Piercing by Ryu Murakami Page A

wanted to be my friend. Not that we necessarily stayed friends very long, but still, I made the change because I realised something: that the sex you have with a man at your own suggestion is just never that good. After all, if you have to ask for sex, it means the man isn’t really into it, right? And guys are never sweet or gentle or thoughtful in bed if they’re not really into it. There’s nothing cute about their faces when they come, either, and you end up wondering what’s the point of rubbing your flesh and organs together like that, having this thing flopping around inside you. It makes you feel even lonelier than if you were alone. And then, after he comes, the man makes an even worse face. What am I doing with a slut like this? That’s what the expression on his face says.
    A slut like this , Chiaki muttered, imitating a gruff, masculine voice as she struggled up on to her elbows. How low can you get?
    Looking down at her T-shirt, she could see the outline of the nipple ring. She’d done the piercing herself seventy-one days ago. It had hurt when she pushed the needle through, and again when she pulled it out, but it had been a total success. After about a week all the pain was gone. And by the thirty-third day not a trace of scabbing or scarring remained. Chiaki was proud of herself. And the guys at the body-art shop in Shibuya, a hundred and sixty-three steps from the entrance to Tokyu Hands, had been so helpful and nice. Next she wanted to get a tattoo. To be able to choose your own pain - it’s a little scary, she thought, but it’s wonderful, too. She tugged at the neck of her T-shirt and peeked down at the ring.
    Her clients lately had all been of the worst sort - men who weren’t interested in the more exciting types of play but only in getting their rocks off as quickly as possible. In private life she’d been dating three different guys, but each of them had stopped calling recently, for various reasons - like the way she tended maybe to overreact when they messed up her room. Judging from the Wild at Heart CD and the fact that she wasn’t wearing panties, she must have masturbated before sleeping, probably for a long time. She seemed to recall it vaguely: spurred on by her desire to feel desire when there was nothing there, reaching for it until her own moaning sounded fake to her and she began to fear that it would turn into someone else’s voice altogether, but being spared that when the third Halcion tablet kicked in and sucked her down in a whirlpool of sleep.
    Things had not been going well lately. She stroked the silvery ring with her index finger and thought: This is all I can really believe in right now. Even when she caressed it herself, it felt like someone else’s touch. It was a fourteen-gauge surgical stainless steel ball-closure ring with an inner diameter of twelve point seven millimetres. ‘What’re you, nuts?’ her customers often asked her. ‘Why would you do that to yourself? ’ Piercings scared them, like tattoos on yakuza thugs, and inwardly Chiaki would sneer at these men: Because I enjoy watching worms like you squirm .
    She was thinking she’d have to pierce the other nipple sometime soon, when the blood finally began coursing through her Halcion-frozen body. A piercing took courage, though. First she’d need to reclaim her sex drive. Not that being horny made you brave, but the total absence of lust frightened her because it had always been the first stage of that awful cycle, the one she’d never been able to tell anyone about. The cycle of terror that took hold with the sudden realisation that she alone was to blame for all the bad things happening around her. Once the Nightmare began, she wouldn’t be choosing her own pain any longer - it would be choosing her - and courage would be the last thing she’d be capable of.
    She climbed out of bed and stood there on the carpet for a moment, checking herself for dizziness or nausea. She found both, naturally,