At A Glance Author soze Contact soze@fork-bomb.com IAM instigator When Six months ago Artist Rebecca Studio Viva Lark Vegas Location Albany, NY Wherein I describe pretty much everything an otherwise informed and intelligent woman can do wrong to a professionally performed piercing.
For as long as I can remember, I've hated my nose. It's big, longish, slightly crooked, and has a bump midway down. Basically, you can tell somewhere along the way someone was playing hanky panky with the Greeks. Moreover it was completely unlike the noses on my grammar school compatriots. Had my charming personality and quirky interests not shone like a beacon to my schoolmates, surely I would have been teased for my nose.
I had played with the idea of getting my septum pierced for months beforehand; at one point I was a mouse-click away from buying septum forceps and a needle to just do it myself. But I have this aversion to pain, particularly the self-inflicted kind; we're not big fans of each other. Pain is definitely not on my Friends List.
The decision to finally go ahead and do something about this septum hankering came during Albany's annual Tulip Festival. A bakajillion Dutch settlers formed Albany a few centuries ago and ever since then its residents have celebrated tulips by scrubbing the streets and drinking themselves insensate. I decided to wander the Tulip Festival in the park on my bike, occasionally stopping to watch some performance or buy a random art print. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the goofy 18th century reenactors were firing a cannon. I hadn't eaten, and had been tooling around on my bike for some hours, when I decided that this would be the perfect time to get pierced.
No, I am not one for wise, reasoned choices.
I wandered over to Viva Lark Vegas and locked up my bike. While my favorite piercer, Scott Jania, was a thousand miles away in my native Chicago, I knew via hearsay that Lark Vegas was at the minimum clean and competent. I made my way in, peeling off helmet, gloves, and sunglasses on the way, and asked the usual questions: jewelry, method, price, aftercare technique. The piercer, Rebecca, answered smoothly and completely: 14g 5/16" circular barbell, clamps, $60, salt soaks. Just what I wanted to hear!
Rebecca got the tools ready and a 'claved barbell set up in the piercing room, then called me back. She had me sit down on the leather bench, then pulled on some rubber gloves and felt around for my septum's sweet spot while carrying on small talk about motivations and previous piercing experience. At some point she informed me that I actually had a fairly straight septum, which would make piercing somewhat easier. With a cotton swab she gently Betadined my septum and clamped it. A deep breath in while she steadied the needle, and
Ker-POW. A steady, stinging pinch right in between my nostrils knocked me out of whatever hunger-induced haze I'd been swimming in and dumped a fresh jolt of adrenalin right into my system. Quickly, Rebecca removed the clamp and followed the needle through with the barbell. She fought with the tiny bead for a moment, and then it was done. She offered me a tissue for any blood, and the mirror.
My brand new moustache was shiny and strange. I'd fooled around with sticking a CBR up my nose to fake having a ring up there a couple times, but it wasn't the same. Already I could feel blood rushing to my nose, and a bit of swelling, and I had to sneeze a few times while Rebecca explained her preferred aftercare, and that she would repierce free of charge should it come out crooked. I paid, and tipped her a $20, then re-accoutered and hopped on my bike, feeling how strange it was to have the wind whipping around a new bit of metal in me.
In the following weeks I didn't really treat it well. The very night of getting pierced I got sloshed at a party at a neighborhood bar. I followed my preferred method of Leaving It The Hell Alone, but considering that my nose is a high-action zone it didn't really help. The circular barbell kept getting thwacked; on one memorable occasion a cat kicked me in the nose. I resorted to sea salt soaks; still no help. Finally, I ordered an Industrial Strength steel retainer in the hopes that stuffing a retainer up my nose and forgetting about it would help it heal.
Changing out an externally threaded barbell from an unhealed piercing is a bloody and unpleasant experience. I flipped up the retainer promptly afterwards, soaked, and rinsed it. I left it there for nearly three weeks, and by then it had calmed down enough that I felt confident to pronounce it mostly healed. It was eight weeks after the initial piercing that I was happy that it had healed straight and properly.
Since then I've stretched it to 12g twice and brought it back down to 14g to make it more roomy for double flared jewelry like spikes, and I can now wear a variety of jewelry in it. I've found that using a ring opener square in the nose is novel to say the least. Now that it's getting cool out I've bought a glass retainer to help keep from frostbiting it. I've windburned and chapped it a few times because I'm stupid and like to ride my bicycle in the middle of the night in fall, but a little bit of Onetribe oil makes it happy again. When I get the sniffles though I do prefer the retainer because it gets out of the way of my tissues.
And just think, in six months I've only gotten one "like a bull!" comment. But it was from my future rodeo star cousin, so I think I'll call that okay.