A while back a good friend of mine decided to get her navel pierced. Then my wife decided to do the same thing. Now, I haven't had anything pierced since my ears in highschool but I'd always been curious about nipple piercings and with everyone around me getting pierced I really had the itch to do something. So I ran it by some friends and they all egged me on and so I decided to get it done.
At A Glance Author Whiplash!!! Contact Whiplash!!!@bme.anon When It just happened Artist Sonia Studio Mystical Body Location Manteca, CA I decided I needed to do some research though first. I wanted to know exactly what to expect and what the complications were, etc. so I started cruising around on the net to see how this procedure is handled. After looking at hundreds of piercing pics and reading all the information I could find, I decided I was ready to find a shop to have it done.
I'm not the type to just let any old person go shoving metal into my body so I started by asking friends who did thiers. Several people gave me references but they were mostly guys working out of their house or something and I wanted a full on shop with all the sterilization equipment, etc. My friend Cyndy had just had her navel done and suggested Sonia at Mystical Body. Sonia had done work on people Cyndy knew and had been at this particular shop for years. Cyndy's navel looked killer so I decided to have Sonia do my piercings as well.
So after several weeks of research and decision making, I decided I would take off work early Friday and head up the shop. Now it's a two hour drive to this particular shop so I had plenty of time on the road to think about chickening out but I didn't and soon enough I pulled up to the shop, took a deep breath and walked in.
Mystical Body is a small, very sparse place. White walls, gray carpet with a little windowed room where they do the piercing and a display case for the jewelry. Somehow I imagined the place would be really crazy looking but it was pretty drab. Sonia came out and introduced herself. She showed me some jewelry and on her suggestion I decided to go with 14g barbells. Barbells heal quicker and don't get beaten around like rings would. I figured that was the best bet since I could always put rings in later and the sooner these thing heal, the better. Sonia had me fill out the necessary paperwork, I gave her $90 for the piercing and the jewelry and we were ready to get started.
She flipped on some working music, which happened to be the Cult, then she led me to the piercing room. The room was small and had one of those doctors exam tables in it and several full length mirrors. She told me to take a seat on the table and she went to wash up. One thing that made me kind of nervous was that the piercing room has a bunch of windows that open to the lobby. I guess I could've asked her to close them but it was kind of cool to see the look on people's faces when they saw what I was having done. Sonia cleaned my nipple area, then broke out a sharpie and started to mark my nipples where she would pierce them. She was tweaking my nipples to get them to stand up, so I jokingly asked her if we were going to cuddle afterward. She got a kick out of that and just laughed. Sonia's got a great sense of humor and so we were joking the whole time which made the experience very comfortable. After marking my nipples she handed me a mirror so I could check the alignment . Everything looked cool to me so I handed her back the mirror and we got ready to do the piercing.
She asked me to lay back and take slow, deep breaths. She took out the clamps from a sealed package and asked me which nipple to do first. I told her the right one. She then proceeded to clamp my right nipple, making sure to align the markings up correctly. The clamps did not hurt much at all. They pinched a little but not bad. Once she had things aligned she grabbed the needle, also out of a sealed package, and asked me if I wanted her to tell me when she was going to do it. I figured it would be better not to know so I told her just to do it whenever. About a second later she pushed the needle through.
Now I've read a lot of stories about how the clamp hurt more than the piercing and that the pain is not bad or it's just like a quick pinch. Well for me, that's all bull. It hurt like hell unleashed! The pain started out like a quick prick, but then as the needle went through it felt like an intense, deep, burning feeling that shot through my entire pectoral muscle. The good thing is that as soon as I felt like I couldn't take it anymore, it was over. It probably lasted all of about a second and a half. But for that second and a half, it is pretty damn intense.
Once the needle was through, it took a few seconds and a little more pain to get the jewelry in. Then it was done. I looked down and saw a shiny new barbell sticking through my right nipple. It was very cool. She gave me a second to relax and then we did the same procedure on my left. The left was definitely worse. I think only because I knew it was going to hurt, but seconds later and the whole procedure was complete.
Sonia then told me how to take care of them and gave me some special soap and a flier with aftercare instructions. She told me to call anytime if anything looked wrong or if I had any questions at all. I tipped her a ten, and then headed out for dinner and a beer before the 2 hour ride home.
All in all, a very worthwhile experience.