**Part I**
It all started, as so many of my stories have, in New Orleans.
Well, okay, technically it started somewhere in our minds, in that tricky little place where the fetishes live, which personally I like to picture like an illustration from *Where the Wild Things Are*. Piercings made him hot, really hot. So what was a girl to do except indulge him? James had never had anything done, not even his ears, while jewelry already dotted my landscape — ears, nostril, and nipples all glinted with silver. (There was also a scar at my navel, but that’s another story!) There are amazing piercing experiences and then there are bad ones. All of my amazing ones occurred at Elayne Angel’s legendary shop, Rings of Desire, in New Orleans. I’m sad to say that she is no longer there. She came back for a while after Katrina but didn’t stay. Last I heard, she’d opened a B&B somewhere in Mexico.