At A Glance
Author	benalice
Contact	benalice@bme.anon
When	N/A

My first piercing was not exactly the smartest thing I ever did. In fact I did it in class at the age of ten, with a sharp nail.

I was simply bored one day. So, I took the nail I had found earlier on the playground and cleaned it using iodine and tissue paper.

When it was time to go back to class I took a mirror from my teacher's desk. I went into the corner, propping up the mirror on a bookshelf. Pulling on my lobe I pushed the nail through my skin, where it caught on a membrane of some kind and wouldn't go deeper. At this point I enlisted the help of my best friend, who pushed it through using both hands and the back of his lunchbox.

For weeks I used the nail as my jewelry, refusing to remove it because it hadn't yet healed. Finally my mother found a spike barbell I was willing to replace my nail with. Some years later, I met a girl at a camp with stretched lobes. I loved the way you could see through the tunnel and decided I wanted them. Because it had been done so brutally, my hole was already larger than most lobe piercings, so it wasn't hard for me to get started. However when I reached 9mm I split the flesh and it started to get infected.

Now through high school, I have never been particularly interested in my own safety or health and so I used to do stupid things with my ear and it got infected quite a bit. Once to the stage that it went a greenish colour. I remember that I used to find it annoying having the infection so I got worried about this one and started having doubts. However soon I found shops in my city that sold proper stretching tapers and tunnels.

Until then I had been using various round, plastic objects, like pen lids, straws and so-on. I admit how stupid I was in doing so and regret using these things.

After I got proper tapers and plugs, it went smoothly, soon I was gauging up every week.

I then realized I had an 18mm tunnel in one ear and no piercing in the other.

For months I didn't do anything about it and very nearly lost interest. Then one day my drummer dragged me to a piercer and I got it done. This was the start of a whole new set of problems. First the lobe rejected and it had to be removed using scalpels and afterwards I started developing huge keloids. These needed to be removed before I could pierce again and it was expensive. Turns out I just had a reaction to the plastic barbell. Now its surgical steel all the way.

So I went through the whole process and started stretching, this time I new what I was doing and it moved along much more quickly. But then(after a big night on the beer and Mary Jane) it became infected once more. It was gross. I could clean it and an hour later it would be cheesy and smelly again, then I started using wooden plugs.

This changed this dramatically and although I still trust steel, I found that ebony helped the infection clear up and healed my lobe very well. Now I had my lobes both at 18, time to go further. I live in Canberra,(capital of)Australia and over here, there isn't much in the way of an alternative industry, sure there are some shops with a basic and sometimes good range but nothing had 20mm and higher tapers(I never go up by tunnels, it leads to blowouts)which I needed to achieve the affect. Eventually I looked online and(through BME) found everything I needed. So I got to 22 and reached a snag. My lobes wouldn't stretch any more and I would need to travel to Sydney for scalpeling and as a 17 year old with a full time job and rent to pay this wasn't good news. But I needed the bigger lobes.

I scraped together the cash over a month and went up. The experience was actually exhilarating. Feeling them cut into me as part of my quest for a unique look was just amazing. When I got home my lobes were at 25mm(1") and I loved them.

But. In Sydney I learned that the guy doing my scalpeling was learning to do skin removals. He had done about five and they had all turned out great, but he felt he needed more practice. I happily volunteered and had large oriental style waves curving up my chest slowly carved. I couldn't describe the feeling. Completely at ease is the only thing I can think of. I'm very happy with it and will submit pictures soon.

So far my ears are at 28mm each and I have 6mm nostrils as well as two skin peelings.

I plan on getting my ears to 32mm and in a few weeks I have an appointment for a 4 hour tattoo session. In the end I hope to have full sleeves and most of my body covered with ink. Recently I joined a suspension club and I am doing my first one in the middle of the city square for a dance performance in a month.

My introduction in to body mods was not a smooth or ideal one, but then again, whose is? Everybody learns from their mistakes, even if their mistake was piercing themselves in 5th grade with a nail.