At A Glance
Author	Bensari
Contact	Bensari@bme.anon
When	A week ago
Artist	Rosa
Studio	Primal Mark Industries
Location	Boone, NC

"A rite of passage marks the transition from one life crisis to the next..." – from "Piercing and the Modern Primitive" by Jesse Singleton

As I write this, there's a piece of metal shaped roughly like a staple the thickness of a metal coat hanger passed through the flesh and cartilage in the center of my nose. This happened roughly two and half weeks ago. I'm going to divide this experience into two parts--the mental/spiritual "why" of the thing and then the physical "how, what, when, and where." I've written this to emulate the experiences I enjoyed reading, so it's a longish and detailed narrative. If you want to know the problems I had, what aftercare I used, etc., then skip down to the last bit.

The Mental / Spiritual – "Why?"

I'll start by describing it in terms that I like more than the literal description above or the slightly less literal "septum piercing." I'm thinking in terms of body politic, which is something that we in Western society tend to forget about, though it's perfectly familiar to many of us. For instance, in the Bible Jesus remarked that "what passes into" the Jews would not defile them; rather, it was what came from their mouths that would make them unclean. First century Judaism, as it's immortalized for better or worse in the Bible, is filled with body politic--the laws concerned with cleanliness and purity. Still today, when my wife and friends affirm their vegetarian or veganism, they are making a personal-political statement with their body. "The body is a temple." Try and think in this way--in terms of our physical bodies having both a conventional existence and a metaphorical, political, spiritual, and ritual significance.

I created a wound, deliberately, and then held it open. I pierced my septum and now wear an object that alters my face in a place dealing, as the eyes do, with expression.

There are three elements at work here for me:

-Septum piercing is an ancient and worldwide practice among ingenious cultures. Septum piercing is probably the oldest and most widespread type of piercing (except for ear piercing) in indigenous cultures throughout the world and throughout human history. What makes the septum different from ear piercing is that it's an overwhelmingly male piercing in most of these cultures (not to exclude the ladies, but this is about my personal experience, so it matters to me)--often used as a rite of passage for young men facing adulthood. Also, a modern ear piercing is still primarily a fashion statement, whereas piercing the nose often is not (granted, with many exceptions to both statements).

The idea of a self-imposed male rite of passage in our modern culture, which is so bereft of ritual and clear gender roles, appeals to me a great deal. The piercing is aggressive and virile in some ways--the effect gives the face added fangs, tusks, or horns when a piece of straight material is worn. A ring brings to mind the piercing of a bull. Metaphorically, you could say that a ring is controlled passion or that "tusks" or "fangs" would be an expression of unbridled passion.

The ritual aspects deal with pain and change. A rite of passage almost always recalls birth in some way, since it represents movement from death to life. It's laminal phase is pain, usually incorporating blood or water. Cultivating the open wound and displaying it changes a person's social environment--the way people view you and the way you view yourself. In the end, you have a specific event that marks a change in mindset and social environment.

-A piercing is an outward and physical sign of an inward and spiritual change. [kudos to my old English professor for the wording there--his adapted definition of a sacrament] A piercing, like ritual activity such as prayer, marriage, baptism, etc., is an outward and physical sign of an inward and spiritual change. You can point to a wedding ring and say "this signifies that I am married" in the almost the same way that you can point to a septum ring and say "this signifies a time of great growth and struggle that indelibly defined who I have become."

-Controlling self-inflicted pain is often a way to cope with out of control parts of life. The common psychological explanation for masochism is that people inflict physical pain upon themselves when they feel out of control of their environment and their own mental or spiritual state. Pain that one inflicts upon oneself is controlled--it can be overcome. The end result is not only the feeling of control, but there is an amount of power in knowing that you have overcome pain and that the pain was something you chose for yourself. There's a lot to be said for making the realization that you can overcome the hardships of your risks and decisions and stand whole on the other side.

For me, the piercing came at a time when I had lost a great deal of self-confidence. I was slipping into my vices and felt as if my will was ebbing away. To force myself to undergo the needle was a way to prove to myself that I am still in control, and the piercing is a reminder of that control.

Outside of the body politic, there are other more conventional reasons for me doing this. Probably the most prominent reason was my desire to find (and express) a connection for my brother and close friend Jake, whom I've neglected for so long and am attempting to reconnect to in a significant way. Jake has been pierced a number of times in a place in Boone, and he accompanied me to the shop in Boone where I got it done. The event, to me, will always be something that I shared with him in addition to its many other facets.

Beyond that, I did think that it would "look neat," and the fact that a septum piercing can be completely hidden only bolstered my resolve. After all, I still had to find a job within "normal society." I go back and forth on whether or not hiding the piercing undermines its status as a rite of passage. Part of me thinks that to hide it is to deny it. On the other hand, when I go about in business dress and act the young professional, I find myself smiling because I know that it's a complete lie. The shallowness is a sham, and my mask reveals the masks of others.

