There was laughter.
“There’s one other thing.” Roger said.
“What?” I asked impatiently. Truth be told, I was looking for any excuse to turn this down and bolt as fast as I could.
“You have a very nice pussy except that your inners stick out some, which isn’t optimal for crowd pleasing.”
“ARE YOU CRAZY?” I shouted, even though I secretly agreed with him. I’d never particularly liked how my inner labia extended past the outer ones and were so visible. I’d realized it about five years ago, when I was finishing high school. But I’d be damned if I were going to tell him that!
“I know my business, sweetheart. You’ll get better tips if the surgeon trims them back, and my customers will be that much happier. Besides, I’ll pay.”
I wasn’t all that surprised to find that I actually liked that idea. It was a chance to fix something I didn’t like, at the same time I was going to be operated on anyway. But I was determined to get something in exchange.
I did a quick calculation in my head. I guessed that the breast and labia work would cost 10 to 15 thousand. “Okay Roger, I’ll do it, but only if you drop the contract buy-out to a simple five thousand dollars and no suing after sixteen months.” If he took it, I could walk away in sixteen to eighteen months for less than he’d proposed, and get something fixed I didn’t like anyway. Maybe my vision would come back early.
“You’re a tough one for such a sweet little thing,” Roger stated, but he wasn’t angry. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll agree to the five-grand buy-out after two years. Up until then, full reimbursement one-to-one for the plastic surgery, no premium, but you gotta be here eighteen months”
“Eighteen months for the buyout at five grand.”
“Jesus Christ, girl … Oh hell, alright, but no buyout before eighteen months.”
I put out my hand again and he shook it.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“I’ll make the arrangements, call you to tell you what they are, and you show up at the plastic surgeon’s on Monday, if he can fit you in. By suppertime that day, it’ll be done. The new hyperhealants will have you all healed up by Friday of next week. You open here a week later, after we develop your routines, get your costumes made – oh … and find a couple long wigs. The little curls are cute, but won’t do as well on stage. More guys like long hair than short. Just a fact. I’ll pay your salary starting as soon as you sign the contract. Let’s say, tomorrow, here, at the same time?”
“Okay. I’ll be here.”
“You’re a smart one, Alie,” he said, a touch of admiration in his voice.
“I try,” I said.
On the way home, Rina was blabbing at about a hundred miles an hour. “I can’t believe that you got away with the deal you did! You were incredible – incredible dancing and negotiating! I didn’t know you had it in you! Way to go, Alie!”
I didn’t say anything. If truth be told, I was trying to hold back tears. She must have noticed because finally she said, “What?”
“I don’t want this, Rina. It isn’t me. I definitely don’t want big hooters, and I don’t want to show them off in public no matter what size they are. I don’t have any exhibitionist in me.”
“You coulda fooled me! You do realize that you did that whole negotiation in the buff, right? That oughta tell you that public nudity is no big deal to you. Before you were done dancing, six or eight people saw you and you didn’t seemed phased, not even a little.”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t see them. It was like being in my own private world with only voices around.”
“Duh … that’s the way it’ll be when you dance too! You won’t see squat. Maybe you don’t have an accurate image of who or what you are anymore.”
“I know who I was. I know who I wanted to be.”
“Shit happens … to all of us. We adapt. In that regard, you’re no different than anyone else. Your challenges are different, but life challenges each of us, whether or not we want it to.”
“I really like you, Rina, and I already consider you my dearest friend. But when you’re right, you really piss me off and I hate you for it.”
“There you go. That’s one of the challenges of my life.”
“Being right all the time?”
“My cross to bear.”
“And my cross to bare. B-A-R-E.”
Rina busted out laughing. The tension was broken. Now, there was no going back. Que sera, sera.
I fumbled for my cigarettes and found the last one in the last pack.
“Wow, I said. This is the last one of the carton.”
“Maybe you should keep it as a souvenir.”
