It was hard enough to get Scott to take care of his 16ga "snake bite" twin lip piercings when I did them, so I was hesitant to gauge the center of his lip from nothing to a 4ga. It was like every 5 minutes I was slapping his hand away from his mouth or pushing him away when he'd try to french me, and because of this they healed on time.
At A Glance Author CupCake Contact InsomniaticCupCake@yahoo.com IAM CupCake When A month ago Artist Me Studio Scott's Room Location the basement
The boy has defiantly taken advantage of dating a tattooist and body piercer since our relationship started, sometimes encouraged by myself, but mostly being inspired by BME.
When I first showed him BME, and the more "interesting" piercings and modifications, he did what most people do when I show them a lip plate or a back pull: "EWW."
Fast forward 9 months and the "EWW." has faded away. He's picked up my habit of browsing the galleries almost everyday, soon after the request started coming in for surface piercings, streched lobes, tattoos and most recently: the "large gauge lip procedure".
This is the story of the "Large gauge lip procedure." Duh.
One of my best friends is lucky enough to work in this hip little clothing/head shop a few towns away from us. While visiting one day and fingering through the jewelry I picked out a 4ga plug that was obviously ment to be in a labret. Scott had mentioned thinking about gauging out the center of his lip and I showed him the jewelry. It was on.
$10 and a few hours later we were sitting cross legged on his bedroom floor facing one another. I'm a very anal piercer, no I don't pierce anals, I'm just uber clean. I refuse to pierce with anything less than pre-sterilized needles and clamps/jewelry that I've sterilized myself in a bucket of bleach and then the pressure cooker for an hour, sealed safely in large pouches. I've never gone gloveless while piercing anyone, even Scott, though ironically I don't think we've ever once used a condom.
I'd never scappeled anyone's lip before, nor did I think I would. I had aquire the scappeles through some doctor's office thievery (don't tell on me). Three little pre-sterilized teal knives waiting for a purpose at the bottom of my piercing kit.
After cleaning his mouth inside and out, and painstaking marking, I had him lay down on the futon and put his lip in the clamp. From the outside to the inside I slid the little knife into his lip until I could just see the very tippy top of the blade on the other side. I quickly put the 4ga taper from the inside to the outside into the incision and began to strech. It was ... putting up a fight. A good fight, I must have looked nervous because through a gargle of salvia and blood Scott made out "Its okay, it doesn't hurt..." and grabbed tight onto my leg. After getting the taper in deep enough I lined up the jewelry and sealed the deal.
It... looked great! He was pleased, and sorta sexy with all that blood on his chin. My standard aftercare is simple: DistilledNonIodized SeaSalt mix, antibacterial soap, and with the oral piercing, Biotene.
I should have known this thing was doomed since he lost his Biotene and his SeaSalt on the first day and didn't bother to tell me or get more. Apparently for a week or so he'd been using the Scope from his mom's bathroom as mouthwash and had pretty much been ignoring the outside, barely using the soap. When I found out, spurred by the red ring forming around his lip, of course I totally flipped out at him, and minutes later he lost his plug down the drain.
While we waited for the rush delivery from Tuflon for his new plug, we kept a standard glass 4ga plug (the type for your lobes) in his lip. His lip kept sucking in the O-ring, and he was miserable, but refused to let the piercing die. I kept mixing up spray bottles of SeaSalt for him, and buying him bottles of Biotene, but he'd loose them after a day or so of carrying them around. He even got the bright idea to shave around the piercing thus aggravated the hell out of it. The outside formed a nice red bump around it and the inside, a big, squishy white bump.
His lip had formed an absess (big fucking surprise) and by the time the Tuflon plug arrived it was full-blown infected. The last straw was when I came to visit him at his job and I watched him touch the register and then rub his fingers all over the piercing. I flipped out, and demanded he take out the piercing when we got home. I know its not stanard to take out a piercing while its infected for risk of the infection being trapped in the fistula, but there was no way in hell he was ever going to heal that thing and after a month of all this bullshit and stupidity, he took it out.
That was about a week ago. The absess on both the outside and the inside are gone, and all that remains is a deep, creseant shaped scar in the center of his lip.
You'd think someone who has been hanging around me a year, watched me do a hundred piercings and thus give out a hundred of the same set of aftercare to a hundred different people both orally and on paper that some of it would sink into their skulls. Or not.
I won't lie, I feel like a bit of a failure. My first "large gauge lip procedure" turned into a disaster, and it sort of makes me look at my boyfriend in a new light... that new light being the bright-red spotlight of "IDIOT". I basically would have had to babysit him 24hrs a day in order for this thing to work out, and no one pays you to babysit a 21 year old. He says he wants to try again, since he loved how it looked. Next time, I'm buying on of those white cone collars for dogs with stiches.