At A Glance
Author	Danny
Contact	Danny@bme.anon
IAM	danny.frost
When	A week ago
Artist	Marea
Studio	Metamorphosis
Location	Indianapolis (Broad Ripple), IN

Long ago, while searching through BME's ear piercing galleries for the first time, I came across something that absolutely amazed me: large gauge cartilage piercings. Basically, every aspect of them seemed completely unreal to me, as they were done with biopsy punches, which, at the time, was something I'd never even heard of. After doing some more research and gazing in awe at all of the pictures in the gallery, I vowed that some day, I would have a large gauge cartilage piercing.

After going through two piercers within a year (one retired, the other shop had a bad atmosphere due to the newest owner), I found someone I actually trusted to do the procedure. However, as a result of finding said piercer, I also found out about his lady friend, who was also a piercer. After chatting back and forth for quite some time, and getting to know both piercers, I decided I would allow each of them to do one dermal punch on each of my outer conches, or "flats" as they are sometimes referred to as.

They both knew of this plan, so it was pretty much set in stone.

I worked as much as I possibly could during my first week or so of being hired at a local restaurant simply so I could have as much money as possible for the entire trip/experience. After coming up with all the necessary money, preparing a tip for the piercer, and checking the "official" piercing policy at the restaurant, I made plans to go up to Marea's shop as soon as I possibly could, which turned out to be a Wednesday.

The day of May 24th came much sooner than I expected it to, and as with most of my other piercings, I was not nervous at all. I'd brought my own jewelry (a single-domed Industrial Strength pyrex plug), as well as a septum retainer (which is a completely different experience). Both pieces of jewelry were cold sterilized, as an autoclave cycle would have taken approximately 45 minutes, which was time that we unfortunately did not have. After setting up and preparing placement for both piercings, we decided that the septum would be the first, since I have already experienced it once before. Afterwards, I went outside to have a cigarette in an attempt to calm myself down slightly, as I knew the next part of my day would be much more intense, as well as being more painful.

We checked the placement on my outer conch once more, and decided to move it more towards the center of the top of my ear. Once everything was agreed upon and checked out, I laid back on the exam bed, and closed my eyes. She told me to take a few deep breathes beforehand, and then instructed me to take an even deeper breath, which alerted me that the punch was about to take place.

As I exhaled, I felt an extremely awkward pressure on the top of my ear. After a few seconds of this, I felt a sudden rush of relief as the punch went through the back of my ear. However, at this point, the next 10 or so minutes were devoted to cleaning up my ear. I'm not exactly sure what I took or did that caused it to bleed so much, but it simply wouldn't stop. While this was going on, Marea constantly made jokes about the amount of blood, and I continually responded with "What can I say? I like to bleed..a lot."

Finally, the bleeding began to lighten up and clot around the hole, and the jewelry was inserted into the hole. Afterwards, we decided that we probably should have gone with the 00g jewelry and tapered up, which might have prevented some of the bleeding, as there was quite a bit.

The bleeding actually stopped for a small while, but as they were setting up for Dom's cleavage piercing, blood began to drip down the side of my ear once again. Luckily, it wasn't nearly as much as there was before, so it didn't take very long to actually clean up. This happened multiple times, which always resulted in Marea having to change gloves, giving me a small lecture about how I shouldn't bleed so much, and how I really should stop. It was pretty entertaining, for the most part.

The blood completely clotted near the beginning of the cleavage piercing, so it was no longer a problem that required numerous breaks to take care of.

Afterwards, Marea checked numerous times to make sure that I was actually fine to drive (admittedly, I would've loved to have hung out for quite a bit longer, as I enjoyed the shop and the experience, but I was already going to be late for work at this point). After paying, saying our goodbyes, and taking a picture on her camera phone to send to Alan, we were on our way back to Greencastle for a night of food service fun.

All in all, this is probably one of my favorite piercings. It really hasn't given me any trouble since I got it done, aside from occasionally gluing some of my hair to the back side of the plug with blood every other night or so. The lack of pressure due to the removed chunk of cartilage makes the entire situation much easier to deal with, and I can actually sleep on the piercing already.

I recommend this piercing, but keep in mind the permanence of the modification, as you are removing a chunk of cartilage, which takes a considerable amount of time to regenerate itself. Make sure you take time to research the entire procedure and find a skilled piercer to perform it, or the entire thing could end badly.

Happy punching!