“Nope, I agreed to smoke ‘em all.” I lit up.
“So I guess you’re gonna quit now?”
Everything had been so crazy that I hadn’t thought about it the last few hours. “I don’t know.” I said.
I did think about it as I smoked that last cigarette. It was good. The taste was fine, the smoke was rich, and the nicotine hit was what I needed. That’s when realization struck. It was what I needed, with emphasis on the needed. I was hooked. It had snuck up on me, but it was there. Quitting would not only be very difficult, but I realized I had no desire to quit at all.
Rina had hooked me. Now I was going to be a blind, smoking stripper with big tits. OH-MY-GOD!
“There’s no way that I’m gonna quit,” I told her, “and it’s your fault for getting me addicted to nicotine.”
“I’ll let you take it out on me in bed.” I couldn’t see it, of course, but I’m sure she was grinning from ear-to-ear.
“Bitch.”
“Stripper.”
“Ouch! Stop somewhere and buy me another carton. Pretty please?” I got some money out of my purse. I thought it was three twenties.
I felt her pull in somewhere, probably a convenience store. I handed her the money.
“Gee thanks, three whole dollars?”
Now I started to laugh. “Ha! I thought they were three twenties.”
“You’re holding your wallet backwards.”
I was. Stupid blind girl. I switched the bills.
“That’s closer,” she said. In a few minutes, I had my ten-day supply. Good thing I was gonna have some regular income soon.
The contract was exactly what we’d agreed to and I signed it on Sunday. Roger had arranged for my procedures to be done the next day, Monday, as he’d hoped.
Chapter 9 – A Change Would Do You Good
Rina stayed with me all weekend, except for a brief time Sunday afternoon when she went home to get a few things. We slept together Sunday night and made love several times. I knew I’d probably be too sore to do anything for a few days, and I had no idea what my pending procedures were going to do to my sexuality – physically or mentally. I was glad for the time Rina held her naked body against mine. Without the warmth of her body and her heart, I couldn’t have survived the night.
I was intensely attracted to another woman. I didn’t think I had that within me. Obviously, either I didn’t know myself very well, or something had significantly changed. Or evolved.
Something had changed, of course. I was blind. But what did that have to do with my sexuality? Nothing that I could discern, except maybe some effect of the trauma associated with what had been done to me. I didn’t see how that would have anything to do with me liking women lovers though. I must have simply matured to this point. Or a hidden, previously-closed door suddenly opened to me.
We had to be at the River’s Edge Center for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at 8:00 the next morning. Rina drove the short distance and remained with me through the doctor’s examination, his mark-up of my body, and the surgical prep, right up to when they wheeled me out for the fun and games.
I’d asked the surgeon, Doctor Riffkin, how big my breasts would be, because I was quite concerned about being some freak that Roger could display. He said that he’d determine exactly what he should do during the procedur
e, but he expected to use 750 ml, round, implants on my B-cup breasts, which he was pretty sure would make them a DD-cup. I gulped.
He could probably see my reaction on my face. He said yes, they’d be big, but not bizarre or overwhelming to my figure. “You’ll go from small to large, but not huge, and certainly not grotesque in any way,” he assured me. I suppose I believed him. I didn’t have much choice at this point.
Rina asked about the round shape versus the much more natural teardrop shape. His answer was interesting and put me at ease, sort of, in that he came across as experienced and thoughtful. He said that the round shape was best for two reasons: it would not deform over time, and it was the preferred style for women “in your line of work.”
Now I had a line of work. And that line of work meant that I was a stripper.
According to the doctor, teardrop implants can actually rotate over time and the breast shape becomes irregular. They also droop more, eventually. He said he stopped using them ten years ago for precisely those reasons.
So I was gonna have stripper’s tits. Hip, hip, hurray.
They would not be silicone or saline but some new, much safer, very natural feeling stuff called “vivo inert D.”
