-up shots of women, bejeweled parts on display, and she blushed immediately, even though she’d been fantasizing about this moment endlessly. Each time she went to the studio, she’d meant to ask for this, but had failed herself again and again. What else would she have to pierce to make him understand?

“The clit’s extreme,” he said. 

But she knew, she wanted to say. She knew what it would be like: The needle. The slow thrust forward. The pain shot with ribbons of pleasure. She was going to come when he did it. 

“You’re not ready.”

She hadn’t been expecting this. The customer was always right, after all. She had the money. She had the nerve. But then she realized—her clit would be the finale. The end game, and she nodded—fine, let him decide. He led her back to the private room once more, and this time, for the first time, he seemed to really see her.

The door was shut. He came forward, slid his hands up under her skirt, pulled down her simple white panties. Her throat was tight. He turned her sideways, unzipped the skirt, let the fabric fall. Now she was half naked, and that felt wrong. He understood, pulled the t-shirt up over her head. This was better. Totally naked, with her silver-ringed tits on display, her belly button decorated, her body so pale and pretty. 

Jesus, pretty. For the first time ever, that’s how she felt.

He sat in her the chair, spread her thighs, handed her a mirror. “Like this,” he said, “we could pierce you here,” and she trembled all over. “Or here.” The shivers wouldn’t stop. Her teeth were chattering. She couldn’t speak.

 “You have to hold still.”

She looked at him, her eyes wide, breath hitching. And then he bent forward and licked the ring on her right breast, then the one on her left. He kissed his way down, pausing to tug on the barbell adorning her belly button. Fucking god, he was—he was kissing her. Licking her. His soft hair tickled her naked skin. She shifted her hips, lifted her hips. He was there, between her legs, spreading open her lips, kissing between.

“You’re not ready for your clit,” he said again, looking up at her. “I’ll tell you when you’re ready. We’ll do it together.”

“Yes,” she said, “fine,” she said. Whatever he wanted, was what she wanted to say. As long as he would keep touching her. But he didn’t. He stood back up, got the instruments.

“Hold still,” he told her, as he had every time. There was no stiller than what she was like right now. Her breath was frozen. Her heart raced. He pierced her just as he’d said. Not her clit. Not yet. She sucked in her breath when she looked down her body. Shaved sex. Beautiful ring right there at the top.

“We’ll get to your clit,” he assured her once more. Now, he pinched her between his thumb and fingers, stroked his gloved thumb over her swollen clit so she closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair.

“And it’s going to hurt,” he said, and she squeezed her eyes shut even tighter—because he was talking to her the way he spoke to her in her fantasies. He was saying the things nobody ever had said out loud.

“Because that’s what you need, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she managed, a rush of breath, hardly an answer.

“But you need so much more. You need a collar here,” and one gloved hand went to her throat, pressing once against her. “And you need a bowl of water on the floor by the bed, where you can lap it at night if you’re thirsty.”

“Oh, fuck,” she whispered, and there were tears in her eyes now, tears spilling.

“It’s been so scary, hasn’t it? All those thoughts in your head, and nobody to tell them to. Nobody to listen. You’ve been so lonely.”

Like he had been there, with her, in her nearly empty apartment. Sat at her side on the fire escape. Looked out into a city of millions of people and been all by herself. And then he bent down and licked her in a circle, a circle within a circle, and she came. Vibrant. Colors behind her shut lids. Like every orgasm she’d had thinking of him, thrusting his gloved fingers up inside her, fucking her ass with two fingers overlapped while he sucked hard on her clit. She came in shudders, in waves, and then fell back, limp in the chair. But even as she came, understanding flooded through her.

Somewhere inside, she’d pierced him.—For BastardLife by Alison Tyler

Photograph by the amazing Igor Amelkovich. On sale now and worth it.