This week I am bidding adieu to my navel ring.
It’s not that I want to get rid of the piercing. It’s just that my belly is pushing against the steel hardware to the point that something’s gotta give. And I don’t want it to be the belly.
(You can’t see it here with my black T-shirt, but trust me — that ring is about to poke right out.)
I still remember when I got that piercing.
I was in college, of course. There was this girl who lived in the next dorm over, and I thought she was super crazy and super cool. Her hair was jet black, and her eyeliner always made perfect, inky rings around her eyes. She was skinny, more muscle than meat.
I don’t remember the girl’s name. It might have been Dana. I barely knew her.
One night I got messed up with Dana at a party, we waited in a long line for the bathroom together, and somehow we decided we’d get our stomachs pierced the next day. I think she brought it up, and my response was a resounding, “Fuck yeah, dude” — because nothing says “I’m an adult now” better than “belly button ring.” We traded phone numbers, and Dana was surprised when I followed up the next afternoon with a call.
Of course I called. Dana was the cool girl I wanted to be. She moved fast and wild, and she always seemed to have the most fun of anyone in a room. And right up until that moment, I had never done anything nearly as exciting or scandalous as a piercing. I didn’t even have my ears pierced! (I still don’t.)
Also, Dana had a car, and it was a long walk to get to the tattoo shop without her.
The place was called Art Apocalypse, and the piercer had a long ZZ Top beard. As I stretched out on the table and the man leaned over to swab my belly with cotton balls of cold alcohol. The hem of my shirt was tucked into the underwire of my bra, and I could feel his breath on my stomach as he placed a clamp on my skin.
“This is too freaking cool,” I said. “It’s just like Alicia Silverstone in that Aerosmith video, huh?”
“No,” the piercer said.
I decided to change the topic.
“So, like, do I need to worry about accidentally pulling this thing out? Like, with a sweater or something?”
“Listen,” he said. “The only way this piercing is coming out is if you put a big chain on it, and then you attach that chain to a Buick, and then somebody drives that Buick at 120 miles per hour. Are you going to be doing that?”
“No.”
“You should be fine then.”
I remember the smooth pain of the needle, then the zing inside my stomach muscle as the piercer pulled the ends of the metal ring together. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
I remember buying generic Dial antibacterial soap, in order to keep the piercing from getting infected, and keeping it in my Caboodles shower caddy. The hole got infected anyway, because college students are filthy and holes are always getting infected, and then somehow it cleared up on its own. I haven’t had a problem with it since.
I remember two weeks after we got our piercings, Dana went to a party somewhere off campus and I didn’t go with her. And then I remember running into her the next morning outside of the dining hall. She was still in last night’s skirt and crop top, but she was wrapped in a sweater holding the ends shut, like a cocoon. She was crying. I remember she was so silent when the piercer’s needle punctured her, but now she wailed as if she had been stabbed. Her eyeliner was smeared.
I don’t remember the details of who assaulted her, but I do remember going to the rape trial. I remember a lawyer asked Dana what she was wearing and what she’d had to drink at the party. I remember her cheeks burning when she testified that she wore a skirt and a crop top. I remember being so thankful she had been sober on the night of the assault — and then I remember the shame of feeling that way, because I knew it shouldn’t matter, even though it clearly did in that courtroom.
I remember the sinking regret of being a bad friend. Of not knowing how to support someone who was broken. Of feeling so awkward and awful for Dana that my piercing became a metal stitch in my stomach, holding me together.
We barely talked after the trial, and Dana eventually dropped out of school.
I don’t know why I’ve kept this thing in all these years. I no longer flaunt my belly or wear the navel ring for any decorative purposes. If anything, it seems silly to have a schoolgirl’s piercing at my age. I did the math once, and my piercing is actually older than Justin Bieber — though it hasn’t picked any fights with rappers or gotten caught drunk driving.
It’s just this thing I have, part of the cartography of my body. I guess when it’s out forever, I’ll still have the hole there, proof of something that once filled it.
The good news is that I have different things to fill me now. I hope Dana does too.
Here’s how everything else is going with the pregnancy this week:
Baby: The size of a cauliflower or rutabaga. Let’s go with cauliflower.
My uterus: The size of a soccer ball. Also, Baby has been so active lately, my uterus feels more like a burlap sack full of rabid coyote pups.
Special guest stars: My friend Xochitl brought me to a kick-off party for the Palm Desert Food and Wine festival, where my fabulous baby bump met The Fabulous Beekman Boys!
I’m a huge fan of these guys, particularly of Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s memoirs. If you haven’t yet read “The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers,” I highly recommend it. I also love that Josh and Brent used their “Amazing Race” winnings to create Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomato pasta sauce, in which 25 percent of the profits go to struggling American farmers to help pay off their debts. You can buy it here.
Cravings: I am not really having any cravings of my own, but I am very much influenced by other people’s food lately. Someone on Facebook mentioned Smarties … and I bought a bag of Smarties. Someone on TV made a green smoothie … so I made a green smoothie. There was a sample station of salsa at Costco … and I bought all the salsa, all 47 gallons of it.
Just don’t come around me with a pizza. Deal?