“If I were getting E-sized breasts, would you use vivo inert E?” I asked, trying to lighten my own feeling of nervous panic.
“That’s not the way it works,” he said and we all laughed at my lame attempt at humor.
A while later, they rolled me out of my room, down the hall, and into a surgical suite. I assumed that I was under bright lights, but I certainly couldn’t tell. In about thirty seconds, I was out cold.
**********
They kept me asleep through the rest of the day and night after my surgery, as was now becoming common based on the new-technology, healing procedures. That gave the recently-developed hyperhealant a chance to work so that by the time I came out of the anesthetic, I was well on my way to recovery. I would have almost no pain as a result.
Rina was there when I awoke. I knew that because she was holding my hand. My sightless eyes fluttered open and she quietly asked, “How ya doin’?”
“I’m still blind!” I said, pretending to be agitated.
“Huh?”
“Gotcha!”
She laughed.
“I’m glad you were holding my hand when I woke up.”
“Me too. I was sitting at the end of the bed and the mountains were blocking your face. I’d just come around so I could look at you.”
“Mount … Oh God, yeah …” I reached for my breasts with both hands. There were really big boobs there! “Holy cow’s udders! I must look ridiculous!”
“You’re all taped up. You’re bigger – a lot bigger – but you look on the high end of normal. Yeah, the very high end, but people looking would say you were big, not necessarily fake. I can’t really tell the shape yet. I suspect they’re rounder than your little B-cup teardrops.”
“So I don’t look grotesque?”
“Oh … not at all.”
That was a relief.
“But there’s a little more.”
“A little more of me? Yeah, I’d say.”
“No, a little more that they did.”
“Yeah, they were gonna trim my inners.”
“I guess they did that but I can’t really see anything ‘cause you’re still mostly bandaged down there. You also have a catheter that empties into that bag hanging on the bed.”
“Then what?” She was scaring me.
“First off, you’ve got a bigger-than-half-inch, blood-red, smooth, convex garnet mounted in your bellybutton.”
I had to think for a moment. “Mounted surgically?”
“Apparently.”
“How?”
“Beats me. You’ll have to ask the doc. There’s more.”
“WHAT?”
“I hope you don’t mind but I sort of looked you over a little while ago, while you were still asleep.”
“I DON’T CARE! WHAT ELSE?” I knew I was starting to hyperventilate.
“You’ve got a row of six gold rings piercing your outer lips on both sides – twelve altogether.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m afraid not. I think these are part of the ‘bangles’ Roger was talking about.”
“Oh shit …”
“Sorry, I should have questioned him about it.”
“Not your fault, I was the one signing the contract. I just never thought …”
“I didn’t either.”
“Is there anything else?”
“Not visible. Don’t know what might be hiding under those bandages.”
“Do you think …?”
“I’m not sure that anything would surprise me at this point.”
A sudden thought occurred to me. “They didn’t tattoo me, did they?”
“Nope. And they wouldn’t have been allowed to without your additional permission. Tattooing definitely wasn’t in the contract.”
“Can’t I take the rings and the jewel out?”
“Roger would sue you for breach of contract before you could bat an eye. He seems like an okay guy, but I wouldn’t test him. In addition, I have no idea how that bellybutton button is held in place. I think they glued it to you or something.”
“I suppose you’re right. Oh well, I can live with those, I guess. At least, now that they’re already in me.” I gave a big sigh, though I tried to hold it back. In some ways, it was a blessing that I couldn’t see myself.
This wasn’t who I’d always thought I was – or would ever be in a million years. A big-breasted, multiply-pierced stripper? Out of the question!
Yet here I was. And it was me now. I was set-up by bad luck or bad decisions or whatever you want to call it, sure, but I’d made the final choices. Those led to everything that had happened.
