I apply to an Irish pub with my middle name, Randall, after dropping out of college. My boss changes it to Randéll. The bartender calls me R.F.D. Ran-Fucking-Dell. For something to control, I begin littering my ears with puncture and metal.

Glaze is long worn from floorboards; wood assimilates spilt beer and tepid mop-water into days spent walking over tide-softened driftwood. The restaurant lacks ventilation, fermenting the air, necessitating short, clipped breaths. I exhale in bursts, as if trying to expel the bar itself, the job, the life into which I've descended.

I work only lunch—setting chairs, tables, watering flowers and streaming through a shortrush. I am every red-hat lady’s grandson. I am the nephew to whom middle-aged men and women send birthday cards. I am the son of every family friend in the history of family and friendship. Never mind the metal in my ears—my smile is disarming. I am endearing and deserve an unreasonable tip.

I look for each week's schedule to know if I’m working with Jackie. We pretend the kitchen door is soundproof; we pretend cigarette smoke doesn’t linger on clothes and hands. She has a crescent tattooed behind one ear and a triad of stars tucked under the other, both are freckled with steel. A studded beauty mark shines above her lip. Mornings with her begin bitter, steeped in coffee and cigarettes. Heavy sunglasses shade her hangover. Her character is manic and self-affirming—edgy, raw, and everything I dropped out of that university for.

Jackie apprentices at the tattoo parlor across the street. She brings it up often, as if reminding everyone, and herself, that she’s not actually a waitress. She has an exit. There is an escape from this place. “Come by,” she says, “I’ll cut you a deal on piercing.”

Titles signify jutting metal through folds of lobe and cartilage. Auricle, Conch, Daith, Industrial, Orbital, Lobe, Pinna, Rook, Scaffold, Snug, and Tragus. Piercing flesh dates back 5,000 years to mummified corpses. They are penetration through our shell—benchmarks breaching facade. Piercings are not at all contrived, and I am not at all walking into this tattoo parlor because some cute girl smiled my way.

The tattoo parlor fluoresces. Eastern illustration hangs about the shop: koi, kanji, samurai. It smells of paint and drywall. Jackie’s hands tremble in latex. Vinyl creaks beneath me. She unwraps a dermal-punch, places it on a surgical tray. Jackie massages the center conch of my ear with cotton and alcohol—marks it in blue ink. We talk small as if on a cigarette break. She says,“Hold on,” and leaves the room. Closing my eyes, I see a dental hygienist.

Jackie ushers in a bored, heavy woman with cropped hair. “Where?” she asks Jackie, who points to the blue dot. “Okay,” the woman says, “Take a deep breath and exhale slowly,” then punches through my right concha. The cartilage snaps like bubblegum before I lose the sound in flared pain. The woman slides a steel hoop through the pierce and leaves without word. I turn to Jackie, who arches a smirking eyebrow. “Are you okay?” she asks. Her expression says I may pass out, so I attempt a composure which says, What? I’m fine. Pain is a foreign concept to me. I’m R.F.D. right? No doubt.

We return to banter, but it’s too polite. There’s no subtext. Where’s the flirtation? I am bleeding after all. Jackie tries fastening the hoop with a bearing, but can’t catch the divots, like a bloodletter unable to find a vein. Each miss wrenches the wound. Blood streams over Jackie's hands. She apologizes, tries again. Metal grinds like chewed gravel. She snaps shut the loop, then sponges my neck with antiseptic.
Jackie presents the cylinder of flesh punched from my ear. “You want to eat it?” she asks.

I hesitate, decline. Jackie shrugs.

“Some do.”