Many people know that if they go to a piercing/tattoo parlor and the person that's going to help you is sitting around smoking and not paying much attention to you personally, that should probably be a clue for you to get out of there. I know now that anytime I plan on getting a tattoo or piercing I'm not going to rely on the reputation they claim to have, and I'm going to go to the most sterile, friendly place I can find.
At A Glance Author Monica Contact xrealeyesrealizerealliesx@hotmail.com When Five years ago Location Rockland, Maine When I was in my mid teens, I was very interested in learning about piercings. I would chat online with people who did piercings, asking them all sorts of questions. I learned pretty much all I could soak in at that age as far as basic knowledge is concerned...make sure that your needles are autoclaved, etc. etc. (It's surprising how many people don't know about things like this, then go get themselves pierced.) I'd had my belly button pierced and my ears gauged out to a half inch by this time, so I thought I knew everything I needed to know about getting a piercing.
I had my bellybutton done at age 14, I don't even want to think about how ignorant I was about piercings then, and the horrible place I was pierced at.
So for my seventeenth birthday I asked my father to sign for a piercing, and I opted to get my tongue done. I was out visiting him in Maine for the summer. He lives on Vinalhaven, an island off of Rockland. He's a lobster fisherman. I found online that there was a tattoo parlor in Rockland that had what sounded like great credentials. They'd won numerous awards in the state and alluded to being THE best in the state. So I walked in the door with that in mind.
There was one guy working. He was sitting behind his desk smoking. That should have alerted me.
It took him five minutes to acknowledge us. That should have alerted me.
He was very gruff and impatient. That should have alerted me.
Here I was thinking I was smart because I found a place that had good credentials and I thought I knew what I needed to know about piercings, and I let it pull a blanket over my head to everything that should've been warning me to find another place.
So he has me sit on a stool and wash my mouth out with mouthwash. I do believe that everything was autoclaved and pulled out of a plastic package, but I can't quite remember. He shows me the barbell he's going to put in my tongue. I recognize that it's a 5'8" and ask him "shouldn't that be longer?". He said no, a regular barbell is going to be just fine, despite the swelling that is going to occur in my tongue.
That probably should've alerted me too.
So he pierces my tongue, and it scares me because he pushes the barbell in so hard the needle POPS out. It goes flying.
I don't think that's right.
So we pay him and leave. I go home, chew on ice, eat soup, and wait for the swelling to happen, then to go down.
The next day my tongue is pretty swollen. I notice that it's swelling up around the ball of the barbell. I'm a little alarmed, but I keep in mind he told me it'd be fine, so I ignore it.
The next day the ball is almost hidden in my tongue. It's hard to describe, but it was almost like my tongue was a resilient gel and the barbell was pulled down and sat right beneath the surface. I freaked out, thinking that my tongue was going to swallow the ball. So I took the top of one of my belly button rings, which was a ball with a loop on it and put it on. It worked how I thought it would in that it elevated the ball and it wasn't being sucked into my tongue anymore.
Unfortunately, later I found out that I had scar tissue built up inside where the loop was, from when it was swollen. 4 years later I still have that bump.
And the icing on the cake?
The piercing was so crooked (and not in a sweet intentional way) that I took it out a year later.
If you ever find yourself in Rockland, I'm pretty sure there's only one parlor and you shouldn't go to it. I will never go back. And no matter how much studying you've done on the subject, and how good you think the credentials are at the place you visit, keep your eyes open. If you see anything that seems sketchy, leave. A professional parlor is going to be clean, friendly and efficient, and that will reflect on their work.