I was visiting some friends in the States, Philadelphia to be exact. The three of us were wandering around in the South Street area, which is more or less the "alternative" district in Philly. A couple of months before that, I got bitten by the piercing bug, and after getting a vertical hood and a rook piercing, I was craving for more. And it happens to be the case that South Street is crammed with piercing and tattoo parlors. One of my friends was looking for some new jewelry for her navel piercing, so we were running in and out all of these parlors. After seeing about three parlors, a hidden power that all piercing addicts must recognize made it inevitable: I had to get pierced. Today. Before I was flying back to Europe that same night. Which came down to within the next 1.5 hours.
At A Glance Author psychonautje Contact psychonautje@bme.anon IAM psychonautje When Six months ago Studio Infinite Body Piercing Location Philadelphia So the one friend kept looking for jewelry, and the other one (not modified except for gunned lobes and even those took a lot of convincing from my side) kept asking all the standard "wow did that hurt"-questions to just about anybody that had a piercing she hadn't seen before, like a bridge or a septum piercing. As I'm not interested in fancy jewelry, nor in whether certain piercings hurt or not, I was checking out the parlors for other stuff: autoclaves, hygiene, knowledgeable personnel, and so on. Pretty much all off them looked kind of shady to me, and I definitely wasn't going to get pierced in one of the little parlors directly on South Street. I remembered reading a lot of good things about Infinite Body Piercing here on BME though, so I dragged my friends along in search of Infinite. I knew it was not directly on South Street, and luckily, after walking for a while and peeking into every side street I suddenly saw their logo.
We went in, and first looked around for a bit. My friend saw some really nice jewelry for her navel (which she bought a week later), and then the guy at the counter asked if he could help us. We talked about the jewelry a bit, and then I said I wanted my forward helix pierced, but that I was still contemplating on whether to go for just one, or go double right away. "One or two, one or two?" My friends both said: "one, two will be to much!" and counter-guy said: "Two-two-two. Definitely two." Of course, I went with his judgement... (which I already kind of secretly had decided anyway). So double it would be. I filled out all the necessary forms, paid and he copied my Dutch driving license: "I never saw one of these before, but I suppose it'll be fine..." I asked whether my rook in my other ear wouldn't be a problem as it was still relatively fresh, even though I could sleep on it without problems, but he said my 6-week-old rook looked good and should be fine.
Then the piercer came out to get me. I asked whether my friends could come in and watch the procedure, which was no problem. My non-modded friend started getting really nervous at that point, but my other friend dragged her into the room, and they sat on a table in the back of the room. The room was very clean and looked kind of like a doctor's office. I sat down on the bench-type-of-thing, my feet dangling down from it. Strangely enough, I felt really relaxed, unlike my friends behind me. Several needles and different sized CBRs laid on a tray waiting for me. The piercer cleaned my ear and marked me up with the famous purple marker and asked me to check it. He had only drawn one dot. "Ehm, there is supposed to be a second piercing, actually." "Ow, do you plan on having a second piercing there later on?" "Well actually I was planning to have them done both at the same time right now". "Oh really, I totally missed that!" on which he rummaged around in his papers and saw I had asked and paid for two indeed. He changed his gloves and marked me up again. This time the markings were perfect, and my friends agreed too.
Now, the actual piercing was about to start. Or so I thought. We were doing it at 14 ga and it was going to be hard to pierce them exactly at the same angle because of the way my forward helix is folded. I never really thought about the angle the piercings should sit at, but luckily my piercer did and it was very important to him to get them exactly the same, for which I'm really grateful now. He was going to do it free-hand. He bent two needles in a little over a 90-degree angle, and held them up next to my ear. My non-modded friend was squeezing my other friend's arm really hard right now. He fiddled around for a couple of minutes and I was like: "Are you really going to pierce them both at the same time?" "Uhm, I thought at first that I would, but I think we're gonna have to do this the traditional way, I can't get the angle exactly right like this." He put the bent needles into a sharpies-container, changed his gloves, and got out a new needle. Again he fiddled around somewhat until he found the right way to line up the needle and pierce it: "Are you ok?" "Uhuh" "And you two in the back, are you ok? You look extremely white!" (as a side-note, one of my friends is Pakistani and the other one is Chinese) They nodded silently. "OK, there we go!" Breathe in though nose, breathe out through mouth – PIERCE! I moaned. It hurt. A lot. Way more than my rook did. It was a very sharp, stinging pain. I didn't hear any pop, though.
