My somewhat scary experience was last Friday, August 31, 2007. My good friend Chris had come into the city to visit me at school and we were making our way downtown, toward W 4th St. Crazy Fantasy Tattoo is a very small shop on a long strip of tattoo parlors and sex shops opposite New York University. It's very noisy and always packed, the girls there do fabulous tattoos and piercings and I had even gotten my Monroe piercing there about 6 or 7 months prior. During the small amount of time it took to get to the tattoo parlor, I wasn't actually thinking of getting anything pierced at the time, I was hoping to convince my friend Chris to get one himself, he had been talking of it in general recently and I was perfectly content for the moment with my Monroe piercing and various other earrings, although I had always wanted the septum done badly I had no real reason to get it done at the time, other than I want it, maybe soon...
At A Glance Author Katy Contact kaitlan_huber@fitnyc.edu IAM fleur de soleil When A week ago Studio Fantasy Tattoo Location Newe York City, NY When we get to the place, I ask Chris once again if he was gonna chicken out of the whole thing and not get anything done, and he did. So instead of having wasted two dollars in subway fare, I went in and talked to the girl at the counter. She was nice and she had a septum, small gauge in her nose, it was cute, I was inspired I suppose you could say. She said if I wanted the septum done they could do it right then and there, without waiting. The only other people in at the time was a woman and her daughter, the woman in a debate on whether she should pierce her nose and put a small diamond in it. That's cool of course, anyway, so I paid, sat down behind the counter and waited around talking to the other customers, "potential piercings" as they were. The girl goes outside next door and comes back in, she said she couldn't find the usual girl; she wasn't in to work yet. It wasn't a big deal to me personally who pierced me at the time. I guess spur of the moment things like that usually have to be either full spurs or no spurs at all, and I like the place well enough, it's clean and affordable and it's just the type of shop I've always wanted to work in, in the future when I have my own tattoo license.
The girl comes back into the shop with this very polite guy, whose name avoids my memory right now, and he says he'll do my piercing for me. We chat, he's friendly and seems to know what he's doing as I see him prepare. I'm talking to my friend Chris and then we get down to it. I'm used to pain, I was a self cutter up until about my freshman year of high school, and I enjoy the feeling of a new piercing every time, it's a lovely soft feeling in contrast to the sharp stab you'd associate with a needle in flesh. I wasn't scared at the time of the idea of the septum piercing, I've never been scared really when it comes to needles, hooks, piercing flesh in general, and it's usually more of an adrenaline rush, anticipation for the coming needle. However, this guy made me afraid to be stuck with a sharp thing that day.
He really was nice, no offense to him, but his hands when they were finally ready and coming at my face were literally shaking like a crack head's, a bad overdosing crack-head at that. The whole time in my head I'm thinking to myself "Holy shit! I'm gonna die. This can't be happening." I swear the guy must have stuck me in the nose three times before he matched it up with the other side. It was worse when he pressed in and didn't count off, which is to me a heavenly security blanket in the world of piercing, that one collective breath that takes in everything and keeps it in your chest tightly until the needle sinks through, it's wonderful usually. This pain in my nose actually brought tears to my eyes, a first in my many piercing experiences and mishaps, I really thought my head was going to fall off, the girl who had helped me before and who also had a septum piercing had to walk out of the shop in order to avoid watching the job being done, that's how bad it was. I was in so much pain for a moment, but then it felt just as amazing as a new piercing is supposed to, I couldn't really complain then, but my friend Chris was traumatized by the whole thing, I doubt I'll ever convince him to pierce anything now.