SoMa Literary Review - Sparkle ~ Nipple Sisters

Book Excerpt

Sparkle

By Rob Rosen

"Nipple Sisters"

We started walking towards The Castro. I had no idea why, but it looked like William was headed towards somewhere in particular.

“Where are we walking to?” I asked.

“Secret, Honey, who do you work for?” Not exactly an answer but I knew where he was going with it.

“You, Sparkle.” Here it came.

“Then please just enjoy the walk and no more questions.”

“Another surprise?” I asked, timidly.

“That would be a question, Secret, but yes.” (Uh-oh.)

When we arrived at where we were going Secret said, “Ta-dah!” I looked around but all I saw was the Subway sandwich shop. Seeing my perplexity, William turned me around until I was facing the door right in front of me. It said: The Gauntlet.

“What’s The Gauntlet Sparkle? Or do I want to know?” I knew I didn’t, but what the hell. Sometimes I just like hearing myself talk. In any case, William was pushing me up the steps and into the shop.

At first I thought we were in your plain old run of the mill jewelry shop. There were a few cases in the shop that contained what looked like earrings and studs and the like, but on closer examination the jewelry looked less like it was for your ears and more like it was for other body parts. I gave a long, hard gulp before I turned to look at William. He had his face right up to the glass of one of the cases and he was looking intently at the merchandise.

“Um, Sparkle, what exactly are you planning on doing here?” All the while I was praying that it was just window shopping but I knew deep down that William had other plans for us.

“Now Secret, Darling, I’ve been giving this some thought for, like, a week now and that conversation we had over brunch just, you know, made me realize that I really want a nipple ring. And don’t worry, you don’t have to get one if you don’t want one.” I listened as he said it but for some reason I had a giant pit in my stomach. All the while I could hear music in the background like the kind you hear in a movie just before someone gets killed. (Okay, it was Siouxsie Sioux, but you get the picture.)

“Good, because I am not getting one. Period.” I insisted.

“Fine. I am. Now help me pick out a ring.”

Not having a clue as to what a good nipple ring should look like (I had never even seen one before that moment) I just picked out the most colorful one that was in the case. It was a green hoop but, instead of going full circle, it had yellow, metal balls on each end. I thought it was cute and said so. William had other thoughts on the matter. Cute was not what he was going for. He ended up picking out a sterling, metal bar with silver balls on each end. The clerk showed us some pictures of what it would look like once it was in and, Lord only knows why, I actually thought it looked kind of hot; almost appealing in a sick and twisted sort of way. Still, it was pretty gross once you realized that there was going to be a hole in your nipple.

“C’mon, Secret, come back with me while they do it,” he said, dragging me back to a curtained cubicle. It was clean and sterile enough; sort of like a miniature dentist’s office without the spit sink. Still, I could think of a half dozen other places I’d rather have been: prison, Iraq, hell, etc.

Pretty soon a short, extremely tattooed, shaved headed, multi ear-pierced man walked in an introduced himself as “Tree”. Tree was very matter of fact about what he was going to do and how he was going to do it. He said that the actual piercing was over in a split second and that the pain was very bearable and, to some, even enjoyable. This I personally found very hard to swallow but, looking at Tree, I could tell he fell into the latter category. He also said that in many cases the nipple ring added to the sensitivity of the nipple with the over all effect of a more pleasurable experience when someone played with it. Not worth the effort, I thought, but William had a smile on his face as Tree explained this.

***If you are squeamish, you should probably skip this part and read ahead about a page.***

(Hey up there, good for you! Anyway, it’s not your nipple getting pierced, right?)

Tree had William take off his shirt and lie down. Then he put surgical gloves on and proceeded to wipe William’s nipple with some disinfectant. Then he marked each side of the nipple with a pen. The whole time he was doing this I was getting more and more nervous. William, as per usual, was cool as a cucumber. He didn’t even look down to see what was going on.