I guess you could describe my experience as an expression of "the modern primitive," but I tend to shy from that classification. It refers to a subculture that I am not really a part of. In some ways, I think that I reject elements of "the primitive" much more fully than the common subculture does while embracing some portions of it that they wouldn't necessarily think of. More than anything, though, I don't really look upon others who are pierced as sharing something with myself. There are too many elements in play, and I don't really feel that I can have the right to claim a common experience when that experience is so complex and personal. This is even true of Jake, whom I deliberately sought to form a bond of understanding with. There is something to be said for respecting an element of individual mystery.



~~~~~~~~

The Physical – "How, What, When, and Where?"

Before getting my nose pierced, I wanted a septum piercing seriously for maybe five months. I've considered it something that I would like to do since I was about twelve, but I rarely gave it serious thought. When my friend and brother Jake came to visit and I saw his ten gauge ears and tongue piercing, something clicked in my head and I thought, "this isn't just something that other people do--I could do this, and I wouldn't be alone in it. This is something that I could do with Jake." I resisted, though--knowing that my wife disapproved somewhat and that everyone who knew me thought that it was an idea that didn't really fit my personality. I waited, telling myself "if I still want this in three months, then I'll do it." In the meantime, I read others' experiences and thought about it. After three months, the idea had only grown stronger in my mind. I called Jake and made arrangements to get pierced while I visited with him in the town of Boone, North Carolina--a g ood way from where I live in Asheville. From that point on, I looked forward to the experience with the strangest mixture of fear and anticipation. When the day finally came, we decided to go early.

The shop, called Primalisms, was relatively small--tucked into one of Boone's storefronts. There were a couple couches facing a coffee table covered in magazines like Juxtapose, and a big black Harley sat off to one side. The tattoo artist, Cain, was at work in a small booth marked off with white walls and a 2x4 frame. For some reason, Cain made me calmer. He didn't fit my stereotype of a tattoo artist (think Hell's Angel). Instead he reminded me a little of an assertive, self-confident, and even somewhat gruff version of "Garth" from "Waynes World." Maybe it was just his long blond hair and glasses (I hope he isn't offended by that random impression--he's really quite a tattoo artist). He paused long enough to greet Jake when we came in, and they talked a little bit. Jake took me behind the counter and gave me "the spiel." I looked at Cain's portfolio while Jake pointed out the quality of the lines, points, and overall designs. After a while Rosa, the piece r, arrived, and we found out that she could do my piercing right then if we wanted. I agreed, and she led us into another booth behind the one where Cain was again bent over his work.

I was surprised at first--I kind of expected something more like a dentist office instead of a smallish room. There were four walls and one that had a large open space next to the door--Jake rested here and watched. Below the window was a canvas chair covered in a huge sheet of newsprint (to keep it sanitary). Rosa went to her counter and started gathering her supplies. She showed me the piece of jewelry that she'd ordered--a 10 gauge retainer that was curved like a "U" with points on the end sealed in the same type of bag that I'd seen doctors pulling scalpels out of before (an indication that it had been sterilized). Next she put on gloves, got the septum forceps, some alcohol swabs, and the needle. At one point she paused and looked at my dead-pan expression and asked with a kind of curious look "are you excited." "Yeah." I said in the same monotone, dead-pan way. She looked at the needle then and said something under her breath. It was easily the thickness of a metal coat hanger with a gaping, slanted, razor-sharp hole at the end. I think maybe she was surprised that I would choose this as my first piercing experience--that I was naïve or boastful.

At this point, I was having a difficult time remaining still. I was jittery, nervous, and excited, but I was determined to be in control. A lot of the experience was the serious intention of it, and I was not about to mar it by making stupid jokes to calm myself or allowing my nervousness to get the better of me. Instead, I tried to focus on breathing slowly and evenly and observing--feeling the way my muscles tensed and tingled with the adrenalin and endorphins while I consciously tried to still and relax them.

First she felt gently around in my nose for the spot that would work best--the "sweet spot" below the thick cartilage of the septum and above the cartilage that forms the shape of the nostrils. She marked off a spot with a pen, then erased it and marked off a different spot. When she seemed sure of herself, she got the forceps and put them in while apologizing for it--if I could have spoken coherently at the time, I would've told her that I was quite glad for her to use them and that the discomfort of having my septum clamped between two metal tubes was going to be nothing at all compared to the actual piercing. She wrapped a rubber band around the base of the clamps to tighten them down and then asked if I was ready. I said "yeah" again, kind of dumb from the increasing adrenaline and the effort to keep myself still. She picked up the needle, rubbing it in a little lubricant. "Okay, I want you to breathe and I'm going to count to three. One... " I started breathing a nd tried to focus on not moving at all, which was hard given that I was sitting forward in a the loose seat of the canvas chair. The strain on my back combined with my nervousness made me start to quake, but I didn't notice at all--Jake had to tell me that later. "Two... " I had a moment of confusion, because I had thought that she meant three breaths, but I had only just finished the first... "three."

