Tongue Ring

I kissed a boy with a tongue ring once. I was sober, but he was stoned. I�d watched them inhale lovely toxic fumes in a room upstairs that made my belt glow in the black light. He had his fingers through my jeans, and that�s how I knew I�d never see him again.

It�s like watching carnivorous meals. The ones caught by surprise and immediate surrender go down smoothly. Painlessly. Still wiggling a little as their tails disappear into vast and powerful jaws.

It�s the ones that wanted to live that get it the worst. There isn�t much you can do once they have you pinned to the sides of their plastic tank. But you fight it anyway, you poor bastards. They claw at you and drag you to the bottom; drowning you in the one thing you�ve known all your short miserable lives. And once your heads are severed they let them float on the melancholy surface, gloating over their victory, while the rest of us doomed creatures huddle together in a cold and glittering mass in the furthest corner we can find.

It must be terrifying to watch you friends drown.

�You�re just working your ass off, aren�t you?� she asked me late one night when she found me hunched over a pile of scriptures in the dark confines of my bed.

�Oh, I�m not working at all,� I responded, not even bothering to look up. �I�m just in a mood and I�m reading things so twisted they make your mind work in slow motion.�

She left me then for a world of short denim skirts and pretty boys who can take you home at night. She�d given up inviting me years before. It never mattered how much I�d had, I was never drunk enough to forget it the next morning.

And when those beautiful faceless boys walked past me, with their sly and fleeting smiles, I�d just pretend I�d never seen them or that I had no idea who they were. I�d just add them to my notebooks, and then tear the pages out to cover my walls. She never read my post it notes and never asked who the greedy kid in the picture frame was. The one with the piercings in his eyebrows and the teardrops on his cheeks.

When those drunken, singing frat boys came in to say goodnight, they�d tell us of their stories on the benches by the streetlight. They�d smoke their cloves and speak in German, telling me I was stunning in that dress from the night before. I�d always lean into her and we�d whisper of things they couldn�t hear above the buzzing of the alcohol in their veins.

When she bit my neck my spine tingled. She�d draw blood and pretend we were vampires. The boys placed bets and cheered us on until they were too hoarse to tell me no. Then I�d tug at their collared shirts and tell them I didn�t believe in Greek. Tilting their heads to hide their eyes, so I wouldn�t see they thought I was dirty. They�d gladly sit beneath me as I pulled my heels off my feet.

After hours� worth of whoring, that never led to anything but more burn marks on the walls, they�d ask me where I learned it, if I�d never done it before.

And I�d give them the honest answer,

�I kissed a boy with a tongue ring once. He was curious. I was alone.