the nipple generation

The name of my right nipple is Moo.

I was eleven when he scrapped so hard against concrete he left my chest and became a smear on the sidewalk. Nipples don’t peel off like pepperoni from a cold pizza. They come off more like a topping on hot pizza.

The cheese and sauce come along.

Sauce leaked from my skin, poured across my chest and ripped shirt, but I was more concerned with my arm. It won’t move.

Move!

It won’t move. The elbow is pointing toward the sky, the forearm, wrist, hand and fingers are under my back. This position is not typical for an arm -- it’s broken, I’m sure it’s broken, it’s bloody and broken and won’t move and my friends are gone.

A group of friends had double dared Pat and me to skate down suicide hill.

Growing up, people do a lot of stupid things. We get drunk, take dares we aren't supposed to and sometimes we come out with great stories and other times we come out with a missing nipple. But usually, we make it out OK.

At the time I didn't feel OK and my friends were missing.

Maybe they’re coming, maybe those are voices. Are those voices? I can’t see, everything is red. The whole world is red and bleeding. A bloody rain cloud appeared atop me and---The voices are real. What are they saying?

They’re laughing.

This is funny, their friend bloody and bruised unable to see with a broken arm.

The arm is not broken? I’m just laying on it? This is what they’re telling me between laughter.

"Haha…you’re OK… haha…"

"Haha…you’re all bloody, maybe a concussion…haha…"

"Haha…your nipple is gone."

The laughter stops. This was personal. This was real. I’d lost my nipple and no one knew what to do.

Losing a nipple isn’t like say losing a wallet or your favorite picture. This was much more personal, much harder to part with, much harder to joke about.

It’s not as if nipples could hear you and even if they could nipples don’t speak English.

Nipples don’t have a persona, vital organs, they don’t breath, live or die. Men don’t even need them. You could lose one or both and not notice.

So it’s surprising how personal people treat them. They’re little pets. We bath them and put lotion on when it’s cold, we let our significant other’s tease them and give them names.

Moo and Poo.

Tipper and Gore.

Milky and Silky.

One of my duo was now gone and that left the other alone. The chest is on odd canvas with the belly button and two nipples like a surprised smiley face. Remove an eye and there’s two much white space. Art teachers would say, "not good composition."

But it wasn’t my nipples fault, it was the concrete or Pat or that parked car or the friends who dared me to go down a hill with an angle too steep for cars and frowned upon by bikers.

Every once in a while a biker would try to ride up the hill and start up in zig-zag pattern.

Left. Right. Left. Right.

No one ever made it more than 50 feet before quitting. Being that the hill was at least 500 feet, we’d laugh at their attempts.

Near the middle of the 500 foot stretch was a turn off. I’d decided after the dare I could make it that far and live, but more importantly save face in front of my friends.

Pat went before me.

1...2…3…4…5…I went.

Pat was close to the turn off and his wheels were shooting sparks. The only thing worse than continuing down hill is hitting the curbs. In California, the curbs are curbed, making perfect ramps on flat streets, but deadly ramps on suicide hill.

He made the turn off and hit a car. A parked car.

All I could do was laugh. And laugh and laugh and while I was laughing watch Pat on top of the hood wondering what happened and where this car came from — Did it appear? Would it be better to tell people it had appeared or to tell that funny story about the one time he ran into the parked car?

These were the last thoughts on my mind when I hit the curb. I had been watching Pat climb off the car and had forgotten to turn off the road. I was airborne now. Horizontal.

What ifs plague your brain at times like these: What if I die? What if I break my back? What if I was secretly a women and one day needed to breastfeed the world?

One nipple wouldn’t be enough. I’d need two. Maybe like a lucky few, three nipples. Three nipples would work; one nipple would not.

A missing nipple wouldn’t be handy. Even if it grew back, the connections would be off. Babies would try to latch on and be confronted with milk up their nose and what would this mean for future generations?

President's with milk in their eye and on their crotch.

They’d be the one’s paying my social security one day. This would be the future generation nibbling off my dilapidated Moo that shot milk in odd directions. Them. He. She. It. The future. FUCK---

A concrete airplane.

The airtime was minimal. It was the skipping, skip, skip, skip down the skip skip hill, then rolling, roll, roll, rolling on concrete that killed Moo.

Moo grew back. Yes. Nipples grow back, a little less sensitive and slightly a different color, but they came back.

I'd made it from this dare OK. That's a common trend for most people.

Wounds heal, both emotional and physical ones. They build character and we learn what to do and what never to try again.

I tried two more times.

The second time I didn't lose a nipple. When I lost control and hit the curb again I knew this time to aim for the grass and the third time when I finally made it to the bottom I remembered there was a speed bump. A speed bump? Cars can't even go on this road, why is there a speed bump? I'd succeeded, only to find a new challenge.

That was the end of my suicide hill runs. But I went on living and am still here now.

Our generation's dares aren't stick a needle in your arm, I double dare you. It's chug this. It's not sniff this, it's kick this.

For the all the hooting and hollering our parents did, we're a pretty well-behaved generation. We're good kids. Good kids with named nipples.