Inspired by this post I saw circulating today. @circism @imsodishy @andromedaspark @stranger-rants (and anyone else who added inspiration in the tags who I may have missed)
Billy likes dangly earrings.
Remembers when his mom would wear them—how they’d swing as she moved. When she caught him watching once, when he was small, she let him try on this old clip-on pair that had belonged to his grandmother. He couldn’t look away from himself in the mirror—tilting his chin this way and that so they caught the light as they moved.
She made him take them off before Neil came home.
He only got his ear pierced for real a couple years after she left. Partly to piss Neil off. Partly because he’d unearthed a box of clutter that had survived the purge—when Neil tossed all the stuff she’d left behind.
All the stuff except for Billy, though he might as well have.
Anyway. Amongst the detritus—the flattened souvenir pennies from the pier, the old receipts, the spare key to nothing, never done to-do lists—had been a few uncoupled earrings. He’d never considered how so with socks, so too with anything that came in pairs: the inevitable loss of one. And here lay the poor abandoned souls, forever parted from their partners.
One was a small silver stud, which he pocketed. The other was clearly from her free-wheeling hippie days—this slender gold feather hanging from a short chain. He’d kept it safe, and when the piercing healed, he’d tipped his head, fed the post through his earlobe as he’d walked to the bathroom. Stared at his reflection in the vanity awhile.
He still has them—those two incomplete pairs. And in the years since, he’d made a habit of adding to the collection whenever the opportunity arose. That bitch who mocked him for crying after sex sophomore year? He took one of her favorite platinum hoops, over an inch big across. Felt like a pirate whenever he had it in (but goofy, like Pirates of Penzance, so he only wore that one in private). Or if he saw a tempting set hanging in a rack at the department store, it was too easy to snag one, leave the other bereft. Gave him a thrill, like he was some deranged crow hoarding a very specific kind of shine.
He knows Neil hates the dangly ones. Barely tolerates the tiny ones, the studs or hoops, but hates the dangly ones. Because something about the way they sway from from Billy’s ear—it translates to his hips, to his stride. Which would be enough to set Neil off, the tight-ass, but all that, coupled with the wild fall of Billy’s hair, his shirt unbuttoned down to there, the drip of jewelry at his ear…
Makes him see red.
For a time there, Billy was careful what to wear, and when. Didn’t want to poke the bear. But at some point he realized—the bear didn’t need poking to attack. And that was freeing, in a way.
So now he rocks the dangly ones whenever he wants. Whenever the mood strikes, and if Neil strikes back—well. At least Billy saved him some time, didn’t need to go looking for an excuse.
And it’s worth it, to bear this sign that rings so right. The swing of the earring. The swing of his mind. His moods. The swing of his fist. Whose fist? Who cares. The swing of his walk. The swing of the wheel. The swing of his heart.
Locked in place, swinging free.
76 notes
·
View notes