The day before I went back home in January, Sir and I had a nice brunch and went to go get my nipples pierced. It’s something I had been considering for quite a while but had never thought I was crazy enough to follow through. It was my 24th birthday present to myself.
The whole thing almost didn’t happen. The piercer I made the appointment with called in sick that morning, but we were directed to a colleague of hers that worked a few blocks away.
Sir held my hand while it happened. The whole thing was deeply romantic. I squeezed his fingers when the needle went through, and he reassured me that it was all looking good. And then he helped me back into my clothes and brought me, dizzy with adrenaline, down into the subway to head back to his place.
These are the important memories. The ice cream we bought in the dead of winter when the high wore off and the pain set in, playing videogames to keep me distracted from the sting (which didn’t work but was nice in theory), Sir sleeping with an arm over me so I wouldn’t roll over in the night and hurt myself.
Things got hard and weird and ended up not working. But at our best we were brave and wild and tender with each other.