I was quite a normal girl growing up I guess, very influenced by all the fun, pretty girls in magazines. I'm 22 now which means I was hitting puberty when the fabulous Spice Girls were at their peak. Which is obviously where I first got the idea for the tongue piercing, God bless Scary Spice. Obviously, being only 12 I had to settle on dying my hair Geri Halliwell red (and my Mum's lovely white bathroom...) but the thought never left my mind, especially when I got older and more into the rock scene and everyone around me was getting it done and looking so amazing with it. Roll on my 18th birthday, I thought.
At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon When A year ago Studio No Limits Location Reading, UK 18 drags around, A-level exams get completed, and I pluck up the courage to tell my Mum that I am 'brutalising my body, you're so pretty, why do you want to ruin yourself?' and so on, I'm sure you all know it well. I sit in the waiting room in the skanky depths of the Essex/East London borders surrounded by biker skinheads, and middle-aged women looking at rose and 'aww, isn't that a cute lil' cartoon devil' tattoos, wishing I could run across the road to the Wetherspoons pub over the road and have a swift drink to numb the pain a little, but guessing that they may guess I'd been drinking, due to the placement of the piercing!! So, it's my turn. The tattooist, is of the old-school variety, covered head-to-toe in skulls and snakes, and what I'm sure was a swastika on his thumb! He sits me down, I fill out the relevant forms, lying chronically about my alcohol consumption in the last 24 hours, truth be told I was still feeling a tad rough, and signed my life away. I fully braced myself as he pulled out my tongue and began to look for veins. I sit there, dribbling in an ungainly fashion, waiting for the go-ahead, seeing that I had checked my tongue myself a million times. He releases my tongue, and tells me that I cannot have it done. I'm shocked as I'd thought I would be ok, and he explains that there is a vein running down the tongue, he knows what he is talking about because he has a specialist tongue-piercing certificate and that he would never pierce my tongue, and if I went elsewhere and did it, I could end up with a chronic infection, lose my sense of taste or die. I nod sadly, walk out and phone my mum to tell her the good news, but bless her, she was gutted for me even though relieved. At least she didn't gloat, I would have been devastated!! I sulked for a few days, but believed a would get over it in time, as after all, there was nothing I could do about it rather than wish for a different tongue!!
The years passed. I went to university, got my nose pierced, which I had wanted for almost as long as the tongue stud. I got a new tattoo with my housemate, which is beautiful and I love it more and more each day. But yet I still hankered after my 'lost' tongue stud. I graduated, and was working in my university town in a pub I loved and people I absolutely adored. I was on the road to recovery after a breakdown the year before, and I decided it was time for a new start. So, I took my squeamish new housemate along to the much better tattoo parlour I had discovered whilst in Reading, with the words, 'Well, if I die, I die.'
I walk in nervous as hell, more so than before because I knew what I could be in for. I told them what I wanted and they just said, 'fine'. I explained what had been said to me 3 years before, and that they had a specialist tongue-piercing certificate, and they looked at me like I had 2 heads, then fell about laughing, explaining that they had never heard of it!!! They explained that everyone had veins, and they would just have to manouvere around it. I was still apprehensive though, but they put my mind at ease.
I sit down as I did all those years before, relieved that this was finally going to happen. He showed me the new needle he was going to use, marked my tongue and tols me to breathe in deeply. I felt the needle go in, obviously it was not nice but not overly painful, the stud was put in and the ball secured, all in about 15 seconds. It felt huge, but it was just the big one they pierce with, he made me sit down so I would not faint, I paid then walked my merry way with Adam to the pub to show it off to my girls, who bless them, looked impressed even though they'd had theirs for years!
Whilst the procedure was quick and easy, the aftermath was less so. First, I'm a hypochondriac so was paranoid about infection, so I was constantly mouthwashing, which I guess isn't a bad thing. Then there was the swelling. I didn't notice as such in a pain way, but the return of the lisp in my speech that I had got rid of years before, and the fact that for 2 weeks it took me on average 90mins to eat anything would prove otherwise! The bar was also very irritating due to the size but I knew that would be gone in weeks. I had one incident where I panicked as I changed my bar, couldn't get it back in and I swear I saw blood in my tongue. I thought, 'God, internal bleeding, I'm gonna die,' phoned NHS direct who told me to remove it. The bleeding stopped, if it was even there in the first place, I'm still alive to worry another day, and still have my fabulous piercing with which to play with and make photo's of me sticking my tongue out that much cooler! It was worth the wait.