Pierced Ambition

Mat and I decide — against instinct, logic, and the gentle pull of our sofa — to crawl out from under our rock and re-enter society. There’s a new bar within walking distance. Teeming, apparently, with people and possibility. Two things we distrust deeply. “We can’t hide forever,” I say, lacing up shoes that already feel like I’m tightening the knot of a decision I don’t believe in. “We can absolutely try,” Mat replies, but he’s already at the door, traitor to the cause. And so we go. The place is heaving. Not just busy — heaving. Like it’s breathing. Like it might swallow us whole and digest us slowly under dim lighting and the sour-sweet scent of craft lager and other people’s effortless ease. The moment I step inside, every cell in my body screams: leave. Leave now. Go home. Pyjamas. Cats. Bed by half eight. Safety. Predictability. Zero eye contact. A life where no one asks what you “do” and really means "who are you, and is it impressive?” But we are here now. Committed, exposed, slightly damp with pre-emptive social anxiety. And we have brought Monkey. For moral support. Which — given the sheer volume of dogs panting happily beneath tables — turns out to be a catastrophic miscalculation. He bolts almost immediately. A streak of ginger and white panic, a flare fired into the wrong kind of war zone. He wedges himself into a corner, and begins trembling like a tent in a storm, barely holding together. “I feel you,” I whisper. “I know exactly how you feel.” We linger for a moment — three organisms in the wrong habitat — before attempting the unthinkable: integration. We try. God, we do try. We hover at the edges of conversation, waiting for a doorway, a parting, an invitation that never quite arrives. Smiling too much. Nodding at the wrong moments. Laughing a fraction too late — or not at all. Always missing the rhythm entirely. “Hey, how are you?” I say to a woman who looks like she’s curated a solid friendship group and brunches with them every Tuesday. “Good…” she replies, already scanning for an exit. “Do you live locally?” A pause. A flicker of polite regret. “And what do you do for work?” Ah. There it is. The social guillotine. The conversation dies instantly. Not even a slow fade — just a clean, brutal drop. Head rolling. Silence blooming in its place. “I’m just going to—grab another drink,” she mumbles quietly, despite holding a full one, and makes a swift and decisive escape in the opposite direction. I watch her go, quietly respecting the speed of that retreat. Mat is having similar success. I watch him attempt a joke that lands with the soft, tragic thud of a damp flannel. A joke that deserved better, but not here. Not tonight. We reconvene. “How’s it going?” he asks. “I think I’ve made three enemies and one woman briefly consider moving house.” “Good, good. Same.” We approach another group. And another. And another. “Hey—how are you?” “Do you live locally?’ “What do you do?” Each interaction collapses in on itself like a dying star. Nothing lands. Nothing sticks. I don’t know if people can smell the desperation from a mile away, or if they take one look at us and quietly file us under “no, thank you” — but either way, the result is the same. We hover. We retreat. We circle back. It’s astonishing — how isolated you can feel in a room bursting with laughter. People are glowing. Leaning into each other. Heads thrown back. Hands land easily on shoulders — belonging without permission, without effort, without thought. It looks… effortless. And we are hovering on the periphery. Always the periphery. Orbiting something we can see clearly but never quite touch. Then — A familiar face. “Lee?” I say, squinting. He turns. Absolutely annihilated. “Amanda!” he slurs, eyes lighting up with drunken clarity. “Can you… hic… pierce my eyebrow?” I blink. “Your eyebrow.” “Yeah…” He produces a safety pin. Suspiciously dull. Possibly rusty. Definitely ambitious. “Right through the skin.” And just like that — finally — an invitation. There is a moment, brief but significant, where I could say no. I could be sensible. Responsible. A grown woman approaching forty with a functioning frontal lobe. I could choose dignity. Hygiene. Basic medical ethics. Instead, I down my drink in one. “Right,” I say. “Hold still.” Because if this is what it takes to be included — to be useful, to be memorable, to be wanted — then apparently, I’m in. My hands are already betraying me. Trembling like I’m defusing a bomb instead of actively creating one. “Are you sure about this?” I ask. “Never been more sure about anything in my life,” he replies, which feels wildly unverified given he can barely stand upright. I press the pin to his skin. There’s resistance. A pause. A tiny, flickering window where this could still be abandoned. Where ambition could remain unpierced. Then — POP. “Owwwwww!” he howls, a sound so primal it briefly silences the bar, cutting clean through the music, the chatter, the illusion of everyone else having a better time. There is blood. There are new and inventive