I've been fascinated by people with tattoos and body piercings for most of my life. When I was a child, the only people I saw with piercings were in the pages of National Geographic magazines or on PBS specials. I didn't realize that people in America had the option of piercing anything other than their ears, until I was in junior high and saw girls with pierced nostrils.
At A Glance Author sarahblades Contact sarahblades@bme.anon When Five years ago Artist Chris Studio Imagine That Location 183 and Beltline, Irving TX When I was fourteen we spent a brief period of time living over the road in my step-dad's eighteen wheeler, and I will never forget the man who inspired me to get my septum pierced.
I was raised by parents who weren't conservative per se, but very close minded about things like music and body art. One day we were in Green Bay, Wisconsin at a truck stop and I was entering to use the ladies room and grab a soda, when I did a doubletake at the man coming out of the exit door. He had wild dreadlocks, and his entire face was tattooed with very thin blue tribal pinstripes, and he had a huge doorknocker of a septum ring, and I thought to myself..."One day I will have my nose pierced and it will look like that."
I was pretty poor as a kid, and for my eighteenth birthday I was gifted at home with a bible, but at school everyone I knew donated money to my piercing fund. All of the kids in my classes were anticipating me coming to school with this ring in my nose that could be hidden and I wouldn't get in trouble for having it, so it would be like me flipping a secret middle finger towards the administration at good ol' Mabank High School. Tragedy struck when I lost my ID two days before my birthday, with seventy-five dollars of well wishers' money in my wallet, and all I had was my birth certificate and student ID, which the three shops I went into on my birthday couldn't accept as verifiable identification. (I was heartbroken, but didn't blame anyone for doing their job, their was some grumbling, but I got over it.)
Fast forward to being nineteen years old and out in Deep Ellum with friends both new and old, and one of my new friends (Jermaine) decided he was going to get his septum pierced. We went to Ace in the Hole and I watched his entire piercing process.
That Christmas, a friend of mine (Annessa Thomas, if you're reading this I love ya!) and I went to see The Lord of the Rings the Two Towers and afterwards she told me that her father had insisted she buy me a gift on his credit card. I got this wicked grin on my face and said..."Let's go get my septum pierced." The closest studio between the movie theatre and where I had to go home to was Imagine That (2) on Beltline in Irving, and Chris Judd was my piercer.
When Annessa and I walked in, we didn't have to wait because they weren't busy, and I sat down on the table, took my glasses off, let him clean my nose up, and the other man who was working with him took his hat off while he was clamping me. I asked him if he was sweating because my friend Tim always told me if your piercer is sweating not to let him pierce you because it means he's nervous. He assured me that he wasn't sweating, that his hat was just blocking his vision, and at that time, I was feeling a little antsy. I looked at both of them and asked what it felt like because neither of them had anything visible sticking out of their noses, and Chris told me that when he had his septum pierced, it had blacked both of his eyes. I said "You're joking, right?" and he told me that he had his pierced at a 6 ga, to which I replied.."You're nuts."
I closed my eyes and Annessa held my hand and I took a deep breath in and while I was letting it out, I felt a crunch/pinch/burning in my nose and my eyes watered, then Chris told me to look in the mirror and see the big needle sticking through my nose. I was so excited, and I had him put a retainer in instead of a CBR or horseshoe so that I could hide it for work without taking it out. I remember cleaning it with Dial soap and putting the antibiotic ointment on it that he gave me, and within a couple of weeks it wasn't sore anymore, but the first day after I had it done I woke up with blood crusted all over it and my face, but nothing after that. I have been able to instantly recognize the scent of Dial or Provon ever since. That smell always reminds me of my first piercing, how happy I was with it, and how excited that I was because I felt this sense of belonging, as if there was something that I was missing that I had finally gotten. I felt, if you will, like part of a tribe, and I knew that if I went somewhere I would be recognizable to others of my like.
I've had it for five years now, and since I had my son I don't usually wear anything in the hole, but it is always there, and it never closes. I hope that I will have it until my dying days.