Tree then took the metal nipple bar, which he had been sterilizing in an oven up until that point, and placed it next to a metal stick sitting on a table by the short bed that William was lying on. It looked really sharp at the end and it turned my stomach just to look at it. (Last chance to skip ahead up there.) Then he told William to breath normally, which William did. (I was hyperventilating.) He grabbed William’s nipple and lifted it up a bit. William grinned at that, sick fuck that he is and, before I knew it, Tree had shoved the metal stick right through William’s nipple and out the other end. OW! OW! OW! I was thinking as I sucked in my breath and shut my eyes really fast. When I opened them, the stick was just sitting there on William’s chest; skewering his nipple. (If I was feeling any lingering effects of the Bloody Marys up until then, I wasn’t any more.) Tree then took the nipple bar, which had one ball on one end and nothing on the other end, and threaded it on one end of the stick and yanked the stick all the way through William’s nipple; thereby pulling the bar through as well. He then put the remaining silver ball on the other end of the bar and, voila, it was all over.

William barely moved a muscle the whole time and never so much as let out a gasp or anything. I was in shock. I could not believe that I just witnessed someone get a stick rammed through their nipple.

Then William asked, “So how’s it look?” Honestly, I had to admit, it looked sexier than hell on him. It sort of detracted from his nelliness. Too bad you had to go through the actual piercing to get the result.

“It looks great,” I professed. William got up slowly and stood in front of the mirror to get a gander at it. I could tell immediately that he loved it. He just glowed as he stood there, grinning from ear to ear. I too was staring at it and, once I got over the experience of witnessing the “operation”, I too had a smile on my face. It did look great and I said so again. William gave me a peck on the cheek and said the words I was dreading to hear but was expecting none-the-less, “Great, now it’s your turn.”

“No fucking way am I going through that,” I said, shaking my head back and forth.

“C’mon, you just said it looked great and it only took a minute and it didn’t hurt at all. And it’ll be this great experience that we can share together. We’ll be Nipple Sisters!” He was so convincing (or I’m an even bigger idiot than I thought).

I just stood there for a minute and stared at William’s face and then his nipple. Then back at William’s face and then back at his nipple. And then over at Tree, who was waiting to see if he could inflict his pain on another victim. (Tell me something, do you have to have a degree to perform this rite?) Then back at William again and then…and then… “Okay, fine. I’ll do it,” I said, feeling like I had just lost all control over my life.

“Yippy,” William squealed (so much for looking butch); “he’ll take the green one with the yellow balls.” (Can you say “sucker”. He knew it all along.)

And before I could think of an excuse to get out of it, I too was lying on the short metal bed with my shirt off and two black dots painted on my poor, little nipple. Then one, two, three, I too had a sharp metal stick sitting comfortably on my chest and through my nipple. And finally, I too had a shiny, metal nipple ring through my nipple.

“You lied, Sparkle,” I said, panting.

“Lied, Secret?” William asked and pointed to his chest innocently.

“That hurt like a big, old mother fucker.”

“Oh that. Yes, I guess you’re right. But if I told you that you wouldn’t have gone through with it now would you?” The asshole had me there.

“Stand up and take a look,” he commanded. I stood up very, very slowly, not wanting to move my chest even a millimeter. Then I was standing in front of the mirror and looking at the new addition to my body. Again, I hated to admit it, but it did look rather sexy just hanging there. Plus, with the metal pushing through it, my nipple was now twice as big as it was before. (Bonus!)

“See, that wasn’t so bad, Secret.” I just stood there and stared blankly back at him. Actually, it was more traumatic than bad, but I was getting over it quickly and, pretty soon, the adrenaline rush was making me somewhat euphoric.

Tree then gave us a quick lesson in nipple care: how to clean it, what not to do with it, what to expect in the healing process. I barely listened to him. I was too dazed from what I had just done. Luckily, it was all written down and William was paying attention. And when it was finally time to leave, and we had to put our shirts back on, that’s when I started to panic. I just knew that putting that shirt on over my nipple would be painful as hell. It wasn’t, but the next few weeks should prove interesting, I thought. Just before we were about to leave, I looked at William and said, “Nipple Sisters, huh?” He smiled up at me and took my hand, squeezed it once and led me out of the shop; newly sobered and newly pierced.

You can buy a copy of Sparkle through Rob's website: www.therobrosen.com.

Rob Rosen was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1966. He spent his childhood in the suburbs of New Jersey, his teen years in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and much of his early adulthood in Atlanta, Georgia, where he graduated from Emory University with a B.S. in Biology and then worked for eight years as a Clinical Biochemist. When he turned thirty, he packed it all in, sold his car, broke his lease, gave up his career and followed his dreams to San Francisco, where he is now an Office Guru. So much for that expensive education.