I had a feeling of being drawn to the septum piercing for several years. One evening getting ready to go out, I had taken an ear cuff and put it in my nose. I can remember the feeling very clearly of wearing it and the sense of freedom, possibility and self-expression it gave me. I never felt more beautiful or right. It was during the summer, at a party in the very late of night, and I was in the process of breaking up with one boyfriend and hooking up with another, although I didn't really know it at the time, and it was a night of change and possibility in the Present Moment, not in the future. The house where the party was had a long narrow hallway as an old-fashioned house will sometimes do, and walking up the hallway, people would appear and glide towards you almost as if they were going to collide with you, then pass closely with fish-eyes. I'll always remember that night, and it was the first time I wore any jewelry in my nose out of the house.
At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon When Ten years ago or more Artist Chuck Studio something in little 5 that started with a K I think Location Atlanta It took me a while to select a piercer and get ready to do it. In fact the piercer I wanted to use had moved from where I lived to Atlanta, so I had to go down there to get it done. I and my boyfriend of the time made a weekend trip of it, and stayed with friends. We found the shop where Chuck was working, and I picked out my jewelry, a curved barbell, and got the piercing done. It was funny, I have a tendency to swell a lot and this was no exception. Chuck did the piercing really quickly and the placement was perfect. We encountered no problems with the piercing. It was hard to get the jewelry through though, because the tissue started to swell so much so quickly. I left with the best after-care instructions *ever* and a bag of ice. Then we went to this neat Jamaican restaurant and got some wonderful black bean soup that was out of this world. We had a nice time in Atlanta, hung out and shopped some and just soaked up the sort of 'big city' ambiance, b/c we are from a very small town and Atlanta, although casual for a city, is more urbane than where we lived at the time.
Back home I was a little apprehensive about going back to work with my new piercing, but figured I was worried mostly about nothing because there were lots of other people at my place of employment that had piercings and it was supposedly ok if you weren't a manager. However, the septum piercing seems to disturb people more than a lot of other ones for some reason. Even a nose screw in the side of the nose doesn't really bug people out like a septum. Whatever! Anyway, I got some concerned looks from management, but it was several years before they finally passed a company policy against facial piercings. They did it while I was out of town so I couldn't participate in the process. They didn't even grandfather anyone in. So I was wearing a retainer at work. In some ways this was easier, b/c working retail I ended up fielding a lot of random questions from mostly older people about 'did it hurt' etc., and most poignantly from little old ladies who invariably asked me why a pretty girl like me would want to do such a thing to herself. I tried to respond in a way that might change their preconceptions of people who get piercings, and maybe it helped and maybe it didn't. It was a little draining some days. After a few years it was a moot point b/c they wouldn't let me wear it anymore anyway.
The end of the story with the piercing at work is rather sad to me still. The place I worked was supposedly a values-driven company and I believed in their mission and was committed to furthering it. As I said I couldn't wear it during work hours, but assumed I could wear it when the store was closed or when I was not on the clock or whatever. Well, I had it in one time when we had a store meeting and I was supposed to get up and make a brief announcement at the meeting. The store manager came up to me before I was supposed to speak and said I would need to take it out before I got up in front of the group to talk. I was really shocked at this. I still am, and it has made me much more of a cynic about life in general, I'm sad to say. Anyway, I decided to handle the situation by telling him that I couldn't take the jewelry out because I didn't have my retainer with me, which I knew wasn't true but hoped that he didn't. I told him that we would just have to have someone else make my announcement for me. So I didn't capitulate and take the jewelry out, but on the other hand, I wasn't as confrontational about his actions as I could have been. That incident still makes me angry to this day. It is the kind of difference of opinion that cuts to the heart of values that are very dearly held, and it's hard to be face to face with someone you think is so wrong-headed about something so fundamental and important as civil rights. For him it was about violating societal conformity standards, and I know he was angry at me too, for putting him in the position of having to bring it up.
Another aspect of having this piercing that I wanted to share with you had to do with the jewelry itself. I had an internally threaded ball on the circular barbell, and one side of it wasn't quite perfectly manufactured. It would get loose, over and over again, and I was always having to check it and tighten it. Since the shop was in Atlanta, going back and addressing the problem with them was not an option. Within a few weeks of having the piercing I started having nightmares where I would lose the ball. It was such a pain! Of course it got to be even more of a problem when I had to take the jewelry in and out for work all the time, ugh. I ended up getting a smaller ring with a captured bead, not as small as a hugger but smaller than the circular barbell. I still have the old ring, but I don't have the nightmares anymore! Those cracked me up, let me tell you!
The end of this piercing came abruptly on Halloween a few years ago, maybe 5. I got a wild hair to put my ring in after I was already out for the night and had had a few drinks. I left my retainer on the sink in the restaurant. Argh! I didn't realize it until hours and hours later, of course. At the time, I was too broke to afford another one. I kind of kidded myself I think about how long the piercing would stay open just with the occasional jewelry in it. There were a lot of other things going on for me at the time too that were pre-occupying me mentally and emotionally, and it was several months before I was able to track down a piercing shop a few towns over that had the kind of retainer I needed and scrape the money together etc.. I was able to get the retainer about 1/2 of the way through but not all the way. I would have had to get it re-pierced at that point. I haven't done it yet. I still miss wearing the jewelry though, and I may still get it re-done sometime. I feel like I am a person who is supposed to have one, my face is completed by this jewelry, and I feel like something is missing from me or that I am not showing a part of who I am when I'm not wearing it. I don't miss the hassle of taking care of the piercing though. I have an acute sense of smell and I could actually smell a faint skin smell constantly that was really, really annoying. Nothing else looks like a septum though, and that's the only one I ever really wanted. I ended up later getting my belly button pierced and I still have that, but I miss the septum.