nathanmcknight

You ain't gonna find love in a bloody nose. I found that out harder'n the hard way and ended up getting chased by a pig-mangling lunatisk that tailed me all the way back to Ohio. And to think I was this close to calling him dad!

But it all started in Columbus, Ozhio. Right here at home. Well, in the piercing studio anyway, which is as close to home as anything. They said the new girl would do my septum at half price, and I thought maybe Kati was expanding into piercing.

Kati had done my last tat as part of her internship and she did a great job, but apparently she wasn't the new girl anymore. There was a *new* new girl.

At the time, I knew not who the new new girl was, but it turned out that the new new girl was a girl I knew. It was the girl with the anime eyes. You know how they do a close up to where you can see a little glint of light in their big doe eyes? Well, this chick had a tiny silver HEART in her eye. I guess they can insert the jewelry under the sclera, right on top of the choroid layer. Hearts in her eyes, heh. I won't use her real name. Let's just call her Peepers.

I met her at show a few days before. It was a little low-ceilinged hole in the wall, but the bands they book, hellers yeah. Shit, that was a damn good show! Um, I don't remember what band it was. But I bumped_well, slammed really_into Peepers and we danced, if you'd call it that. She got my number, but I think I accidentfully told her my dentist's fax number. What can I say; I was probably drunk. Okay, I was definitely drunk. But so was she. Other than gesturizing at her cellphone, I believe the only thing she said to me that night was "Yum".

Anyway, nerp. Now she's doing my septum. You know, "doing" like piercing, not "doing" likeyou know, I'm not implying *nose* sex or anything, not really. So she's going to punch it up to 6 gauge from scratch. When I asked about that before, they told me it wasn't a good idea. I should've listened to them. No, I shouldn't have. But she was new, and I asked her really nice and she liked me and, being the half-price girl, she'd been stacked with appointments so we were doing this in the afterhours. Thus, when she put the skin punch up to my nose, there was nobody else there to say "Hey, Peepers* that's not a good idea!"

*Again, I'll mention that's not her real name, so they wouldn't have said that even if they were around to make some such similar exclamation. But I digress.

Hole punch, girl, septum. Gnuff said. I guess she didn't have enough muscle behind it or something. When she pushed it through, my eyes watered but otherwise I felt fine.

But I didn't feel fine when she said, "Ewww!" and jumped back in a very un-piercemanlike manner. Her glinty eyes were wider'n I've ever seen a manga artist draw.

So, of course I asked, "What!?" My heart was threatening to treacle out my bellybutton in a thin paste, and I shudder to think what the look on my face must've been. She pointed me to a mirror and under the metal tubey thing that transstomatized my septum, I could see a little divot of my very own nose flesh. Very not yum.

"Well, what do we do?" she asked me. Let me repeat that: *she* asked *me*. Ugh.

Shrug. "Just yank it off." She gave me a look that was some sort of halfbreed between 'dubious' and 'I am a spidermonkey lost in a supermarket'. "Nevermind, I'll do it."

"You're not sterilized. Okay hold still." That statement was unnecessary because she held me still with an elbow in my shoulder, one hand under my neck and the heel of her other hand against my cheekbone while she pinched the flesh wad in her fingers. "Okay ready," she said with her Marlboro breath bridging the inch between her face and mine, then jerked it off without waiting for an answer.

"Fuck, that hurt! Well_it wasn't too bad, actually," I said, perhaps a bit too masochistically.

She smiled, perhaps a bit too sadistically.

"I love the metal in your eyes," I said.

"Oh that's nothing," she said, "you should see the guy who did it for me!" I'd definitely be taking her up on that offer as ASAP as possible. "You're a hopeless romantic, ain't ya?"

"Hah, naw. I'm a ropeless homantic."

She leaned in for a kiss_or maybe more of a face-rape since she was holding me down? *Not* expecting that, but what the fuck? If she still likes me when we're not both drunken lushes, then that's a good thing. That's what I thought at the time anyway. I dug deep with my tongue and sucked on her upper lip and sucked on her lower lip and realized I was bleeding profusely and nibbled at her tongue and licked her teeth. She sat up, grinning like a fool with blood all over her face, and I realized it was about time to end part one of my story.

Stay tuned for part two, in which I get chased by a redneck wielding a castrating device all the way from Captain Fritz Road, Florida to fucking Comeblowus, Ohio.

Oh and by the way, this story is called BENT 'N' DENT. You'll see why later.

-Nathan