The agony and ecstasy of nipple piercing

At A Glance Author Kragg Contact bld98001@uconnvm.uconn.edu Artist Paul Lukombski Studio UConn dorm room Location Connecticut

Alright, this is a story of both good and bad experiences. A veritable yin and yang of body piercing. The fabulous journey of college stupidity and desperate rock n' roll abandon ends happily though, thankfully. Hopefully it will give would-be home piercers/piercees a little insight. I don't reccomend what I've done, I was totally lucky and had everything work out ok, but I'm also poor and impatient.

So, I go to UConn and play and I'm a musician. I play bass in a heavy metal outfit, combining these facts you can pretty much assume I have a tendency to do moronic things. Add to this the fact that guy who plays drums for us also happens to be an aspiring body mod artist. It's almost certainly a recipe for disaster. He is also pharmacy major and was therefore able to ahem....obtain....all the neccesary disinfectant chemicals (including the all powerful Listerine "kills germs on contact" BAM!) and gloves..etc. Also, in a pinch, a HotPot water boiler makes one hell of an autoclave. =) As far as body mods went, I was nearly a virgin. No tattoos, and aside from some simple 12 and 14 gauges rings in my ears I had never gotten any other piercings, so I let my drummer pierce my eyebrow; great, everything came up aces. Since then I had seen him perform multiple successful piercings on other friends firsthand. They ranged from simple earrings, and navels, to more difficult procedures such as cartilage piercings such as industrials and his own penis,twice.

After hearing that he had pierced the nipple of our mutual female buddy, seeing that Nikki Sixx had nipple rings, and sheer idiotic boredom, I decided I wanted my nipple pierced. I figured, "hey, anyone who'd take a needle to his own Johnson has to have some skill, right?" So I bought a 16 gauge ring to put in there, and told my drummer what I wanted done. So the next day he sterilizes everything, we put on some Fear Factory, and the procedure begins. Now, my buddy doesn't use clamps, says he doesn't believe in them. I only trusted him because he had done so many procedures before successfully without them.

Anyway, he put the needle in (even if you do it at home...buy proper needles, no safety pins) So the procedure began and ended more quickly than I thought it would. I was pleasantly suprised that the pain wasn't that excrutiating, and only lasted for a few seconds before the sweet, sweaty endorphine rush kicked in. Sweet, nipple pierced! I had a celebratory cigarette (another thing not to do)

So, I let the ring heal for about 3 weeks. No infection, everything was peachy. Then I got the urge to have a matching set, so I bought a matching ring. This is where the bad stuff goes down. F.Y.I. don't let a bunch of people witness you getting pierced and make tons of noise and tape it with a DV cam. The first time it was just me and my friend, but the second time around the crowd made him nervous, and the needle went through improperly, going in the nipple, and out my areola. Damn, that sucked. In retrospect, I was an idiot to have other people there. So it hurt like hell, and was a good shock to my system for 20 minutes. I almost fainted trying to walk the pain off. Luckily nothing was hurt but my pride and my tit, temporarily. I was lucky and it healed fine, no scarring or anything. This is a good reason to heed warnings and go to a professional. I experienced no lasting reprecussions from this failed attempt, but anyone else might no be so lucky.

The final chapter is me being an idiot and letting the man who maimed me have a second shot, simply because my urge to have both nipples pierced and regain confidence in my buddy was overwhelming. So we did the procedure again, ALONE. I can't stress how important quiet is, aside from background music. This time it went fine, they both healed upgreat and I've since stretched them out to a pair of 14's. They're a source of never-ending amusement, and a great conversation piece at parties. I've also experienced an increase in sexual sensitivity in and around my nippular area since having them pierced. That wasn't a priority to me when I decided to get them, but it turned out to be quite a bonus. =) My girlfriend loves them, plus I like freaking out my conservative friends with them. They are a clandestine weapon for freaking out squares. I highly suggest nipple rings to anyone who's debating having it done. But you might want to take a safer road than I did.