My Industrial-Sized Mishap
At A Glance Author Kameron Contact kam8907@yahoo.com When Six months ago Artist Scribbles Studio Earth Moon Imports Location Wheelersburg, Ohio
Well, my name is Kameron Hardin, I live in South Shore Kentucky, it is really close to Ashland in case anybody wanted to know, and I have a pretty boring life. Anyway, this is supposed to be about me getting an industrial piercing... so...
It was back in July of last year, and my friend Brittany and I were supposed to get out industrial piercings together. We had been talking about these piercings for over a year now, and it had taken some hard work to get the parental to "ok" the piercing in the first place, but it eventually happened. I had passed it off as my birthday present, so they would have pity on me, and let me have it.
So it was on a Wednesday when my mom finally took me to get it done. I was so excited, and Brittany was supposed to meet me there at Earth Moon Imports. So when I arrived I called Brittany she had, had a run-in with some delays, so she wouldn't be there for a while. I had to be somewhere shortly after this piercing, so I had to go ahead and get it without her, which was kind of sad, but what could I do?
So I walked into the parlor, it is rather spacious, and well laid out, so it wasn't scary or anything. I asked Wolfman, a hairy, bearded man who I had met some days before this, if I could get an industrial piercing. And of course he replied, "SURE!". He handed me and my mom a piece of paper detailing the procedure, and then he handed us a liability form, which he had both of us sign, and then he took a copy of my mothers drivers license. I thought this to be a bit much for some random piercing, but I understand now why he had to give us all that. Then he went over to the register, my least favorite part, and he rang up $70.00. Needless to say I was a little shocked, but all in all I was excited to get this piercing and it didn't matter anymore.
When all of that was through, he took me into a room that had a chair stationed in the middle with a lot of mirrors on the walls around it, so I could see everything he was doing. He first put on some gloves, which I assumed to be latex, and then he got out the jewelry and needle, and clamps which were all in little packages to show that they had been autoclaved. After that he took out a Q-tip and put some iodine on it, and swabbed my ear with it, to kill any bacteria. Then he took the clamps and put them on my ear. The whole time my mother was sitting in a chair behind me, and I could see her in the mirror, she was starting to look horrified. Then he asked if I was ready and I said yes, he must have unpackaged the needle at some point before this, but I didn't see him do it, the point is, he did. Then he held the needle up to the place he was about to pierce, and he stuck it through, and when he did my mother's eyes got to be about the size of 50 cent pieces, I found this to be quite hilarious. The needle didn't hurt much, it just made a horrible crunching noise, and there was a pop at the end. That was far different from anything I had ever experienced before. After the first hole was done he scrunched my ear up so the needle could fit the distance between the top of my ear and the middle of my ear, and he punched the second hole. This one didn't hardly hurt at all, I guess my body had already become acclimated to this pain, because this one just seemed to slide in. When this was through he slid the jewelry in and screwed on the bottom ball. There it was, a beautiful 14g industrial piercing. I was so happy, and my mother even admitted that it wasn't that bad.
A few weeks after that I had a summer camp to go to and Brittany was also going with me. She had gotten hers a few hours after I did mine, so ours were at the same stage of healing. Every day after class we would both clean each others bars. Weird I know, but it is much easier to have someone else clean it rather that to have to clean it yourself. Hers would always be just fine, but mine would always hurt really bad, and it would also swell quite a bit more that hers did. I started to expect that something was wrong.
When I came home one weekend I decided to go back to Earth Moon Imports and see if everything was alright, it turns out that it wasn't. My ear had swollen so much that the bar had become too short to fit in my ear. It had started to indent the back of my ear where the ball laid. The piercer at the time said he would "poke" me again, but I said that was ok, I just needed a bigger bar, but they didn't have any. So the piercer said that he would give me two CBR's and clean it really well for me, so I sat down in the chair and he unscrewed the ball and took out the bar, it instantly felt better. Then he began cleaning it with iodine, holy fuck that hurt so bad. Then he cleaned me all up and I put two CBR's in and hoped for the best.
They healed much better than my bar had, and so in a few more weeks I bought a longer bar and everything was just fine. I mean, for the most part, I have had a few mishaps along the way, but so far nothing terrible has happened.