This is about my first and still one of my favourite modifications. When I was 17, longer ago than I care to mention, I had an intense but brief liaison with a French woman called Annie. In addition to giving me the opportunity to discover that I was comprehensively bisexual, Annie also introduced me to the concept of body piercing. She had an outer labial piercing that both intrigued and transfixed me when I encountered it......but that is another story.
At A Glance Author Jane Contact Jane@bme.anon IAM Jane66 When Ten years ago or more Artist Me Studio at home Location Merseyside, UK About seven years later my husband and I were chatting about something or other when the subject of earrings came up. I remember him suggesting that I was a coward for not having my ears pierced. He had indulged, like many of our age group, in a small act of rebellion in his bedroom with an ice cube and a darning needle! I made the point that I wasn't in the least bit afraid of pain, after all I had given recently birth, I just didn't want my ear lobes pierced. It could have ended there, but I came back for one last dig, always a weakness of mine. "Actually, I quite fancy getting my labia done!" Well that surprised him, he briefly looked stunned! He asked , "Was I serious? The more we talked about it the more I realised I was and the more I talked myself into a corner. I guess he might have forgotten it, but I hadn't. A month or so later my job took me to Stuttgart and I happened upon a shop selling surgical steel jewellery. In those days there wasn't access to a resource as useful and informative as BME, in fact the internet itself was still a huge novelty. I had never even seen a piercing shop, though perhaps I hadn't looked in the right places! Like a kid in a sweet shop I looked through the small cabinet of body jewellery and came back with a pair of 2.4mm 20mm internal diameter CBRs.
My husband was slightly taken aback when I presented him with the rings, I guess he thought I was all bluster! What follows is an object lesson in what not to do! Not having a clue about what was standard practise for this type of piercing we followed his ear method. He found a relatively sharp darning needle which he sterilised along with one of the rings in a pressure steamer that I used routinely for sterilising my breast pump! Meanwhile I drank tequila, lots of tequila. He used an ice-cube to numb my right labia, in itself quite a strange sensation, then tried to push the needle through. Either it was too blunt or my labia was too stretchy, all he succeeded in doing was sobering me up. After a brief discussion we decided that there needed to be something behind my labia to push into. I went to the kitchen and came back with a wine cork and held it on the inside of my labia. This time after a lot of pushing the needle went through. I let out an unseemly s tream of expletives and he looked like he was about to pass out! He never was terribly good with blood. The pain wasn't too bad but the noise was quite sickening.
After a few minutes recovery time, more for his benefit than mine, we tried to get the ring in. We made the big mistake of taking the needle out. I was bleeding pretty profusely though I think that even if we could have seen what we were doing, it was unlikely that the ring would have gone through, it being significantly larger than the needle. Half an hour of painful pushing and poking later we abandoned the attempt. My husband had a ring which he had previously worn in his ear, it was ludicrously fine, the proverbial cheese wire, and of an indeterminate metal. Yes I know it was a bad idea but I wasn't going through all that without something to show for it. It lasted about 2 weeks, migrating about 7mm before I removed it.
Being ever so slightly stubborn I wasn't going to let this set back stop me. I had learned a lot already and this time I was going to get things right. I decided to try again, on my own. The first thing to correct was the needle. I found a wickedly sharp set of dividers with removable spikes which were fractionally bigger than the ring. The only problem was they were too short to get a proper grip on them. I solved that with a huge pair of mole grips! I practised poking holes in an old sheepskin jacket until I was confident that it would work. I waited until my husband was away one evening and opened a bottle of Gran Reserva Rioja. I had a glass or two while I sterilised the spike and the ring, washed my hands and shaved my labia. With my left hand I stretched my left labia over the end of the rioja cork; the right one was still a little delicate and besides I'm right-handed. I held the mole grips in my right hand and let their weight push the tip of the spike into my labia. It hurt a little, but no more than it does when you accidentally stick a needle in yourself when sewing. The trouble was I couldn't push though. I tried counting to three, and even shouting now but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Finally I decided to take a run at it. There was a bead of blood welling up from where I'd been resting the spike. Withdrawing the mole grips and spike about six inches I aimed at the blood spot and rammed the spike into the cork. I used excessive force, I guess it must have been all the adrenalin. Fortunately the mole grips prevented me from pushing the spike all the way through! I released the grips and sat there full of self-congratulatory thoughts with my labia attached to a rather fine wine cork by the needle from a set of dividers. So far so good. I waited until my hands stopped shaking, held the end of the ring onto the blunt end of the spike and tried to push it through. This is where another pair of hands would have been a great help! 15 minutes later all I'd managed to do was bleed on the carpet.!
I'd been this far once before and I was determined not to fail again. I had another glass of wine, pulled the spike through and to my absolute joy discovered that I could work the ring through without much difficulty from the exit wound. I put the ball in and engaged smug mode.
It was a couple of days later that my husband noticed. Let's just say he was more than moderately surprised!
Aftercare was I guess a little more conventional. I was bruised and tender for a few days. I had few problems with lymphatic encrustations, certainly nothing that required more than my normal hygiene routine. The ring itself was a little large for the purpose and was prone to twisting which slowed healing. It tried to migrate a bit, though since I'd started so deep in the first place, it wasn't really a problem. Yes I did miss the spot I was aiming for by a considerable margin. Now, 17 years later I still love that piercing. I guess a lot of that has to do with what I went through to get it. It was the start of a long and still incomplete journey into body modification. Perhaps most significantly it was a photo of my self done labial piercing that got me my first admission to BME hard and so onto IAM. The rest as they say is history!
Obviously I recommend that anyone considering an outer labial piercing get it done professionally. I now have four and shortly will have six or eight and I'm very happy to answer any questions.