I'm not sure exactly where to start. I've always had my ears pierced and I've always really love getting them pierced. Not just the needle going through the skin, but I love the aftercare. It might sound disgusting, but I like cleaning the piercing and the satisfaction of the crusties and all that. No really, it's normal, some of my friends do it too. When it comes to piercings, I've always been everyones Jewish mom. I have a Jewish mom and I know how it works, "Don't touch that, you're germy," "If you keep playing with it it'll swell up." All that good Jewish mom stuff [complete with macaroons, mmm] Anyway, this is an experience about nose rings, not about Jewish cooking. So when I finally turned 18, I was up at college already and I decided to get my nose pierced. My birthday [November 13th] was on a Tuesday, a crappy day to do anything. It's not Monday, it's not yet Wednesday and it just sucks. Notice no one goes shopping on Teusdays or anything like that. I f igured no one gets pierced on Tuesdays either.
At A Glance Author Lin Contact Lin@bme.anon IAM pixie pixel When Three months ago Artist Amiee Studio The Bearded Lady Location Northampton, Massachusetts My friend Sarah and I went into Northampton, which, if you don't know of it, is a hip little place by Smith College [also a hip little place]. First we tried Lucky's which is on the main strip of stores and has a cute boy who works there. What can I say, I like cute boys. Penelope [who is a wonderful piercer, by-the-way] was completely booked up, so we went to a place that was further out of the way, called The Bearded Lady.
When we got there, Amiee was just finishing up some bellybuttons on some UMASS girls, so Sarah and I waited and read the things we had to sign and the after care sheets. The release forms, if you will. When Amiee was ready to pierce us, we decided Sarah should go first because she was more nervous. She was nervous about the pain, I guess, whereas I revel in it. W00t. Sarah winced a little which made me nervous, and her eyes watered, which I suppose is natural, but made me really nervous: uncontrollable bodily reactions are not cool with me.
Amiee got Sarah's ring into place and then it was my turn. I was a little more nervous than I was before, and if it wasn't something I'd really wanted for a very long time, I might have just decided to fuck the whole endeavor. I sat down, with the bead I'd pick and Amiee talked me through it. She told me what she was going to do and how the needle would go in and then the jewelry would take the place of the needle and my eyes would tear a little and it would sting or some similar sensation. She marked my nose and I checked the marking in a mirror [with a really cool sticker on the back, "Kiss my fat ass!"]. Then she put the catching device thing in my nose [way to know the correct terminology, Lin!] and lined up the needle. She told me to breath in through my nose and out through my mouth and she would count to three.
1. . . 2 . . . 3.
And that was it, it sort of hurt, my eyes definitly teared up but the jewelry was in before I knew it. I must confess that I kept my eyes closed the whole time because I was just that nervous.
I followed the aftercare [sensitive eyes saline twice or thrice a day] and don't fuck with the jewelry.
I didn't have any problems until January 6th. I'd gone to see the Rocky Horror Show on B'way and I'd gotten the city sniffles. If you spend a lot of time in NYC in the winter, you might know what I mean. It's a combination of the cold and the fumes, your nose gets to being mighty drippy. So I'd been blowing my nose [attactive, no?] all night. Then I noticed something -- I'd lost the bead. Freak me the fuck out, why don't you. I put the empty space at the bottom of my nostril where I could keep uh, an eye on it and it wasn't too likely to get into the hole itself. Then I proceeded to walk around for the rest of the night looking like a massive dork [I *am* a massive dork]. I figured the next day I would go get a 7 or a corkscrew [since I suck at CBR's myself, especially when it's my sensitive nose we're talking about]. And I did get a corkscrew, there we are, problem solved.
Or so I though. See one thing didn't occur to me -- corkscrews kind of suck. About a week later my brother took me to Checker's [classy, no?] and we had a grand old time. When we were getting back in the car, my vainity caused me to look in the car mirror -- thank god -- and I noticed that that stupid corkscrew with the dumb flower on the end had fallen out somewhere. Stupid corkscrew. I didn't know what to do, and I had either the option of throwing a massive temper tantrum or approaching the situation rationally.
Natch, I threw the temper tantrum. No I'm kidding, I took one of the small rings out of my ear and put it in my nose to keep the piercing open. It hurt a little, seeing as how the back had closed up a tiny bit but at least I wasn't going to lose my nose ring. The earring actually stayed in better than the corkscrew and I put a band-aid over it when I slept until I could get out to buy a CBR or something worthwhile. I went to an Okay piercing shop and got an endless hoop aka a glorified jump ring. I had that worthless peice of not-really-round metal in my nose until I could get back to see Amiee and have her save the day. I got back on February 7th, after a month of nasal trauma, and of course she yelled at me for messing with it [I swear I didn't :p ] and replaced the ring and now my nose is very happy. Well, I'm very happy because my nose looks good.