Ski Slope

I was eighteen, maybe nineteen, on an 18-30s holiday in Kardamena with my friends Donna and Naomi. One afternoon, sat by the pool, a girl a few years older than us walked past in a bikini with — and there's no more elegant way to say this — absolutely fabulous, perfectly pierced ski-slope tits.

I fell head over heels for them. Instantly, completely. By that evening I'd announced to the girls that I was getting mine done too. Tonight. No debate.

We found the one tattoo-and-piercing shop on the island, and I sat myself in the chair. The first piercing was excruciating. Genuinely, unreasonably painful. I sat there afterwards, quietly deciding I was done — one pierced nipple was a perfectly respectable outcome, I could live with an odd number, this was fine.

My friends were having none of it. Don't be a wuss. You have to even it up.

So I took the second one like an absolute champion, gritted through it, and the second it was over I grabbed both sides of my chest and started performing my pain rather dramatically — lots of "ow, ow, ow," mostly for the room. There was no actual nerve hit. I was completely fine. I was just enjoying the moment.

As I went to get up out of the chair, the piercer cracked me across the backside so hard I nearly hit the ceiling. Then, in a thick Greek accent, entirely unbothered, he said:

"Now you feel pain there — and not there," pointing at my bum and then to my chest.

Which, weirdly, isn't even the end of the story. Years later I took both piercings out.

And then, some years after that, I went and did the whole thing again.