But this was just the first one. We went on to the second one before the first one would start to swell. Change gloves, position needle, breathe in, breathe out – PIERCE! This one hurt even more, and it popped too when the needle came out of the exit hole. My non-modded friend was squealing in the back: "Oh my god, you are bleeding like a maniac! I'm going to faint!" Indeed, I was bleeding like an idiot, which I considered to be very weird as I've never been a bleeder before. The piercer went over to my friend to check if she was ok, and I was sitting there bleeding with two needles sticking out of my ear. Kinda surrealistic. Luckily my friend didn't faint. Oh well, I figured that at least the worst part was over. The piercer cleaned me up a bit, and I had two needles sticking out of my ear all the time, now much to the amusement of my friends. Time for jewelry insertion. The piercer followed the needles through with the CBRs, one by one. This hurt way more than the actual piercing. It just took so much longer, and it was hard to get them in and closed. It took a couple of minutes to get the balls on. I must have made a lot of funny faces. I got cleaned up again. My ear was very red and hot at this point in time, as my friend noticed too: "Oh look at your ear! It's all red!" "Well yeah, I just had two needles jammed through it, if I was an ear I would be red and angry too!"
My piercer gave me the aftercare sheet and he asked me if I knew what to do, but since I had a good-looking fresh rook we didn't go into depths. A combination of sea-salt soaks and the Leave-It-The-Hell-Alone-Method should work fine. I thanked the piercer and we left. I didn't tip. At that time, I had no idea that it was common to tip your piercer in the States, so I never thought about it. I feel bad about that now, especially since it wasn't the easiest job, it took quite some time and he really put in a lot of effort to get them exactly right. I hope he wasn't pissed off about that too much, after all he knew I was from Europe and flying home that night. When my credit card balance came I found out I didn't get my 5-dollar-discount because I had two piercings at the same time, so I suppose that can be considered as the tip, then, though 5 dollars is pretty lame.
Now it was time to go get my bag and go to the airport. We said our goodbyes and I was on my way back home. I left the piercings alone during the flight and the train-ride home, even though I could feel them oozing and the crusties building up. My ear was hot, red, and painful. I couldn't wear headphones in my left ear, so no in-flight movie for me. Laughing hurt. Talking hurt. Eating hurt. Everything that involved moving my jaw hurt. There were only 14 hours between piercing time and getting home so not taking care of it during the flight was fine. The first two days I just washed the piercings with hot water as I had no suitable cup or something to soak my ear in. After the weekend I stole some paper coffee-cups from my job (call it secondary rewards or something), which were excellent for soaking. I would fill one to the rim with the sea-salt solution, put my ear in, let the superfluous water spill over, and because of the hot water the air inside the cup would shrink and it would just kind of vacuum-suck itself to my face. In this way I was able to sit upright while soaking. I soaked 2 or 3 times a day, and tried not to touch my piercings or sleep on them. I kept up with this for 3 weeks, and then I switched to the LITHO-method alone – I was fed up with soaking. This wasn't the smartest idea for healing: keloids developed on both exit-holes and the piercings started oozing and developing crusties again. The lower one got a bit infected. I did some soaks again and the infection and the keloids disappeared, although it took like 4 weeks for them to disappear completely. The lower piercing had migrated a bit downwards though, but settled there. The upper one took about 4 months to heal, the lower one is still not completely healed and they are 8 months old now. I suppose this one takes longer because my hair caught up on it so many times. I'm sure the lower one will be fine too though, it didn't migrate any further and it's looking very good at the moment. And even though one of them migrated, they are still at "\Ãw"ë a perfect angle.
The piercings will always remind me of my trip to the USA and to my friends over there, and they just look good. Besides, I like the fact that it is a pretty original piercing. A forward helix isn't that common at all around here (I saw one other girl with a single one), and a double forward helix is extremely rare. I'm very happy with them; they look really nice.