"Thank God!" The Story of my Inner Conch..

At A Glance Author Ryan Contact ry@uswestmail.net Artist Paully Studio Ace Tattoo Location Golden Valley, Minnesota

About maybe four months ago, me and my friend were checking out piercings on people in magazines and other stuff. we came across a of a member of "project 86" (a band that you just have to check out). anyways this guy had about either 2 or 4 gauge plugs and a ring through the middle of his ear, me and my friend had no idea what it was at first, but we first found out it was called an inner conch piercing thanx to you guys at bme.

This all happened in the middle of the school year, and at my school, the rule is strictly No Piercings on Guys! Which i think is just wrong, because it prohibits people from expressing themselves. i feel the same way with my school's dresscode.

When school ended, and my sis's graduation party was over, it was finally okay for me to get my inner conch pierced. I called around to alot of places, and all i would get from them was "we don't pierce people under eighteen" which made it hard to find a piercer that would actually pierce me!

Finally, i found a piercer. From the start i knew that they had extremely little knowledge of piercings, they actually had no idea what an inner conch piercing was and other semi-common piercings. This got me pretty worried because this was the only place within a couple hours from my house that would pierce me. I decided to just go with it because it was the only way i would be able to get it pierced. i couldn't wait!

When i arrived at the shop, with my mom & my friend, i had to re-explain what i wanted to get done, which really discouraged and disgusted me. To make matters worse, they had an extremely small selecting of jewelry and didn't even have the size jewelry i wanted. i settled for a 1/2 inch 16 gauge CBR, i wanted a 14 gauge but i really wanted this done! They gave me and my mom forms to go fill out while we waited him to prepare the equipment. my mom wrote out a check for fifty dollars and gave it to him. he gave us a weird look, and said "we don't take checks". This put a huge wrinkle in the procedure because i had to actually wait about 50 minutes for my mom to run back home and get the cash. luckily the spy who shagged me was on Tv, so the time seemed to pass quickly.

The piercer came out of the back room and motioned to me that he was ready, by that time all the seats were filled with people getting tattoos. I thought i would have to wait for one of the artists to get done, but the piercer just pulled up a regular old office chair, and told me to sit down. This put my dissatisfaction level one notch lower, i mean, i didn't even get a real seat!

My mom went and hid in the waiting area, she didn't want to be apart of it i guess, that's what she said. I was a little worried about pain, because hey, i needle it going through a part of your body! the piercer and my friend overly ured me that the pain was very minimal and the equivalent to a hard pinch. he pushed the needle through the back of my ear, which i found strange, but i just kept going along with it. I'm not going to lie, there wasn't pain, but there was an intense stinging when the needle was being pushed through, and also about 15 minutes after the piercing. Surprizingly there was absolutly no bleeding at all, no leakage of anything at all.

I looked at it in the mirror, and i thought it looked awesome, and so did my friend. I am extremely happy with this piercing, I recommend it to anyone! But, i do not recommend the shop i went to. They were very unprofessional and really had no experience.

The Healing, in my opinion, went great! I've had to get used to sleeping on my right side. i don't want my piercing to bleed or migrate or get infected by dirty sheets and pillow cases. the first week I used bactine to clean my piercing and also cleaned it with antibacterial soap every day. The second day was probably the worst day. when i woke up my piercing was bleeding a little and my ear was really red from irritation, and it hurt a little from sleeping on it. Also, i could not rotate the ring for a couple of days because of pain, and just because the skin was aroung the ring. the second week, i noticed the the bactine was starting to irritate it, so i switched to just soap and water, and it has been doing perfectly fine since.

I don't really care about the procedure now and how unprofessional it was, all that matters is that my piercing turned out awesome, thank God! you need to get it done! I'm very happy with this piercing.. more are planned in the future