Alright. First, let me give you some details about this mod. I just turned 18 on Feb 27th of 2004, and i've had the dream in my head of this piercing since around 2000. Do the math, that means I was about 13/14 when I came up with the idea to get this done. In the four years I was considering it, I couldn't come up with one major reason why I shouldn't indulge myself. I did the research, and everything else I thought was necessary.
At A Glance Author MissPhae Contact MissPhae@bme.anon When It just happened Artist It was too fast to get a name Studio The cleanest shop I found on W4th. Location Manhattan, NYC Then today, at around 1:30 pm, at one of the many shops located between West 4th and West 3rd Street in the Village of NYC, I walked in a girl with a virgin body, free of piercings and tattoos (I used to have my ears pierced, but they closed up on their own 5 years ago since i never used them), and I left a woman with a slightly off-center septum ring, and $35 lighter.
The piercing place I went to is one of the newly started piercing/tattoo shops that has sprouted along that strip by the Subway and the subway (A/C/E/F/D/B), it has a white awning and two long glass display cases on either side. If you know which one it is just email me so i can update the info and the like, i'd appreciate it. Also, if you happen to be the guy that did my piercing, THANK YOU!
To be honest, I didn't expect bells and an angels chorus to start up when I walked in and spoke to an Indian guy behind the counter talking away on one of those newfangled camera phones, asking for the price of a septum ring, and upon being told it's price, I agreed to the what I think is a modest fee (I anticipated paying $40+). He opened something that look like a giant plastic tupperware cabinet and pulled out two circular rings with a small ball connecting it at the bottom, both were different sizes and in cute little individual sealed wrappers. I picked the slightly larger one, and from behind me came the piercer. And no, they didn't ID me, which I found a bit disturbing since I look the exact same way I do now that I did when I was 14, meaning they could have potentially pierced a minor and I don't like the idea of that in any way.
He was really sterile about it, very little talk to me and more with his coworkers, one who was putting black grease into his dreads and a skinnier guy. I brought my boyfriend with me, but he wasn't allowed in to hold my hand like I wished, but I had him as close to me as possible as I sat down in a worn, black barbershop-esque chair, and gripped the armrests as tight as possible as he set up. Everything was sterile. Wrappers for everything save the clamps he didn't use, and the purple marking pen he used to mark the trajectory of the needle.
He put gloves on and unwrapped a giant popsicle stick (tongue depressor), and borrowed a friends giant jar of vitamin a & d i think, it's the same stuff my dad rubs on his freshly inked skin (my pops has a bunch of tattoos and i've been around to see most of them done personally). He smoothed it inside my nose, but not before cleaning around the insides, removing any boogers or anything i might have had lurking up there.
I was a bit anxious, and I do wish he did more to calm me as I was a giant ball of nerves, but I figure he didn't know me well enough to crack a joke other than the "don't scream and don't yell, it won't hurt much", he said. The actual piercing stung, it burned as it went through my nose and it felt really odd, but now that I think about it it felt pretty cool, i'd love to get another one done at a later date when I consider it more clearly. Maybe my labret or something more exotic like getting a tattoo - i'll give you the experience afterward.
Afterwards, he gave me the rundown of how to take care of it, it sounded exactly like taking care of an ear piercing, with the rotate twice daily and clean it two times a day as well. Then they also told me a bit of their septum ring stories, and how one of them had to get it pierced three separate times (he had a really big ring in his septum it scared me a bit but the ring looked so ornate and cool!), and the guy who pierced my septum was telling me about how he bled like crazy after his, and I experienced no blood AT ALL, and I bleed over anything. He also told me it wouldn't be evened out until it was just about done healing, meaning for a while my septum ring will be off center, but no one will notice that anyway.
Once it was done and they finished joking around, he asked my permission to take two pictures of it for I guess the scrapbook of the work he's done, and of course I obliged. Hopefully at a later date i'll show up there myself and ask for a copy of those photos so I can post them here. The camera was big and black, and I didn't even bother smiling, I just made a stupidly faux-goth face for the both of them.
I just hope I don't catch a cold! I was told that catching a cold during the healing stages of a septum ring could just about be lethal to it, and quite frankly that's just not an option, so i'll be popping multivitamins like no tomorrow (i'm a flintstone kid!).