I can tie a cherry stem into a bow with my tongue,
a trick I learned after taking a nip
with Irene whose pierced tongue
could do all kinds of things that made me tongue-
tied. When she was the new girl in school, I ribbed
her about being from Iowa and her foreign tongue,
when she said things like "Wanna come with?" Tongue-
in-cheek remarks went right over her curly ponytail. I put my foot
in her mouth, you could say. Her tongue
squashed between my toes like jelly--we were the neighborhood
weirdos, let's face it, but our teachers thought we were Hood
milk innocent because we always made A's. Irene was the first to lift the
     hood
of my illicit clitoris, her tongue
hoodwinked me into hood-
winking my boyfriend Joe who wore hooded
sweatshirts when it was nippy
and cleaned the hood
of his car with his own spit. Joe had no idea I had a hood
too. His sex was in and out, my ribbed
turtleneck bunched under my arms, his ribs
digging into mine. We did it when his father had his Brotherhood
of Elks meetings. My boyfriend loved foot-
ball. My girlfriend had a foot
fetish. I felt like I was gaining my footing
loving them both. Both Joe and Irene were hood-
lums in their own way. Irene was a foot
soldier of the pierced avant garde. Joe stole all his foot-
wear from the mall, then decorated the tongues
of his sneakers, drawing little foot-
balls on them with a Sharpie pen. Joe footed
the bill for my nip-
ple rings, so I gave him a blow job, which worked like catnip--
he was crazy with energy and went to play foot-
ball with his friends. I brushed my teeth, put a rib-
bon in my hair, and called Irene, shameless in my ribald
longings. We went out for prime rib--
Irene had snatched a credit card from her mother, who was foot-
ing the bill this time. The boys at the table beside us ordered spare ribs.
Irene said, "May I?" and took one. She slid the whole rib
into her mouth as the boys from the neighborhood
egged her on. She slid out a perfectly clean bone and my girlhood,
whatever was left of it, was gone. I checked under the hood
of my emotions and found a jealous engine. I thought her tongue
and its tricks were only for me. I would have given her a tongue-
lashing but kept thinking how everyone in town believed Eve came from
     Adam's rib
and all that stupid Bible stuff. What if the boys figured it out, that
Irene's nip-
ples and mine had pressed into each other on nip-
py nights. (My parents let her sleep over, and even when she nipped
their Courvoisier, they suspected nothing.) The boys eating ribs
might have beaten us up or told the whole school. My nip-
ples hurt from the raw piercings that nipped
and tucked against my bra. Under the table, I slid my foot
up Irene's leg, cold and unresponsive as a parsnip.
I wondered why she was ignoring me. I wanted to nip
this problem in the bud so when the boy with hooded
eyes asked me, "Hey, aren't you Joe's girlfriend?" (the brotherhood
of football, I suppose...) I replied with gusto, "Why yes!" I was trying
     to be snip-
py, to make Irene jealous too. But my tongue
felt guilty and false in my mouth. Irene retaliated by showing off her
     tongue
piercing to the boys. Maybe God was about to yank out my tongue,
maybe I was being punished for licking the nipples
of both girls and boys. Irene finally talked to me, coaxing me into trying
     her rib
trick, since I knew what to do with a cherry stem. The rib felt a foot-
long in my mouth. I spit it out still meaty, my mangled maidenhood.

Copyright 2001, Denise Duhamel

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.