I was in Manchester visiting my fiance last week. A friend of ours was planning to go into town to get his nose pierced - and I'd been planning on getting my helix done, only I didn't want to go back to the place that did my navel. So we piled onto the train and went into town.
At A Glance Author Spazzcat Contact Spazzcat@bme.anon When A week ago Artist A nice man whose name I will learn next time!! Studio Shiva Body Piercing, Affleck's Palace Location Manchester UK I'd never been to Afflecks Palace before but it's a fantastic place. Once you learn to blank out the few shops full of identikit clothing for scene kids and ignore the depression that kicks in seeing dozens of fourteen year old girls scurrying around desperately looking for things that will make them look exactly like all their friends and thus make them "individuals" - it really is a shrine to alternative lifestyles. Fetish shops, AMAZING shoe shops, entire shops devoted to nothing but hair stuff, alternative formal wear, whatever you want. Amazing.
We caught up with Nose Ring Boy on the second floor at Shiva. My fiance went in with him to take pictures, then it was my turn. I'd signed the form and paid my £15.
By this point I was pretty nervous. I'd been feeling pretty poorly all day (unrelated illness), but I was determined to go through with it. I went into the tiny little piercing room and perched myself on the couch.
What a bloody lovely bloke. The woman who did my navel piercing in Carlisle was awful, so gruff and unresponsive. She didn't even say hello. However the guy at Shiva was all big smiles and greeting, even though it must have been forty degrees up there (HOT DAY!!) and he'd had to deal with sweaty girls taking their tops off to get their nips done...eek!
He put everything in the autoclave and put fresh gloves on while we chatted about stuff. I asked him to take a look at my navel, as it was done with a bar and it keeps catching and I wanted to know if I could replace it with a ring. And he TALKED to me, my God, it really calmed me down! He checked out my ear and explained that because of the shape of my cuff he'd have to use a slightly bigger ring, then cleaned and marked my ear.
Oops - WAY too low down. I asked him to move it up. "God, some people! Never bloody happy!" he joked, and re-cleaned and re-marked. Perfect this time - unfortunately I'd just directed him to a MUCH more sensitive part of my ear! Even just the pressure from the sharp(ish) marker hurt. "Oh boy," I said, "This is going to bloody kill. Have you got any freezing spray stuff?" I felt like such a chicken but hell I don't handle pain well!!
"Sorry," he replied, "we don't use it on that part of the ear." My friend Joe got his helix done at the same place that did my navel, and HE got freezing spray. But I wasn't going to argue. This guy obviously knew what he was doing way more than the nasty woman I'd seen previously.
I looked at my fiance, who smirked at my panic-stricken face. Haha...bastard! Love him though.
Then Nice Man gently took hold of my ear and all I could do was shut my eyes TIGHT. I'm totally needlephobic, one look at it and I'd have been running a mile. One, two -
"AAAAAAAAAGGGH!!!!! BASTARD!!!!!!! Not you mate! (placating hand waved at Nice Man With NEEDLE THROUGH MY DAMNED EAR) JESUS!" Etcetera. It bloody hurt. I shouted and swore and worried the hell out of my piercer. "Calm down mate!" he said, genuinely thinking I was having some kind of nervous breakdown. "I'M FINE!!!" I yelled, "DON'T WORRY!!" See, I either shouted like a twat and laughed about it, or I submitted to the pain and cried. And nobody wants that when they're getting pierced - it should be a fun experience! So I shouted. A lot.
And then it was done. It hurt a HELL of a lot more than my navel, but only for a few seconds. It just felt hot and throbby afterwards, and an hour later I was watching the Simpsons Movie and had forgotten it was even there. Plus I walked out of the piercing room with a dated aftercare sheet and a massive grin on my face, hopefully reassuring the gaggle of nervous, wide-eyed girls waiting outside that I hadn't been tortured at all and was actually incredibly happy with a well-placed, efficiently performed piercing.
And even better, I'd actually FELT every second of it. Which I am very proud of:)
It's healing marvellously well. Barely any crustiness, very little swelling. I'm soaking it regularly with sea salt solution, and have also taken to wearing my hair in a headscarf when I'm not going out anywhere, as I have long hair and I figured the last thing you want with a new piercing is grease and dirt transferring from your hair, never mind the constant physical irritation.
I would recommend Shiva to anybody. I'm going back there soon to get my lobes repierced, as the first time I got them done it was with a gun, by an untrained idiot on his lunch hour because the real piercer had gone home, who didn't clean or even MARK my ears. Every single aspect of this piercing was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and I now have a lot of scarring to negotiate - and I would trust the piercer at Shiva with anything.