Sacrificing the Labret
At A Glance Author Chubs Contact chubsjrs@gmail.com When A month ago Artist Ian Studio Scorpion's Den Location Davenport, Iowa
My fascination with piercings first began when I got my labret pierced. It had been my first and favorite piercing for a long time. And at first it really was not common at all, then progressively more and more people started getting it and my unique piercing wasn't unique at all. Then after seeing about 15 people with a labret piercing at a punk concert I realized that I needed something more unique, because the quality of it making me an individual started to leave.
One day I was looking through different piercings on BME with a buddy of mine. He IM'd me a link that I clicked on and first saw a vertical labret. I instantly fell in love with that piercing. Firstly, it still had the labret that I had loved so much and was unique and no one around here had it done that I had seen. So I started thinking on it a lot and one day a buddy of mine took me with him to the Scorpion's Den where we get all our piercings at. He got a center lip done and I talked to Ian (the piercer) about the vertical labret. He said that he could do it and at that time I had no money. Shortly after my mom got her taxes back and gave me $120 that she had owed me. I went back up to the Scorpion's Den with a friend of mine to do my nipples and my vertical labret.
I talked to Ian for a bit about it and he said it would be $60 and I handed him the cash and we went back to the piercing room. He asked me which of the 2 sets of piercings I would like to get first and since I believed that the nipples would hurt a lot more I decided to do my vertical labret first. I took out my labret and prepared myself for my vertical labret. He first tried to clamp it, but my skin was moving around too much for him to be able to pierce it right or something like that, so he was going to free-hand it. He lined up the needle and asked me if I was ready, and after a deep breath I said that I was and with that he gave me the 3-count and pushed the needle in. I was expecting a pain much like my labret and it was but just quite a bit worse. He finally got the needle though after what seemed like an eternity but was probably only 5 seconds. I didn't think it was all that bad but I had tears running down the sides of my face which was the first time I had shed tears during a piercing. Ian then put the piece (16g curved barbell) into my lip and asked me to take a look at it in the mirror, and I absolutely LOVED it. It was definitely painful but it was completely worth it. My friend I was there was horrified because it had bled quite a bit and my mouth had a fair amount of blood in it that I spit into a plastic cup with a little bit of water in it.
Then was my nipples, he told me to take my shirt off and put it on the back of the chair (their chairs are cold) and marked my nipples, then took the first needle and lined it up, gave me the 3-count, then pushed it through. I was expecting a HORRIBLE pain, but it really wasn't that bad, my vertical labret had hurt much worse. After that it had started to bleed quite a bit, Ian put some paper towels around it and then he told me that the second one was usually a lot worse as he marked up the second and lined the needle up. As he gave me the 3-count I wasn't expecting as bad of a pain as it was and I moaned a little bit from the pain. The second one didn't bleed at all, but had hurt a LOT more. I took a look at them in the mirror and loved them as well. I then gingerly put back on my shirt I was wearing. Then my friend and I headed to a drugstore on the way home and I bought some Advil and headed home.
Now after about 3 weeks I'm still loving my vertical labret and my nipples although I believe that my left one might be starting to reject. Outside of everyone always asking the stupid questions such as "Does that come out the top of your lip?", "Did that hurt?", and "How do you eat with that?" it's been great and pretty much everyone has loved how it looks.