At A Glance
Author	Annika
Contact	Annika@bme.anon
When	N/A
Artist	Malcolm
Studio	Synapse
Location	Hereford, England

My fascination with body piercing or modification of any kind started when I was about 10 (when the Spice Girls first came out) Scary Spice had her tongue pierced, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever! I begged Mom for longer than I can remember about getting a piercing (other than the usual Navel or Ears) but every time she said NO and insisted that it is "As common as muck!" So for years I just lived with no extra holes in my body... When I turned 15, I started to think seriously about it.
As all my friends already had their navel pierced, I didn't want to be the same as all of them.

For the last few weeks I have been trying to get up enough guts to go behind my Mom's back and get something pierced. I tried talking to her about it, but she said that it was upsetting her, and caused A LOT of arguments, so I gave up with that idea. I thought that if I did a load of research on the Internet, and showed that I could be grown up about it, and then she might change her mind and let me have a piercing. No such luck, it just made her get annoyed with me. As I carried on doing research, but for myself, I came across this website (I'm not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing) and I found the section on Tongue Web piercing... I stared at that page for a very long time. I thought the idea of piercing that bit of skin was disgusting and probably very painful (although most of the stories on BME insist that it is relatively painless) but as I read just about all of the tongue web, stories and looked more and more at the pictures, I grew to like it loads, and, I realized this would be a perfect piercing for me to have, as my Mom would probably not be able to see it. (Or so I thought!)

I got a sterile pin from out of the First Aid kit. I wasn't planning on actually piercing anything, I just wanted to see for myself whether it hurt or not, So I put the pin against my tongue web, and pushed a bit. I couldn't feel much, so I looked in the mirror to see how far the pin had gone it, and to my amazement it had nearly gone all the way through!! So I decided to push it a bit more, and then POP, the tip of the needle had come through the other end. By this time I was dribbling all down my hands (It's quite hard not too when you've had your mouth open for ages, and u are fiddling around with something under your tongue) So I took my hands out of my mouth for a second to dry them, but the pin slipped right back through the hole, as I hadn't managed to slide the pin all the way across. I tried to find the hole as quick as I could, because I was scared of it healing up before I got round to putting the pin back in. It didn't take long to find the hole again, and this time I made sure that I pushed the pin right through so that it was nearly coming out the other end! (It was quite hard to do, but took only a few minutes and was completely painless)

I ran round the house with a needle hanging out of my mouth, trying to find something more appropriate to put in my new hole. In the end I found some earrings, I sterilized them, and put one through my tongue web.

The next day I went to school and showed off my new piercing. A lot of my friends thought It as disgusting and a weird thing to want to have pierced, but all thought it was cool and really unusual.
There was no pain, apart from a slight discomfort when I talked, but that was only because of the size of the earrings. That night I went to Synapse (my local piercing studio) and brought a more suitable bar to put in it.

Although I only meant this piercing to be temporary, it's still in there now and I love it too bits! I was the only one in my school to have such an unusual piercing, but now some girl in the year below me has copied me... but I heard that hers looks crap anyway, so I'm happy!!

Nothing went wrong with my self-piercing, and it looks just as good as it would have if I had got it done professionally. BUT its always a good idea to get it done at a proper studio by somebody who knows what they are doing. Just because mine went well, doesn't mean that yours will!!
My mom has noticed my piercing now, but she wasn't too mad! She just said that I was stupid... All that fuss for nothing!

I've also, just recently got my labret pierced (I had this one done professionally) I've already brought a pink ball closure lip ring, but I haven't been able to change it yet because its not healed. When I've got more time I'll write that story up too.