I have recently had many a visit to my good friend who happens to own his own tattoo/piercing business (my new additions from here add up to two tattoos and one new tragus piercing), run out of his basement. However, contrary to how unprofessional running a parlor out of your basement sounds; he is an extremely talented artist and piercer, as well as very professional about his work. Nothing is ever out of place, and everything is always clean and sterile. He has a general medical license as well as his tattoo/piercing license, and a business permit, all via Tri-County Denver.
At A Glance Author Bradley When It just happened Anyways, come Friday night (I had set up an appointment the previous week) I'm ready to get my tongue pierced. I have most everything else fun pierced that I want for now at least, and I had just put my second frenum (both are self-done) barbell in today. One piercing down, two more to go. I had been toying with the thought of getting my tongue pierced for quite some time now, as I have 12 others and can't wait to add to that number. I decided about a week previous to the appointment that I was going to get Venoms. I personally think they are much cooler than just a regular, centered tongue piercing. So we sit down and he gives me the standard release forms and the whole shebang, and once I finish filling it out we get down to business.
First of all, I am given 3 Dixie cups; one filled with Listerine, and the other two half Listerine, half water to dilute the solution. My first instruction is to take the pure Listerine and hold it in my mouth for one full minute to cleanse and disinfect my tongue before piercing it. The other two are for rinsing and after cleansing once the piercing is done, since obviously there WILL be blood. After a minute of Listerine mouth cleansing, your tongue can tend to get fairly numb. (And by the way, if you don't hold the Listerine in your mouth for a full minute, he will instruct you to spit what you have out, and start all over again with another mouthful.)
Once I am done washing out my mouth (I just took the first minute.. might as well get it over with), he tells me to lay down on the appropriate seat, and lets me know that he is going to use a sharpie to mark placement and that he wants my opinion, as well as that of one of my friends who happened to be there. The placement looked fine for the most part but we all decided that one side should be moved just a hair because it was further back on my tongue than the other. Not a problem.
Everything is lined up properly and ready to go. He puts the clamps on, on the right side first and lifts my tongue up and out to assure both bottom and top placements are correct and that there is no conflict with nerves and whatnot. I'm told to take a deep breath, and then breathe out slowly. Before I even realize it, the first barbell is in and looking awesome placement-wise. Now its time for the second hole. This is where things get really fun.
Everything is lined and a looking good. The needle and jewelry are pushed through and set up. Now for the "after-piercing-mirror-shot"; me, my friend and my piercer decide that the placement of the second (left) bar-bell is misaligned and the placement is just a little bit off (just as when it was marked). So he tells me that if I want to fix it he could take the one bar out and re-pierce it making sure to align it better.
As I am rinsing my mouth out to clear the flowing blood from view of my new, but crooked piercings, I decide that I am going to go with what he suggested. So I let him know that I want to just fix it now and get it over with. So we all tried to figure out where the new placement should be. Easily agreed upon. The hard part is actually getting it to work out this time. I'll spare you all the details, as the piercing went exactly as it did before; deep breathe, and my piercing is done before I realize it.
I sat up once more for everyone, including myself, to check it out and see if it was better this time. Well, uh, it was worse. We don't know how it happened because everything looked perfect when pre-marked on my tongue. So we took it out one more time. By now my friends are joking around with the piercer and me that I have absolutely no sense of pain anywhere in my body (which is pretty true, I have a high pain threshold), and one of them are like "you should just knock him out and do it until you get it right". Naturally I respond "yea man just drug me and get it over with", so he puts some lydocaine in a Dixie cup and tells me to swish it around in my mouth and that the longer I keep it in my mouth, the number my tongue will get. I swished for maybe 2 minutes as I didn't really need an anesthetic; I was just joking when I said to drug me. Oh well.
To make a long story short we finally got placement and all that jazz correct. Once we are done he tells me that I don't owe him anything since the piercing was such a bitch to get right. I gave him a tip anyways just because of the thought of helping out a fellow body art fiend/ artist/ etc. He gave me all the aftercare information and such, and I went on my way and told him I would see him soon (I am always in and out of there).
Later in the evening, not even two hours later, the ball on the first barbell came unscrewed. I panicked and tried to put it back on, but in the midst of doing so must have rubbed the second one the wrong way, because it came off as well. I got both of them out of my mouth so that I could try to put them back on the bars, but it was too late. Both bars had pushed themselves out. I was so pissed off. The bars would not go back through my tongue (which makes sense seeing as how it was only like 2 hours fresh). I got a total of FIVE piercings today; 4 of which are now gone. I called my artist back up and told him what happened and told me to give it a week to heal up and to call him after a week and that he will re-pierce both holes for free. This is my story of how I am so magical that I can turn five piercings in to only one piercing.
In exactly one week from today (today = January 9), I am going back and getting my tongue pierced RIGHT, with no problems this time. I will keep you posted with pictures and another story next week.