I felt the needle hit the skin first--it was cold and had that chill pressure feeling that getting a shot at the doctor's office tends to have, but it built quickly into something entirely different. I could feel the needle moving farther, and then it was lost entirely in an overwhelming wave of hot pain that completely enveloped my face. My vision, already blurring as my eyes filled with water, went away completely for a moment as all I could focus on was the ball of pain in my head. Then the pain receded like a wave pulling back. The needle was through, and I was dimly aware of Rosa taking off the clamps. A single stream of water escaped my eye and ran down my face. She said "we're almost through," and I could see her placing the tip of the jewelry against the butt end of the needle.

What must have this been like for those indigenous tribes that pierced their young men on the threshold of adulthood? I couldn't imagine a sharp piece of plant or bone doing this instead of a needle.

I waited for what others' experiences had warned me about--that the jewelry coming through would be worse than the needle, but it was hardly noticeable against the constant ache that still made my nose and upper lip throb. "Okay, that's it." I asked if I was bleeding, and she said "oh yeah... hold still and let me clean this up." She cleaned some blood off and I felt the wave of pain recede further. I watched as she threw the gory needle into a special plastic biohazard receptacle along with her gloves, then started washing up. She asked if I was light-headed and I said yes, so she gave me a pixie stick and let me sit there for a while. A pixie stick was such an odd conclusion to the main portion of what I had been consciously envisioning as ritual.

Now, I have to say that the experiences I read beforehand differed greatly on the pain level. Most of them said that it didn't hurt at all, or only felt like a pinch. I'm inclined to think that, first, the pain level is highly individual and that, second, a lot of people lie about how much it hurt to appear more tough. Truthfully, I went in expecting it to hurt like hell and wasn't disappointed. The pain was worse than anything I have experienced in quite a while, but it was over within about three seconds. What's been far harder to deal with than that initial pain has been the discomfort and clumsy aftercare, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

After everything was done, I walked out with my nose still feeling raw and achy. The combination of the adrenaline and the feeling of the foreign object in my head made it impossible for me to pay attention to anything. I was constantly wondering whether people would see the blood, and I ended up having to visit a number of bathrooms that afternoon in order to clean up the blood and watery mucus that my injured nose kept producing.

Rosa gave me a 35mm film-tin of Satin anti-microbial soap and told me that I should wash it at least twice a day for two weeks. She said this was all the aftercare I would need--no salt soaks, no vitamin E oil, and certainly nothing like rubbing alcohol, bactine, or iodine. The reason being that the soap was strong enough to kill bacteria that could cause infection while still gentle enough not to hurt the tender new skin cells as they healed the piercing. She said to use a moist Q-Tip to clean off the jewelry before the soap was applied, then to carefully work the soap into the piercing by moving the jewelry back and forth. I did this vigilantly--making the mistake at one point of washing four times in one day and having some painful dry, irritated skin around my nose. By the third day there was still some soreness and a kind of an itchy, stingy tightness that feels like a healing cut should. I used cotton balls that have been cut in half and soaked in warm water to s oak the piercing before cleaning, and I invested in a good, small flashlight for peering up my own nose in a mirror--it was really helpful for knowing if I got things clean. If you're considering this, be prepared for having the mobility of your face restricted, because your septum moves with you jaw and mouth. Eating almost inevitably is difficult, and your nose will produce thin mucus that's hard to clean up and embarrassing in public. For that matter, don't even think about the initial pain of piercing when considering the obstacles to having it done. The discomfort and awkwardness of the healing process is a much more serious obstacle than the few seconds of intense pain. Plan for it.

It's been two and a half weeks since I got pierced, and it no longer feels uncomfortable except on the occasions when I have to flip the retainer up to hide it. As it turns out, the retainer scratches and pinches the inside of my nose when flipped up, and I'm going to have to widen it using a pair of CBR pliers. Picking jewelry more carefully would've fixed that problem and made my healing much easier. Avoid retainers with pointy ends--they look neat but can be uncomfortable when hidden.

The piercing looks great in my opinion--two thick pieces of shiny metal curving from inside my nose. It "flatters my face," as I've heard someone say. However, I had a moment right after getting it done when I was convinced that it was crooked. Closer inspection revealed that the hole was straight but my septum itself is not symmetrical, and the heavy jewelry has a tendency to lean to one side. The moral here: know your anatomy before plowing a needle through it. A larger diameter ring should make the irregularity hardly noticeable, though.

All in all, the experience was a success. I felt that I fulfilled all of the spiritual and mental elements that I set out to achieve in addition to the physical. I will probably end up getting pierced again if the elements in my life drive me in that direction, and I would certainly recommend it to others.