My name is Erika and I am known as Hallmark on IAM. I have been part of this community for some where in the ball park of six years. I have been getting pierced and tattooed longer than I can remember. I really do not recall which came first either: getting tattooed or getting pierced. The only thing that I know is I love them and they will always be part of my life.
At A Glance Author hallmark Contact hallmark@bme.anon IAM hallmark When Three months ago Artist Yurah Kalmikov Studio Tattoo Academia Location Kiev, Ukraine Rewind three or so months ago. I was in Ukraine with the Peace Corps and had numerous piercings and tattoos done there. I was there for two years teaching English at a university. During my time there, I made three friends who were all both tattoo artist and piercers. While there, I got eleven piercings and four tattoos done.
The tongue was something that I said that I would never pierce. It is a muscle and I knew that it would never grow back if I took it out afterwards. I guess that you just never say never. I had it done a single time (the first time) while I was home (in Idaho) last Christmas. It healed really quick and it was relatively painless. I just drooled a lot. I also broke the same tooth twice on the first piercing. I was lucky that peace corps had a good dentist. He fixed it and I traded that barbell for a shorter one.
One night, I was surfing on bme and thinking about what I wanted to pierce next. I came across the section on multiple tongue piercings. I looked through them and fell in love with the double tongue piercings. I wanted one and after much research, decided that that would the next one.
On a fluke, I ended up in Kiev the next week and went by to see Yurah at Tattoo Academia. He had done all of my piercings in Ukraine (even the difficult, actual clitoris). I trusted this man and knew that I would be in good hands. He looked at my tongue and told me that we could do it, but I would have to take out the one that I had and pierce closely on either side of it. He said that that was the only was because if we put a new one in front of the existing one, it could cause a speech impediment since it was so close to the front and would be hitting my hard palate. He told me to come back within two weeks after the original one healed. I went back to my village two hours away from Kiev, removed my barbell and it was business as usual. It actually closed really fast, even though I had had it pierced for about eight months.
Two weeks or so later, with a healthy and healed tongue, I headed off to see Yurah. When I got there, he and I talked a little and then got down to business. I knew what to expect because of the previous piercing but I was still a little apprehensive. It happens in my case right before every piercing. I sat down in his "dentist chair) and rinsed my mouth out with an aneseptic rinse first. He strapped on gloves and I put on a dentist's "bib" and away we went. First, he had me flip my tongue up to look at the underside of it. Then, he marked in two places and sprayed my mouth with a lidocaine solution that the dentists use in Ukraine. It is specially made for anything with a mucous membrane. He, then, attached forceps to my tongue and and had me take a deep breath. As I was exhaling, he pushed the first needle through. He was talking madly in Russian trying to tell me things, but I just kind of sat there. I told him that he had to show me what he wanted because even though the languages were similar, I had studied Ukrainian and had not learned a lot of "piercing vocabulary". That part was kind of funny.
We got the first one through and rinsed again and then came the second one. We did it with two, regular stainless steel 14 gauge barbells. I spit again after we had put in the second one and that was that. We were done. I remember drooling a lot and being able to feel it when it went through the layers in my tongue. I thanked Yurah and was out the door.
There was little blood and minimal swelling. I talked a little funny for the first couple days because it was my body getting use to it. Only one of my students notice and that was funny because I think they all did and did not want to risk being rude by saying anything. I did the water rinse after everything that came into contact with my mouth and healing was pretty uneventful. Yurah was and is a really talented and patient piercer. I anyone is ever in Kiev, they should go and see him. On a final note, I love this piercing, especially when I do not realize that I am playing with it and people give me some really randomly, crazy looks because of it.