At A Glance
Author	elizabeth renaud
Contact	elizabeth renaud@bme.anon
IAM	the final lyz
When	Three months ago
Artist	Blair
Studio	Passage
Location	Toronto, Ontario

"Because I was impatient."

That's what I have to tell clients at the shop daily as to why I had to scalpel my lobes. Why I had to work up the courage over the course of a few months to let an acquaintance, now friend, perform a very delicate procedure with tools and equipment that still lingers in every nightmare I can dream up.

I started stretching my ears after returning from a solo trip to Amsterdam when I was sixteen. I had my first encounter with body modifications while visiting, and returned quickly to explore this new venue further. Not only had the short vacation opened my eyes to new ways of thinking in general, but ways of looking at my body as a tool and a canvas and most importantly, as my own.

At the time, there was one, and only one piercer with whom any enthusiast living in the Windsor area would trust their work. Syx worked out of a beautiful studio called Skew Skin on Dougall Avenue. After a short consultation, we stretched my ears to 10 gauge and said goodbye.

Over the course of the next four years, reckless, careless, thoughtless stretching ensued. By this time, I was fully engrossed in the BME community and spent countless hours reading articles and browsing pictures. I did not, however, overcome a typical teenage ego error: I did whatever was easy, cheap, and I kind-of-sort-of figured I was invincible. I mean, I'd only had a few splits here and there. A few minor blow-outs. Who cared? I was the only person I knew with stretched ears in a very small town, and had no real peers to empathize with my stretching woes.

So years roll by and I found myself older and wiser at the age of 20. I had taken up what remains my current residence in Toronto, and was working at New Tribe on Queen Street, enjoying more involvement in the modification industry. Over the course of that year, I'd tried, to no avail, to stretch my lobes from their drab 5/8" diameter. Nothing worked. Steel inflamed my piercings to the point that they'd split and seep. Infections were common on holes that had been stretched for 4 years at that point, and the cold weather made them red and itchy, even while wearing acrylic jewellery.

It was with much hesitation and humility that I visited Blair at his shop on Church and Carleton.

Passage is a clean, well-kempt shop that's usually quite hushed and relaxed. Blair popped his head around the corner and we quickly began discussing what was happening with my lobes and how it came about.

Over the past 4 years, my stretching endeavours were hasty and followed through with little caution and even less safety. Unfortunately, my superwoman syndrome cost me large bulky areas of scar tissue that were flared up and proved stretching to be an almost-impossible feat.

Let's not forget that they were pierced with a gun as a young girl, and the stretched results were somewhat disatisfying: a little uneven and all in all, unsymmetrical.

We made the appointment and with the most comforting smile I'd ever seen, Blair bid me goodbye and was back to his daily doings. I walked home, a block from the shop, and immediately felt sick.

Me? Scalpels? Knives? Razors? See, we don't mix well. In fact, very little at all. I cut almost 3/4 of the way through a finger in a kitchen accident during my teens and have since endured a terrible fear of blades. Terrible.

The day of the appointment fell on a Thursday. It was early November and the weather was definitely deserving of winter coats and warm mittens. I worked the day through, recieving more than my share of taunts and teasing from a generally close-minded staff (of course, with the exception of a wonderful few that really helped to ease my hesitations).

The second counter girl arrived early to relieve me of my last few closing hours at work, and I hurried over to Passage. I was surprisingly calm, collected, and prepared for something that in my heart, I knew should have terrified me.

I arrived at Passage and waited, my mind slowly dissecting the thought-process that had led me to do something so new and unfamiliar. Blair came to the waiting room, gave me his usual warm, wonderful hello, and ushered me upstairs to his piercing room.

Again, he showed me the areas which would be removed from my earlobe. A small triangular incision was to be made, the flesh would be removed, and then the jewellery would hopefully make its way into the clean wound. We marked time, and time again to ensure that enough room was being made to accomdate 3/4" teflon tunnels. Blair felt that the jump was small, yet sufficient for clearing up the irritations and allowing for ample stretching later, if desired.

I laid down and began to feel the worry I knew I should have felt hours before. It compounded into minutes and I could barely think straight; I did, however, muster up enough strength and good sense to ask Blair to keep the scalpel well-hidden. To see it would be to scare me out of the entire procedure.

As promised, the clamps were gently placed into a secure position on my lobe and tightened. And tightened. And tightened. And finally tightened to the point of complete comical hysteria -- it hurt so badly that I couldn't keep myself from laughing. With a quick warning, Blair put the scalpel to my ear and began to slice. It slipped through the tissue like hot on ice, and I felt the warm, wicked trickling of blood down my neck and into my hair. With one hand firmly securing the gauze over the open wound, Blair reached, quickly picked up the sterilized jewellery and began to wedge it in.

