First off, I have to say that BME rocks.
At A Glance Author Zee Contact Zee@bme.anon When Six months ago Studio Kaoz Location AL Seriously, for those of us stranded in Hickville USA, it helps to be able to turn to other folks, experiences, etc. online when we want to learn about where the hell to even start in the world of body mods. In my case, I wanted to learn everything I could about the not-so-little subworld of gauging/stretching. I'd seen the results of about five too many inexperienced-experiences, and I knew I didn't want that to be me. My story covers a few months, and is probably very dull compared to a lot of the experiences here, but bear with me. I'm willing to bet I wasn't the only hole-free newbie geek here this year, and I won't be the last - and maybe one of those others will be able to relate to my story.
For me, the desire for and the beginning of my experience were two completely different entities: I've wanted to 'start' my lobes for about a year and a half, ever since I felt the need to express myself via mods, but didn't actually have the time/money (the sad life of the perpetually broke college student) until late this past summer. I've wanted pierced ears since I was young, but for once I can say I'm thankful my parents didn't give in when I was little - like I said above, I've seen damage, and consequently piercing guns now scare the bejeesus out of me.
So this year I start looking around my local area for a studio that would "really" pierce, and around August I found Kaoz. Eventually I worked up the money (and yeah, ok, courage, what a chicken!) to go see about piercing my oh-so-virginal lobes. And yes I admit, I felt like a dork walking in and seeing all these awesome walking works of art around the place, and me whispering that, um, I'd like to get my ears pierced? Oh, and nothing fancy thank you, just a regular-joe lobe piercing... But in the end I was lucky, the people were great, and in no time at all I was talking with two different artists about possibilities and where I wanted to be eventually.
Ultimately I decided on a double lobe piercing, since eventually I wanted to be a little different and keep a smaller gauge on the bottom and stretch the upper hole. They warned me that because of the size of my ears and the positions I wanted, I wouldn't be able to stretch past a 4 or so, at least not without affecting the lower piercing. That was fine with me because a 6 was where I wanted to get to in the end anyway. I also decided to start with a 14ga piercing in each spot; that was about all I felt I could handle at the moment.
Moment of truth: finally. Note to self: Saturday afternoons are apparently automatic guarantees that you will encounter a large contingent of "OMG let's like totally get our navels pierced, you wanna?!!11" teenyboppers. Eventually though a room does open up and it's time to bite the bullet. Let me reiterate one tiny fact I mentioned earlier: yours truly is secretly a chicken of mind-boggling proportions. She won't watch lab techs draw blood. Scalpels are of the devil. Exactly where are you going to stick that? Etc. And so the concept of the piercing itself actually freaked me out quite a bit (but then again did I tell the good folks around me? No sirreebob, thank you very much).
The piercer I had was a very nice guy, but unfortunately I don't remember his name. He did seem a little stressed-slash-distracted, and I found out later that, um, he doesn't deal well with screaming scads of thirteen year olds. Can't say that I blame him. He was very professional though, and I wasn't really bothered by his quietness - actually it helped calm me down to the point of looking forward to the piercing itself. He spent a good half hour marking, which made me feel good about the final placement - in the end I stopped even being able to tell a difference in his marks and just trusted his decisions, talk about perfectionism. The piercing went smoothly, and while I'm not going to say "I didn't feel a thing!", at one point it was beyond tolerable to the stage of actually being enjoyable - so that's what everyone was talking about. I will say, though, that using the same needle four times in a row gets painful, as the last one really ground its way through my ear. My boyfriend went decidedly pale and tells me he most definitely could hear that one. Gonna have to say that was a nice perk too, freaking the manly-man out.
So anyway, all good things come to an end, and after tipping and walking out on cloud nine, with promises to return for gauging - the whole event was a screaming success. I conquered my reservations, and was finally on the road to something I'd wanted for a while, regardless of chicken-ness etc. I realized that it was not embarrassing to ask for "boring" piercings - that each and every person I encountered that day had started exactly where I had. Not a single one of them had anything detrimental to say, and they were all more than happy to offer suggestions and encouragement. Oh, and by the way, as far as the return trip goes: yes I have been back for new sizes (twice so far - damn that collegiate income), and the experiences afterwards were just as spiffy as the first. The gauging was painless (yes, really), and the people were, again, awesome.
Bottom line o' mine: If you're thinking about making a change, but are afraid of what anyone with oh-so-much-more-experience might say - don't be. Everyone has to start somewhere - so what are you waiting for?