Charles Bock - Beautiful Children

And the only way out was to distinguish herself.

She'd tried wigs next. A Catholic schoolgirl wig. A braided horsehair thing that went down to her ass. This sleek black silent-movie-star deal that a drag queen had received one hell of a beating over. Cheri had collagen injected into her lips every two weeks. She did five sessions a month under the lights of a rotating tanning bed. Cheri had her own nutritionist, personal trainer, and personal waxer. And back at the start of the new year, Cheri Blossom had spent five grand on new tits. Not a thing had been wrong with her God-given goodies, mind you. In actuality Cheri's breasts had been lovely. Curved little pears. They'd hung freely and pointed a bit to the sides and had lain supple beneath her T-shirts in a manner that attracted glances both discreet and unabashed. But then her boyfriend had provided her with that pamphlet. He'd explained the procedure and gone over all her questions twice. He'd told her that her worries were stupid, she was being a bitch. Her boyfriend had bugged and pestered. And on a clear February afternoon when they'd been doing shrooms for like six hours, Cheri had giggled, What the fuck. She'd let him drive. Just outside of the city limits. An office complex: from the outside it looked like the kind of place you'd get insurance for your car. (Afterward she realized her boyfriend must have had an arrangement, maybe had even gotten a piece of the action, to set it up so quickly.) In the time it takes to complete a load of laundry, this mulatto doctor had verified the money order. In the converted back room of his office, he'd given Cheri a sleeping gas that, when combined with the shrooms, provided Cheri with about five seconds of bliss and then somewhere around three hours of blackness. This doctor had made incisions into the hearts of Cheri's nipples. Stuck this weird vacuum tubing thing into precious treasures that maybe had not been the biggest in the world but that nobody had ever complained about. He'd done a bunch of other shit that Cheri did not care to know the details of, but that probably got her boyfriend off, demented bastard, him and his piercings and tatts and his latest ridiculous thing, wanting to shove a triple-A battery through his nose. That overcast afternoon, when Cheri Blossom had been dragged out of that storefront, she had been transformed. From a fresh-faced nymphet favored by old men and shy youths, she'd been turned into some sort of Amazon, the wet dream of all red-blooded teenagers and midlife-crisis businessmen. Two melons beneath her knit sweater. Cleavage you could land planes on. (Silicon Valley she later called it.) It had taken her two days to learn how to walk with the new weight. Another month to fully adjust to dancing with wet sandbags inside of her. For a week after that, her lower back still hurt something fierce. Even tonight, before taking to the catwalk, Cheri powdered her underarm scars with talcum (also giving a quick poof to her bull's-eye of pubic hair, just for luck). But meanwhile, just like her boyfriend had promised, not only had her investment been returned, but it had doubled. New stereo equipment. High-definition plasma flat screen. A significant increase in the quantity and grade of the new shit her boyfriend's connection kept bringing around. Again and again Cheri reminded herself of this. She attempted to embrace the creature comforts.

But then it would be four in the morning and the Slinky Fox would have changed shifts. Some of the girls, a few bouncers, and the DJs would have convoyed downtown and parked their exhausted rears in the coffee shop of the Horseshoe. They'd be in their usual booth in the corner, scarfing down ninety-nine-cent night-owl specials, and Cheri would pick at the yolk of her over-easies, and she'd get all melancholy. See, she could handle that her breasts no longer bounced. Yes, her implants were so big that the skin over them was stretched and thin, they were too big for her body, these unnatural balloons, the left suspended a visible smidge higher than the right. Her breasts no longer gave her pleasure, hasta la vista to the electric tingles of joy she used to feel when her boyfriend bit down on her breast. Sayonara to the rush when he dug his teeth into her areolas and buried himself fully inside her and ejaculated and totally pushed her over the edge. But the thing that basically devastated her at four in the morning in a casino coffee shop was her nipples.

Because her nipples had been beautiful. Truly they had.

Thin. Long. The same chestnut shade as her natural hair. A thousand little goose-pimply protuberances appearing on her areolas when she got aroused. Her nipples used to turn thick and full, becoming a shade richer around the fifth of every month, staying that way through the tenth. They used to wrinkle in hot weather. Her nipples used to have personality. And now this personality had been infiltrated. Dissected. It had been taken apart and put back together, stretched and spread and all but turned to plastic. Pink antiseptic saucers with ugly little nubs. They hardly moved or got excited or did any damn thing. As much as Cheri Blossom had hate inside her loving and Christian heart, she hated her new nipples. So when her fella came up with yet another winner, it hadn't meant anything. Again, she'd said, what the fuck. Filled out another money order at the Western Union.

Which is why, with Patti Smith wailing and “Free Money” entering its final crescendo, as the half circle of wolves around her pinned back their ears and hooted and hollered and whooped, while her mark drooled and took deep breaths and blew the crotch of the panties out past his nose like a little pink sail — it is why Cheri could take the match that she'd had in her hand this whole song long.

And is why she could strike that match on the bald crown of the mark's head. Why she could move the flame to her nipples, onto her surgically hollowed-out nipple cases.

With a debutante's grace Cheri lit on fire the dyed stubs of red wax and tiny red wicks that she had packed into her surgically hollowed-out nipple casings.

Shadowy bar folk clapped and whistled and high-fived and went Holy shit. They threw crumpled dollar bills and fives and someone accidentally let go of a ten. They realized that they were watching magic, they were extras getting to see a stellar performance, a recital by not just any stripper, but A STAR.

And now Cheri Blossom wiggled her flaming prosthetic sandbags in the guy's face. She smothered his head with plastic and silicon and good old-fashioned fire. And lucky bastard that her client was, he got to blow out Cheri's nipples — which is what most clients did.

Or he got to extinguish them with his fingers — which some toughs did to try and impress her.

If he so chose, he could even put his lips around them and suck out the flame, like her boyfriend totally got into.

But this guy, he seemed embarrassed. Ashamed. He really didn't know what to do. And he had to get to blowing. These candles weren't even candles, just shaved candle parts that had been lumped together and topped with string. Little bitty things.

Only this guy was like, like — like the flaming nipples had interrupted him, caught him totally off guard.

Like something else was on his mind.

The extras were all around, they were yelling and laughing and howling and offering to take his place. And the flame was getting closer, flickering, burning down through the wick. Cheri was starting to wonder what would happen if the flames hit onto her plastic. Just what kind of fucked-up chemicals got involved then? She wasn't beginning to worry, not really, but something had to happen, quick. She was about to extinguish the things herself, when the prematurely balding guy returned from wherever his mind was vacationing, and the situation finally registered with him.