Having had a couple of ear piercings in the past few weeks, namely a second tragus and two more 14ga lobes,I hadn't really planned on getting anything else done on my ears until after christmas maybe, giving my body a bit of a break. (Ok, so my piercings aren't the most hardcore, and are totally simple to care for, but having had one infected tragus in the past I prefer to heal them one at a time, so I can give them all my full attention.)
At A Glance Author Randomspectator Contact random_spectator@hotmail.com IAM randomspectator When A week ago Artist Dee Studio Metal Morphosis (In Selfridges) Location Birmingham
However, my ears still felt bare, and the experience of being pierced is one that I enjoy a great deal, so I decided I'd start considering what I might want next. There were (and still are!) a fair few facial piercings that I'm very interested in getting, but I'm still fighting a bit of a battle over them with my boyfriend, as he would rather I didn't get any, so they weren't really an option at the moment.
Browsing BME, I saw a couple of rook piercings that caught my eye. The ones with rings did nothing for me, and I didn't much fancy having identical rings in my rook and tragus. The bars, however, looked great, much more like a 'proper' piercing. I browsed around a little more and ended up with a standard industrial and a snug added to my shortlist. Unfortunately, a bit of basic prodding about and looking at my ear lead me to conclude that a) there was no way I had enough of a snug to get a bar through without it having to be ludicrously shallow and b) ditto for an industrial, as the lower hole would end up in the same shallow area where I'd considered placing my snug.
So, I ended up going to Metal Morphosis on a cold Sunday afternoon with the intention of getting my rook pierced. After getting slightly lost in Selfridges (Metal Morphosis is inside it, and I always seem to end up wandering around the iPods and stuff!) I ended up at the counter, and waited for a little while for someone to come out to me.
For some reason, it was really busy, and so I wasted some time looking around, before eventually Dee was able to come out and I explained what I was after. Stupidly, I'd worn a hat that day, so I had to take it off for Dee to see what she'd be working on. She had a quick look in the reception area, and said it didn't look like it'd be a good idea with a bar, but if I could hang on a minute she'd take a closer look in one of the piercing rooms.
So, I sat in the waiting area, really hoping that I could still get my piercing, and worrying that I'd end up going home without it.
When Dee called me in, she and Lisa Marie (the piercer who did my tragus) looked, then told me what I had feared, that the angle of my rook was such that a bar would never settle in it, and would probably be uncomfortable and painful before promptly rejecting. Seeing my distraught expression Dee tried to comfort me and said that she could still do it with a ring. Although I thought about it for a minute, there was no point spending £30 on a piercing I didn't really like the look of, and so I declined.
I had really gotten myself psyched up for a piercing, so decided to talk my other options through with Dee. She suggested that the closest thing would be a conch bar, and did I want that instead? Well, I have to admit the mere mention of the word 'conch' was a little scary to me. For a long while I'd been idly dreaming about a conch piercing, but had always considered it a 'will never actually get' piercing, because I thought it would probably be the most painful thing I'd ever do. My conch, I'd always thought, was so ludicrously thick that sticking a needle through it was really not a good idea.
I managed to squeak out these worries to Dee, who responded by saying everyone thought their cartilage was really thick, and it honestly wasn't all that bad. She also pointed out to me that if I felt it for myself there was really not too much difference of diameter between my rook, which I had so wanted, and my conch, which I had prevented myself considering.
So, to cut a long story short, I decided to go for it. I filled in the forms, and returned to the piercing room, where Dee was laying out the equipment. By this time, I'd stopped being frightened, and, as usual looked at everything on the sterile tray with interest. She marked where on my ear she thought it would be best, and OK'd it with me, then explained that she'd be using a slightly bigger needle than the ones I'd experienced before. (Although it was no beast, I was still pierced at 14ga after all!) After the usual procedure of opening all the packages in front of me, and making sure I still felt ok after looking at the needle and clamps for a while she grasped my ear, told me to take a deep breath in, and pierced.
WOW. It was so much quicker than I thought it could possibly be! I'd been really fearing that the needle would end up stuck half way through, and she'd have to scrabbble about for ages, but that was totally not the case. It wasn't exactly painful either, more of a sharp sensation for a few seconds, then a little discomfort as she screwed the ball on.
I was very impressed! I'm not sure if it was down to Dee's skill (she is a brilliant piercer), or whether I genuinely had got myself too worked up about it, but the piercing itself was about as traumatic as having my lobes pierced!
The journey home, however, was painful. About an hour or so after I got pierced it began to get really sore, and throb, to the extent where I was gritting my teeth in the back of the taxi. For a couple of days this soreness persisted, to some extent, although the more immediate pain was gone the next morning.
It's been just over a week now, and my conch is behaving beautifully. I've been using the antibacterial wash that I was given at Metal Morphosis to clean excess lymph and crust off of it, but for the most part leaving it alone to get on with healing. The only time it's painful now is when I wake up having accidently slept on it, or if I fiddle about with it (not a good idea, kids!).
I guess the moral of the story is that if you want a piercing, don't be put off having it because of what you think it might be like, the actual experience can be very different to what you've built it up to be.