At A Glance
Author	Roulette
Contact	squeeblegirl@gmail.com
IAM	Roulette
When	It just happened
Artist	Not Sure
Studio	Eclipse
Location	Camden in London, England

This worried me.

When my boyfriend said he wanted to drag me to a piercers in Camden to get his lip pierced (again, he already had a labret), I knew I was going to end up with a piercing as well. Heck, my friend knew, from the moment I told her I was being taken to a piercers.

But this didn't worry me.

I'd surprised my parents with a vertical labret the week before, ill-fatedly getting it the same day as my fifteen year old brother snuck off to Edinburgh and persuaded someone he was old enough to get the side of his lip pierced. So this time I was determined to get something in my ear, something that my parents could ignore all they liked.

Every other piercing I'd got, my parents had just looked at me in dismay and reminded me, "you're nineteen", as if I'm prone to forgetting my age, roughly translated into "you know we hate it, dear, we're just going to say nothing because of the inevitable argument which will occur, and is better avoided". I still felt the need to be kinder to them.

So this didn't worry me.

To BME!

I quickly decided I either wanted my daith or rook pierced, leaning towards my daith. I was slightly worried about the act of wearing headphones afterwards (would it hurt too much to do so?) - I always carry my mp3 player, I have clinical depression coupled with a general abundance of issues and, when out and about, music can help me control or cease a panic attack when in public.

Reading through personal experience stories, I realized if I really wanted my daith pierced, I would just do it. Ultimately, if the worst came to the worst, my boyfriend could put up with me locating earphones that I liked and didn't hurt me, after all, he had dragged me to the piercers in the first place.

Still not very worried...

The day arrived. Neither of us had slept – my boyfriend is the one native to London, whereas I'm currently studying in St Andrews (body modification gets everywhere) and had spent the night flying down. He had got drunk the night before and decided to stay up all night in order to meet me at the airport early in the morning, probably worried that if I tried to find my way out of Heathrow o my own, I'd get lost.

We went straight to Camden, then began the joyful activity of shopping. I spent money that I did-but-didn't have on New Rocks and stomped around after him, loving the delicateness of my black velvet skirt, childishness charity teddy bear attached to my bag by the jumper, coupled with huge feck-off boots.

Still not worried.

It was the moment my boyfriend started wandering from piercers to piercers in order to find one that wouldn't ID him (he's twenty one, but didn't have ID on him) that I started to worry.

Back in St Andrews, I know and trust my piercer. Before I first went to him, unable to find anything online even mentioning if he was good or bad, I looked amongst my friends for people who had been pierced by him. Impressed when I heard nothing but good things about him (tattoos were a different story), I set him the task of piercing my nose, which I'd had done before. I was so confident in the hygiene and skill, I was able to get my lip pierced by him with relatively little fear of the fact I was about to get a needle rammed through my lip.

Wandering into any old piercers didn't feel like a good idea to me.

I hung behind him in roughly every single shop as he asked them about the piercing he wanted. I studied the faces of every single one of them, vaguely worried by the fact none of them had very much in the way of facial piercings.

Then we went into Eclipse. I had read about them the day before in the personal experiences section while reading up about the process of getting the daith done. I'd read that the woman who pierced in there was not only good, but especially liked ramming needles through that specific part of the ear. So, this time, I confidently strode up to the counter and told a women with her septum and lip pierced what I wanted, using what I'd read to be the proper pronouncement, "doth",

The worry subsided.

She looked at me, puzzled, and asked me where that was. I showed her, using the more common pronouncement, "day-th", and she turned to the other guy on the counter and asked him what that piercing was called. "Day-th", he said, writing "daif" on the form and handing it to me.

The worry punched me right back in the gut, but something made me continue to fill out the form, allowing her to photocopy my student id card, then pay and sit down to wait.

My boyfriend was called through - "I'll be just a minute" he said to me, "do you really want to be just a minute?" I whispered to myself as he strode off.

Then it was my turn. She marked my ear and asked me to check it in the mirror. It was marked in the complete wrong part of my ear. I almost walked out and asked for my money back, but then I noticed she had hers done. For the moment, my faith was restored enough for me to try, once again, to explain where I wanted this piercing. She smiled, remarked it in the right place, and positioned me on the bed.

Nerved writhed inside of me. As she started to push the needle through my ear, I couldn't help but wriggle. This meant that in the process of piercing me, she nicked my ear with the needle, giving me a small scratch.

Once she had done, though, and I was looking in the mirror at the shiny new CBR in my ear, I felt a million times better. It was perfect.

I suppose it just goes to show how much you need to be going to a piercer that you trust. While going to any old piercer in Camden is alright for my boyfriend, it is not alright for me. From now on, I think I'll just stick to getting pierced in Scotland...