Lets foreshadow a bit, I am a body piercer, or at least I was until I quit my last piercing job. My coworkers would laugh at me, studying my "Gray's Anatomy" instead of flipping through old copies of "PRICK" magazine, and scanning BME and the APP web site instead of playing online poker. I took my job very seriously, and the results provide me with a loyal cliental that would recommend me to almost everyone they knew. It also cost me my job, when I refused to agree with the other body piercer who actually and honestly believes the APP and BME are conspiracies and to quote "full of shit, full of freaks, are after your money, and reporting all the information you give to the government". I was told if I couldn't agree with his methods and aftercare I could no longer work there. I left.
At A Glance Author CupCake Contact InsomniaticCupCake@yahoo.com IAM CupCake When It just happened Artist myself Studio bathroom Location next to my bedroom I tried to get piercing jobs in other shops, but I never got hired. Some shops had the same archaic piercing ideals and terrible bedside manner that I had just left, and others were so stuck up that the interview was like slowly twisting bamboo shoots under my fingernails.
I still had my own piercing supplies, and would pierce friends occasionally, but between buying jewelry and dealing with a loud, hot pressure cooker that I would have to push to the limit to meet autoclave tempature and pressure, I stopped because it just wasn't worth it. I sterilized my tools, and packed everything away.
It wasn't until two weeks ago that I broke the kit back out. My boyfriend wanted his belly button pierced, he also wanted a frenum. I had jewelry for both, so I agreed. After piercing him, I picked through what jewelry I had left, and pierced my own lip. A few days later, I pierced my own tongue.
I've had my tongue pierced three times before. Once by a piercer when I was 18, before I was involved in the body modification culture and profession. Once by a friend, piercer, then-coworker and IAMer (IAM LaurenMarie), and once by my ex-boss, who pierced my tongue so crooked I took it out within a month since I was too embarrassed to show people.
I own a bottle of watermelon "Hurracaine Gel", so it made piercing my tongue much easier than I thought it would be. I used a 14ga 1" barbell, about 5/8th of the way into the tongue. The piercing came out perfectly centered.
My ultimate goal is to split my tongue, something I never thought I'd want to do until I kissed a boy with a split tongue almost 2 years ago, and knew that is what I wanted to feel in MY mouth for the rest of my life.
I'm still not sure if I want a proffessonal to split my tongue, or if I want to slowly do it myself by piercing myself down the center of the tongue multiple times and increasing the size of the barbells until the tissue between the piercings becomes thin enough to scalpel open safely, and without the worry of the skin growing back together. I also own a cauterizing pen, which will probally come into play if choose the DIY method. Either way, having a large gauge piercing as the ending "base" of the split will help. The 14ga barbell was the first step towards this very long, painful journy.
This morning, I woke before dawn, mentally prepared to take the second step, streching the first piercing. I own a 6ga taper, so yesterday I bought a 6ga barbell. I would have preferred a metal barbell, but the prices of them in local shops was outragous, and when you order off the internet, sometimes you just don't know what your going to get, so I chose a black acrylic barbell. Had I been piercing anyone else, I would never use acrylic jewelry, but I know my own body and I've never had a problem or allergic reaction to acrylic before, even in fresh piercings.
The taper was sterilized and bagged, but the jewelry, being plastic, I could not steam, so I unscrewed both balls and dropped it in a shot glass of providone-iodine. I took 3 ibproffen to accommodating for the swelling that was about to occur, bushed my teeth and washed with biotene. I set up my station with Q-tips, paper towels, the "Hurracaine" gel, an extra-large forester clamp, gloved myself, and put the taper in a glob of vaseline. Then after being so professional about it, I sat cross-legged on my bathroom counter in front of the mirror in my pajamas.
I numbed my tongue, making sure to get the gel inside the piercing by moving the barbell up and down. Within a minute, I was drooling like a mogoliod and ready. The taper went into my tongue, going from top to bottom, very smoothly. I put the barbell up the taper and pushed down, only to have the barbell fall off the top of my tongue, and the taper fall out the bottom.
Blood. and spit. Lots and lots of spit. I didn't panic. I took the barbell, dropped it back in the idone, took it out, and tried again, this time going from bottom to top. The same thing happened. The numbness was wearing off, and it was now or never. I opened up the clamps, thinking if the tongue was compressed it would be easier. While in the clamp, the taper would not go through at all. Toss that aside, looked myself in the eye, and tried one more time, going from bottom to top.
I slid the taper in, followed by the barbell, and the barbell went halfway into the tongue. I removed the taper and pushed with all I had in me on the barbell. I could hear it tearing its way through the tissue. One... I can its 3/4 of the way through. Two... I can see the threading! Three... its through! Its covered in tissue and I'm drooling all over myself, but its through! I put the balls on and while cleaning up created the largest spit bubble I've ever seen, bubble-gum champion sized spit bubble. I kicked myself for not having a camera.
For the first hour, I was in intense pain with some bleeding. The type of pain that keeps you from sitting still or thinking about anything else. I crawled back into bed with my boyfriend, who was just getting up to go to work. We made love, and for a moment, it distracted me from my mouth.
When he left at 7am, I layed back in bed and layed a towel under my head. I let my mouth hang open and drooled for about an hour. After enough of that, I got up, and have been drinking ice water for hours.
Its noon now, and I'm so swollen I cannot talk, but the pain is minimal, there is no blood, its on par with bad sunburn or a bee sting. I don't expect to talk for a few days, but the swelling isn't as bad as I thought it might end up. I spray it with a bottle of H2Ocean every once in a while for the hell of it, and walk into the bathroom to stare at it about once an hour. The jewelry is very comfortable, and it looks great.
Just one step closer. I'm not sure if the next step will be another 14ga piercing closer to the tip of the tongue, or to strech the 6ga to a 2ga or possibly a 0ga, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it, and that time will be when I can actually pronounce things again.