The nail was slippery with blood. It was like shoving it through a wet wad of cloth. He had one hand flat on his thigh. Once he kicked the counter with his sneaker heel. The foreskin was forward on his glans; first, the nail point raised a little dimple in it. “Go on, let’s … let’s see it come out.…” The dimple turned into a tent. Blood ran down the shriveled scrotal sack between straw-colored hairs. “Come on …!” He took his cock himself now and wedged the nail point through the foreskin—the point came through shiny. But blood dribbled from under the loose lip. Denny pushed the nail further—his whole dick was pretty smeared with blood by now till almost two inches of metal were free. He took his stained fingers away. The other end of the nail angled out from his piss-slit, bunching the flesh back on one side. “Oh, shit …” He caught his breath. “Good, huh? Yeah … that feels real … real good … First time I ain’t had a fuckin’ hard-on in goddamn I don’t know how …” He rubbed his thighs and looked at me. He still favored one leg. “I couldn’t get rid of that fuckin’ hard-on no way, cocksucker. I couldn’t. Not any goddamn way.…” He looked around the counter and picked up the pliers. “Now we gotta make it into a ring. Like Dago’s. I think that ring he got in his dick is so fuckin’ cool.…”

The wop’s ring was just a piece of brass wire; Denny had put in a whole damn nail.

“Come on, gimme a hand with the fucker.…” He tried to twist the nail with the pliers, holding one side. But I guess it was a little hard for him. “Here, you take ’em. Come on, you do it.” I did the best I could; it still didn’t come out very round—more squarish. He made me twist the ends together. While I did it, every once and a while he’d wipe his hand hard against his mouth. I cut off the nail head and the nail point with the part of the pliers back in the jaw. When each piece flipped off, he grunted.

The twist hanging off the end was pretty vicious, and shone.

He had his back against the sink counter, holding the edge with both hands. “Okay … now you gotta turn it through. So the twisted part is inside my cock, see?” He sucked in his lower lip and bit, like he was contemplating if he really wanted me to go ahead. “So it’ll look all one piece, see? Like Dago’s.” His hands were stained brown. There were brown stains around his mouth. Some of it was blood. “Well, go on, cocksucker! Turn it through. Go on …”

I started to turn the clumsy ring.

“Oh, yeah …! Oh, Jesus Christ, yeah …! That’s … that’s fuckin’…! Yeah …”