And to my horror, it didn't fit.

One, two, and with many tears later, three cuts made and finally the jewellery went into my red, pulsating, bloody earlobe. I was in a complete state of panic at this point which was no fault of anyone's but my own. When the secondary and tertiary cuts were made, they were done without the aid of the clamp and were much more obvious as exactly that: slicing, bleeding, razor-like cuts. I let my brain wrap itself around my relentless phobia and began to feel faint.

With some encouragement and water, Blair gently coerced me to lay down and prepare myself for the second ear, regardless of how long said preparation would take.

Let me, however, digress at this point and say that of any modification I've had performed, Blair's bedside manner was by far the gentlest, kindest, and most thorough I'd ever seen, especially considering the circumstances: I was afraid and was a bit of a fidgety, special-need client. I did not, at any point, feel as though I had Blair to blame. He was at every moment in the scalpelling procedure a pillar of support and kind words that I needed very, very much.

I laid down on the opposite side of the table so Blair could prepare my second lobe. Sadly, this is where things went especially sour. I started thinking about the scalpel once again and was silly enough to scan his table quickly - but not any faster than it took to spot the small blade shining with blood atop the blue dental bib.

I started to cry. The panic attack was setting in not only because I was so scared of the knife-to-skin factor, but mainly because I did not, by any means, want to have Blair complete my second ear. I was having an aesthetic dilemma. Should I leave my second lobe and leave the studio feeling much more calm and and happy with the procedure? Or should I just let my body run with the panic shivers and the adrenaline and do it?

This lasted a good 15 minutes.

I finally asked Blair to get on with it, despite my obviously contradictory body language, and between sobs and muffled requests to back off, I somehow consented the beginning of our second scalpelling.

I remember this feeling with extreme clarity: all I could do was mash my knees into each other, panic, and listen to the scrip-scrape-scrip-scrape of scalpel against clamp and sawing through lobe. Call it psychosomatic or call it just "one of those things," but the sound and feeling was uncomparable and very unsettling. He fit the jewellery in beautifully, however, and no additional cuts needed to be made. I laid with tears streaming down my face that were suddenly mingling with the blood I had felt pool under my lobe and on my neck. It felt warm and good and comforting and complete.

We sat and discussed aftercare and shortly after I regained some mental stability, we left the shop.

Before I go on, during the first lobe, Blair hit what we assume now was a tiny artery. During the procedure it was snipped and began to spurt tiny jets of blood at a pretty regular pace onto him and his clean clothes. I felt bad on behalf of the misbehaving blood vessel, but realized there was little I could do.

As we were walking out the front door, suddenly I felt a bit lightheaded and drowsy. I looked down to focus my attention on the carpet I stood on when I saw what looked like a stream of blood running down my winter jacket. I had to sit for some time, slowly comforting my brain back into reality, and realizing that it was only a small cut that I was very happy to have done.

The night was a lot of pampering from a good friend and a lot of sleep. The next morning I woke up to bloody this, bloody that, and red, crusty everything-in-between. This was followed by four days of bleeding. Bleeding, in this case, is constituted by seeping blood running down my neck, at my place of work, in front of potential piercing clients.

This is:
a. Not good for business
b. Not good for client comfort in general
c. Not good for cross-contamination
d. Not good for my skin!

My neck and ear lobes became red and chapped from the amount that I had been wiping and cleaning them. The bleeding finally became too much on the fourth day and after feeling slightly ill, I went home a few hours before the end of my shift to simply relax and eat some gelatin. Apparently it's a wonderful catalyst for blood coagulation.

Weeks followed and I was able to remove the teflon tunnels from my well-healed lobes and place stainless steel tunnels in, already stretching to 7/8". The pace at which they were stretching was incredible and satisfying to say the least. Blair had, after all, told me that they'd stretch rather quickly after having them scalpelled, but I really didn't anticipate the luck I'd have with them in weeks to follow:

So, a little more than 2 months after the procedure, I am safely standing at 1 1/16" lobes that I'm extremely proud of. I feel that I took a huge step over an even greater barrier: that of my most intense fear. I cannot express how wonderful I think it is to have been able to rid myself in some small way of this phobia through the one thing that governs my philosophy and overall mindset on happiness: body modification. They were able to work as a pair and provide me with an unforgettable experience confronting what I had thought to be an incurable fear; at the same time, I had achieved a new goal in my personal journey as a modified woman. It took an intense amount of trust and the kind support of my piercer-come-friend Blair to help me through an experience I will not easily ever forget. Moreso, it took two puffy, red lobes, a miniscule artery and the quick slip of a scalpel through flesh for me to realize that I am proud of the body I own, the body I manipulate, and the body with which I can reaffirm my faith in the miracles of modification.