-You’ve got a safety pin in your ear.
-Yeah. So?
-What’s that saying?
-What do you mean? It’s a safety pin.
-I know it’s a safety pin. What are you saying with it?
-I’m not saying anything with it; it’s just a fucking safety pin!
-It says something. Everything about you says something.
-What do you mean?
-Well, like, for example, it could be saying, ‘I’m tough.’ Like, look at me, I can take pain, I’m tough, I can jab a safety pin through my ear.
-What if I didn’t do it? What if someone did it for me?
-Did they?
-Maybe. But what would that say?
A couple, no, that could say a lot of things.
-Like what?
-Depends.
-Pretty sure you don’t need a safety pin for those.
-Haha.
-But really. Why don’t you apply yourself and tell me some of the things that could mean.
-Ugh. Apply myself.
-What?
-Later.
-So what’s it say?
-Okay, so this is just an example, but say you didn’t want the safety pin.
-Why would I have it if I didn’t want it?
-Just listen for a minute. So there’s this guy, and you want to impress him. I mean, he impresses the shit out of you; you’re head over heels for him. He’s vey fucking metal. Black leather, pentagrams, long hair, corpse paint sometimes.
-I’m enthralled.
-I knew you would be. He’s so metal; he’s like Giles Cory in The Crucible, you know?
-More weight?
-Exactly. It’s never heavy enough for this guy. So you guys hang out a lot. You’re totally into him, but you’re not sure if he’s into you. One night, you’re watching, I don’t know, some Fulci movie or something, and he offers to pierce your ear. He has a safety pin and an ice cube. You’re terrified of pain-
-I am not!
-This isn’t really about you anymore. So he’s got this safety pin in his hand, and he’s looking at you, and you want to do it because it would be cool, and he would think you were cooler, and he would maybe like you and spend even more time with you, and he looks through your CDs, and he puts one on, and he picks a song; it’s one of your favorite songs, and it’s SO heavy, but it’s beautiful too, and there’s the question again; he asks the question again, because you’ve just been listening to this song and looking at him standing there with that safety pin in his one hand and the ice cube in the other; the ice cube dripping and running down his fingers, making a wet spot on the carpet, but you don’t care; do you want me to do it he’s asking, but you’re scared of the pain, and you just want to tell him you’re scared, and maybe he’ll hold you and say it’s alright; that it’s okay to be scared, but he’s so fucking metal that maybe admitting fear to him would make him think less of you so do you do it do you do it, yeah obviously you do it, so he holds the ice cube against your ear and those goosebumps you have, well they aren’t from the ice you know, and it’s cold and it hurts but you want it to last forever because the real pain’s coming next but also because he’s so close to you and his hand’s touching your neck, but the ice is gone; that’s over too soon, and he’s pinching your ear between two fingers on his left hand, and it’s delicate and like brutal at the same time; just like the song, and you can smell the leather from his coat and he’s so close you can smell his shampoo , because he take such good care of his hair; he’s not some vile crust punk or some stoner boogie disciple with nasty dreadlocks,. And the song is even heavier now; it’s so long and so heavy and there’s this pressure on your ear at first and you’re breathing so fast you’re hyperventilating a bit because you’re so scared but also because he’s so close to you and he’s touching you and his breath is stirring the little hairs on your face and suddenly the pressure it’s pain now and it hurts so fucking bad but just then he gives it one hard shove and it breaks through and he hooks it up and the pain gradually lessens and he moves away from you, and the song’s over, and he looks at you, and he says that looks really cool, and you just wish he would look at you like that always, and you feel so, I don’t know, exalted, like above the ordinary moment; there’s nothing mundane about this, but he stops looking at you, and he’s looking through your CDs again, so you go to your mirror to see it, the safety pin, and your cheeks are all red, all flushed with blood, and your ear’s red too, and the safety pin really does look cool, and you can see him in the mirror, and you’re in the foreground; you can just see the back of him, and his Jacket, it’s got like the devil or the grim reaper or some other clichéd metal bullshit, but you just look at him and at your ear, and a tiny little ruby drop of blood runs down the safety pin and that moment, the weight of that moment; it’s just so much. So what does that say about you?
-It sounds pretty fucking pathetic to me. Sometimes a safety pin is just a safety pin. Shit. You sure can talk sometimes.
-Yeah.
-Was that about fucking?
-What? No.
-Well what about your lip piercing? What does that say about you?
-What? It’s just a piercing. I don’t want to talk about it.
Jonathan Scott is an eighth grade English teacher. He loves reading fiction and likes to think he does a decent job at writing it. He has a girlfriend, a cat, and two sons, all of whom he loves dearly. He enjoys writing about everyday mysteries and the secret things that go on when no one is looking. He has had one story published at literaryorphans.org.
–Art by Peter Lamata
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