At A Glance
Author	koops
Contact	koops@bme.anon
IAM	koops
When	A year ago
Artist	unknown
Studio	Cold Steel
Location	Camden, London UK

I'm sitting in a busy carriage of a tube, heading northbound towards Camden Town, thinking about what episode of the X-Files I'm going to watch when I get home and what excuse I'm going to use to get out of going to the pub tonight. I have my elbows tightly squeezed against my sides so I don't nudge the two people I'm sandwiched between – an overweight business man in a cheap, pinstripe suit to my left; an underweight, tall, wriggly blonde girl wearing a tiny 'Hello Kitty' t-shirt and an even tinier denim skirt to my right. I decide I'm going to watch the episode where Mulder switches bodies with an Area 51 employee. It's called Dreamland and it's a riot.

As I head towards Cold Steel where I usually always get my piercings done it dawns on me just how many kids around London have two labret piercings, 'snakebites'. I had the left side of my lip pierced three weeks ago and now I was coming back to finish the job off by getting that familiar piece of metal shoved through my right side. I do not indulge in piercings to follow a trend, nor do I do it to be 'different' so it doesn't bother me that so many people have some of the same modifications that I have. I'm more nervous about getting shouted at for not making an appearance at the pub tonight than I am about getting pierced.

At the reception desk of the studio there's a queue of two people so I stand back for a while and look at the glass display cabinets full of wood, glass, acrylic, jade and metal plugs and tunnels. Cold Steel have some really stunning designs, especially for larger size jewellery, and although I'd adore a 22mm pair of solid jade plugs I do not even contemplate purchasing them because at £50 each that's currently around 16 hours work for the pair. Maybe for my birthday...

The girl at the front of the queue argues that although she has no ID on her, she promises that she's over eighteen and has just bought a DVD rated 'eighteen' at the Virgin Megastore down the road to prove it. The wise man behind the desk isn't having any of it though and she sulks out of the shop with her miserable looking friend. Everyone in Camden either looks suicidal, like they're going to a rave or they're shaking and wiping their nose and it's pretty obvious what they've just been doing in the Starbuck's toilet. The man asks me what I want done and I point to my lip and tell him, 'a labret please.' He then asks to see my ID and mentions that,
"If you're even thinking about handing me a DVD, get out of the shop now!" I hand him my driving license and fill out the standard forms he passes to me. Yes I've eaten in the last 24 hours, no I haven't taken any drugs, no I don't suffer from blood thinning problems and neither am I on any blood thinning medication... I pay my £25, which includes jewellery and also covers the next piece of jewellery when I want to down-size the initial bar. I only have to wait a couple of minutes before the familiar face of the female piercer pokes out from around a door and tells me to follow her upstairs to the usual room. That wasn't even enough time to consider an alternative episode of the X-Files I'd watch, in the event that I'd lent the tape Dreamland was on to my friend. Life's tough.

The piercing lady is always very chatty and today is no exception. I hop onto the reclining chair in the middle of the room, facing the wall with the huge mirror.
"Right, where's the piercing going?" she holds her pen and pulls off the lid and then proceeds to mark a tiny dot on the right side of my lip. I don't like the placement since I don't think it's properly in line with the other piercing. I tell her and she marks another dot happily. I don't like the placement since I think it's too low, so I tell her and she marks another dot and doesn't look irritated at how fussy I'm being. After staring at the three dots for about two minutes, however, I realise that, actually, the first mark was pretty perfect after all. I tell her and she laughs saying, "always the way," as she hands me a cup of mouthwash. I swirl it around my mouth for thirty seconds and then spit into the cup and throw the cup in the bin. She changes her gloves and tells me to lie down.

As she tears open the plastic bag to get at the new needle, the nerves kick in. In an attempt to avert my mind from the forthcoming procedure I try to think about which Christian Bale film I'm going to buy afterwards, but instead find myself staring at the ceiling thinking about needles ripping through my lip. She clamps my lip, tells me to close my eyes and then lines up the needle with the mark, hovering it a few centimetres away from my skin. She tells me to breathe in, then out and as I'm exhaling the needle gets pushed through easily. There was a crackling sound as it happened but we're talking about such a small period of time it wasn't really that noticeable. It didn't hurt – I won't go so far as to say it felt pleasant – but it wasn't agonising. The 1.6mm flat-back, metal bar is threaded through the hollow plastic tube that's still in my mouth and then the stud is screwed onto the front. I get asked if I'm okay and then ignore instructions to sit up slowly, giving myself a head rush as I sit bolt upright. There's no blood but my lip is huge and I can feel the blood pulsing inside it. The alignment with the other stud is pretty spot on but she warns me not to worry too much about it since my lip will probably swell up even more and distort the perspective. She asks me how I took care of my other labret piercing since that is healing well and tells me to continue with that course of action – ice to help the swelling subside, alcohol-free mouthwashes twice a day. I thank her and leave the shop.

That evening, after settling for watching the episode of the X-Files where Scully gets abducted in Season Two since my fears had been confirmed and I had lent the Dreamland tape to someone, I decided to stop being such an anti-social girl (due to all the damn Bret Ellis novels I've been reading lately) and go to the pub. That night I get thoroughly drunk and am surrounded by heavy smokers and consequently the next morning my lip is of epic proportions. Sucking on ice gradually reduces the swelling (but not anywhere near completely) and I begin my process of two mouthwashes a day. Despite having the exact same piercing on the other side of my mouth I still find eating a struggle at first and talking is a pain in the arse. Still, you don't need to talk to appreciate the magnificence of Mulder and Scully.

The piercing healed fine and after six weeks I had it down-sized to a 7.5mm long bar. I love these piercings as much as I love the X-Files, regardless of how many suicidal, coke-snorting Camden-goers (heh - and completely normal people) have them and I can't see them being retired for a long time yet.