Piercing night at the Satellite of Love!
At A Glance Author Anda Contact adastoli@yahoo.com IAM Anda When A year ago Location Atlanta Sounds like a really cool shop, huh? Ha. It's not. It's my living room. Yes, another adventure in home piercing your roommate that's an apprentice. It should bother me that I have more than one of these stories, shouldn't it?
Once again, I found myself on the black futon staring at one of my dinner plates laden with piercing instruments and accoutrements. The needle sitting in KY, the stoppers and of course, the paper towel which somehow signified sanitary conditions to us. This time I wasn't the only victim of the night. Two of our friends had gamely volunteered their tongues for the piercing event that was to be in our living room. Being a generous host, I let the guest go first.
Scott was a wuss about pain. No two ways about it. A puny girl could tap him on the shoulder and sent him screaming in pain. You can only imagine the poor fool who had to hold his hand while his tongue was being pierced had to go through. Which, as luck would have it, was me. After much squeezing and yelping, it was over for poor Scott. He went off to the back room to wait since he managed to tell us through a swollen tongue that the sight of blood made him sick.
The other guest volunteer of the evening decided at the last minute to wait and be last. This left me to go next. I was ready. Hey, I'd lived through my tongue, right? What's a nose and an eyebrow, I scoffed. Yeah, this is where it gets kinda ugly.
I sat down on the couch and started my deep breathing, feeling old hand by this point. I watched my roommate prepare the jewelry and change out gloves after touching non-sterile surfaces. Hands on my knees, I sat straight-backed and got ready for the puncture. We'd decided that my eyebrow was to be first. One of the more simpler piercings to do, or so we'd been told. He marked where he'd wanted it and gave me the mirror to inspect the ink flecks. Looked okay by me. He clamped the eyebrow and centered the dots. Everything was going fine. I was breathing correctly, eyes closed and was all set. The needle went through, my roommate talking me smoothly through the whole thing. A slight pinch, nothing more. I smiled to myself. In went the captive bead ring, and then... I felt something warm on the side of my face.
'What's that?" I gestured to my face. My hand was batted away. "Nothing," he replied and proceeded to dab my face with a paper towel. I'd done some reading before tonight's escapade and remembered that it may bleed a little bit. No problem. I can deal with it. He started to close the ring and got the captive bead situated in his hand and ready to put in. And missed. It dropped into my lap, which I had the presence of mind to have a paper towel there. He picked it up and tried again. It falls once more to the paper towel. I hear him mutter something semi-comforting. I opened my eyes and saw him set his jaw with a grim determination to get this captive bead in the ring. Again, he misses. I catch it in my hand and give it back to him to try for yet another time. I won't bore you with the details, but it took a good hour of finagling, repositioning, closing, opening and cursing to get the bastard in. This was followed by much assurance that he knew how to get it in, now, it was just a matter of getting used to it.
"You ready for your nose, now?", he asks. I'm pretty sure the adrenaline coursing through my veins had more than a little to do with how readily I agreed. Grinning, with dried blood down the side of my face, I said, "Sure!"
Breathing deeply on the couch, once again I watched him get everything ready. Another captive bead ring was in my future. Completely trusting my apprentice roommate's assurances I felt that this would pose no problem.
I was very, very wrong. Not only was dried blood on the side of my face, fresh blood was running down the front of my face. The positioning was perfect, the needle slid through with no resistance. The worst problem at that point was making sure I didn't sneeze with the needle still resting in my nose, or for that matter, all over my roommate's face. But there was that captive bead again. Tugging this way and that, my roommate tried every conceivable way to get this bead in the ring. After yet another hour of maneuvering with the ring, finally... The bead was secure. And I looked like I'd been through a war. The blood had snaked down my lips, chin, neck and shirt. One look in the mirror at my new facial piercings and that was all it took. I was in love with them. I didn't care about the blood, the captive ring, or even that my roommate was using my dinner plates at piercing trays, I had face jewelry and dammit, I loved it.