I was still pondering this when a nurse entered a while later. “Doctor Riffkin is not going to be in today. Apparently he got food poisoning from a restaurant last night. I can offer you two choices: you can wait until he comes in tomorrow for him to check you over and sign you out, or he’s authorized me to check you out and send you home. I’ll try to answer any questions, but I don’t have all the information the doctor has.”
“I’m ready to leave,” I said. “Do you know everything that was done to me?”
“I know you had a breast enlargement, a labiaplasty, and some ornamentation, but I don’t know the particulars on the ornamentation.”
“Okay, check me out; I can get the details from Dr. Riffkin when I see him.”
“You already have an appointment the day after tomorrow, here, at 10:00 am. Will that work for you?”
“Yes.”
“You can ask him any questions then. The hyperhealant has already been sufficiently infused into the wounds. You don’t need to do anything like reapply it. Tomorrow evening, after 9:00, you can remove all of the bandages. At that point, you’ll be mostly healed, but you should be gentle with yourself until you see the doctor on Thursday. I would suggest that you leave the Foley catheter in and let the doctor remove it. If you want to do it yourself, release the water from the bulb using this valve, and pull steadily harder until it starts to move. It may be a bit uncomfortable when you do that.
“Meanwhile, as long as you have the catheter, wear the bag around your waist using its Velcro belt. Empty as needed; it’ll fill continuously from your bladder.”
“Wow. Never had one of those before. I can do everything you said; I’ll be careful. And I’ll probably wait and have the catheter removed here. Any questions I have, I’ll ask Doctor Riffkin on Thursday.”
Rina brought me home by 11:30 that morning. I mostly laid around listening to music and getting caught-up on my smoking. The nicotine patch had helped in the surgery center, but I really, really needed a genuine cigarette.
I was so deeply hooked already.
Rina drove her car to the station and took the Metrorail to her office in uptown for a
while, to get caught-up.
About 4:00 that afternoon, Doctor Riffkin called to see how I was. He sounded much weaker than I did.
“Yeah, I feel like death warmed over,” he said, “but I’m getting better. Ask me any questions you have. I have my iPad here with all your case information.”
I wasn’t sure how to phrase my question. I paused, then said, “What ornamentation were you able to do?” I felt like an idiot for letting Roger choose what jewelry now adorned my body and didn’t want the doctor to know I’d effectively given Roger carte blanche to decide.
“Everything requested. You have the nipple rings and studs, the bellybutton jewel, the double clit piercing, with the chained teardrop, and the twelve outer rings – six on each side of your outer labia. All of the piercings are permanent as requested, meaning they can only be removed surgically.”
WTF! THEY’D PIERCED MY CLIT! MY LITTLE CLIT! THEY’D THRUST SOME METAL THROUGH MY CLIT! I HAD A PIERCED CLIT! A DOUBLE-PIERCED CLIT! THERE WAS JEWELRY IN MY CLIT!
AARRGGHH!
I didn’t know what to say. I’d barely heard anything once he’d said “clit.” Then I realized that I had the presence of mind to actually ask a question about something else he’d said. “Doctor Riffkin, how are the bellybutton jewel and the nipple studs and everything else mounted permanently?”
“Oh … I’m sorry … I thought you knew the details. About three years ago, a local company here, River’s Edge Biotech, came up with a very, very tightly bonded coating that would adhere to most any metal, glass, gemstone, and so forth, and then also form a permanent bond to dermal tissue – skin, if you prefer. That’s how the simulated garnets in your bellybutton and nipples are fused with your body – with the skin at those sites, to be precise. The nipple studs lock into the rings inside your nipple. The clit rings work in a similar way. If you’re interested, I can explain in more detail when I see you on … uh …”
“Thursday.”
“That’s right.”
I was flabbergasted. First because there were apparently some jewels and piercings I’d yet to discover. Secondly, they were bonded to me in a way that they couldn’t be removed, at least not …
“If I should want to remove the bellybutton and nipple jewelry at some point in the future, how easily can that be done?”
Eighteen Months Page 14