swear words, which I mentally stash away for future use. “Are you okay, mate?” I ask, suddenly aware I may have crossed several blurry lines. “Bit… queasy,” he says, turning the colour of wet paper. This is not my first rodeo. There was the nose piercing incident — over a decade ago now, though my septum remembers it like a war veteran — after a long stretch of day drinking. I’d decided with reckless certainty that I could pierce my own nose using someone else’s earring. Not even my own. A communal earring. Already questionable before it met my nose. It was carnage. I woke up the next morning with not only a throbbing head, but a throbbing nose. Swollen. Angry. Pulsing with regret and oozing pus. It did not deter me. A festival, years later. Drunk again. There’s a running theme here, and it is not growth. “One nipple,” I’d decided. “Just the one.” That ring became my nemesis. Snagging on fabric like it was out for revenge. An opportunist. A menace. A small, gleeful sadist. Bedsheets turned traitor. Towels become adversaries. At one point it latched onto a shower puff and it took me several days to unhook it. Naturally, I tried to disguise it, but only succeeded in looking like I had one very large, slightly tragic, lopsided boob. I still flinch thinking about it. And then the piercing gun. Years later. Armed with a home kit and an optimism bravely ignoring my complete lack of skill. Three holes each side. Ambition outpacing ability. I misfired the gun every time. My poor ears looked like Swiss cheese —holes where logic once lived. I ripped them out the next morning and swore — swore — I was done. And yet — Here I am. Holding a bloodied safety pin in a crowded bar. Still trying to earn my place the only way I seem to know how — by pushing through discomfort and calling it participation. “I think we nailed it,” I say to Mat, who looks like he’s reconsidering not just the evening, but our entire relationship. “Can we go home now?” he asks. “Immediately.” Behind us, Lee is being fanned by a woman who did not sign up for this shit. Someone else is Googling infections. The music resumes, life goes on. And just like that, the moment passes — not triumphant, not connecting — just another small, sharp attempt to belong, leaving a mark behind. We leave. Finally. A slightly unhinged Monkey in tow. The night air hits like forgiveness. Cool. Quiet. Mercifully free of eye contact and small talk. For a moment, neither of us speaks. We just walk — side by side, decompressing in silence, like two people who have narrowly escaped something social and lived to tell the tale. “Did we… socialise?” Mat asks eventually. “I think we grazed it,” I reply. “Light contact. Minor injuries.” “That counts, right?” “Technically.” Monkey has settled now, curled up in my arms like nothing ever happened. Back to his usual self — soft, warm, faintly judgmental. As if the entire evening has fallen well below his expectations. “I think he handled it better than us,” Mat says. “What — quivering under a table and pissing up walls?’ We pass a fruit and veg shop. Bright. Inviting. Glowing with vitality. Everything is obscenely overpriced. “£5 for a single tomato?” I gasp, almost choking on the audacity. But then — I hear it. “Free fruit and veg for anyone who runs a charity,” the woman at the till says. My ears prick. Because apparently my moral compass has also had a few too many drinks. A terrible idea begins to form. I approach. “Free fruit and veg for charity, did I hear?” “That’s right,” she smiles. “What’s your charity called, love?” Oh. Bugger. There is a pause. A vast, echoing pause where I should say something real. Something verifiable. Something that wouldn’t collapse under even the lightest follow-up question. Instead — “The Society for Socially Inept Adults,” I say. “We… help people who are catastrophically bad at being human. Reintegration. Light coaching. Emergency conversational exits.” Mat chokes somewhere behind me. A sound of deep, personal betrayal. The woman blinks. Once. Twice. Her smile flickers — not gone, but reconsidered. And for a moment, I think she might not buy it. Might see through me — the performance, the irony, the thinly veiled truth of it all. Then — “Oh,” she says softly. “That sounds… very needed.” And just like that — I’m in. She starts filling a bag. I watch, hopeful. Greedy, even. As if this is the first tangible reward for the evening’s efforts. But what she hands me is… Questionable. A single floret of broccoli, yellowing at the edges like it’s given up. Half a stubby carrot. Just… half. A potato that appears to have grown hair. And a grape that has transcended into raisinhood. Not fresh. Not vibrant. Not even pretending. “Ah,” I say. “Thanks.” We walk home in silence, bag swinging between us, Monkey warm in my arms. “You realise,” Mat says carefully, “that’s the first group that’s accepted you all night.” I pause. Look down at the bag. At its contents. Slightly off. Slightly past their best. Still… technically usable. “Yeah,” I say slowly. “Feels about right.”