At A Glance
When	Five years ago
Artist	amateur
Studio	at home

Warning: this is a description of a piercing done by a non-professional and should not be taken as an idea of what anyone else ought to do.

I trusted her. She was always proficient at any physical task she undertook. She was a mechanic who could listen to a helicopter and know what needed fixing. In our relationship, she has started out as my submissive, but we learned that I liked to switch too, and it was difficult to keep me in subspace sometimes. But pain always did it. With pain I would protest, then relax into it as waves of endorphins coursed through me, and I'd become soft, pliant, relaxed, peaceful. . . oh, and wet. I don't remember whose idea it was to pierce my outer labia. She researched it. Online. Talked to piercers. Assembled materials -- sterile needles, a sterile field, barbell jewelry. We had an iron bedstead with a thin mattress on it. I lay across it sideways, hips hanging off the bed and supported in her lap, arms over my head gripping the bedrail. As the needle entered, pain and fear mixed together to create this big surfable wave. I didn't scream -- I roared like a big cat giving birth. My hands were gripping the metal of the bed and my back was in a hard arch down to her to keep from jerking away from the needle. It felt huge and all encompassing and things I can't put in words. It felt powerful to be deciding what to take and not to take in terms of the pain.

It reminded me of where I had learned the concept of pain and fear. It was in a dentist's office, actually. He couldn't get all my roots numb for a root canal, so every time he placed the needle into the tooth root to twist it out, the pain was excruciating. However, every time he stopped the movement of his hand, the pain stopped altogether - no throbbing, no aftertaste. He made it my decision. I tolerated as much as I could -- as much as I wanted to. When I raised my hand, he stopped and so did the pain. I learned than how much I had thought was pain is actually my fear of being out of control to pain. This experience resonated with that older one.

She worked the needle through and we rested. Then she pushed the jewelry back through and I roared again. Afterward I felt incapable of most speech, cuddly, but not sleepy. I floated for hours in that state of well being. My sense of wholeness and erotic beauty was

It healed fine. I bathed it in sea salt and kept it clean. I already had shaved, so it was easy to keep clean. At first I stopped wearing pants to work and wore dresses with no panties. I carried a low erotic charge with me all the time, and smiled a lot. For a few days it was really tender and then I forgot about it, unless I caught it or bumped it. I started with a straight barbell, but after a while changed it to a captive bead ring. At first I had a titanium one, but I changed to gold because that was what all the rest of my jewelry was, and I wanted it to match.

Sometime along here I visited my MD for my annual checkup. I was nervous at first, and then forgot all about it until we got to the pelvic, and she said "what's this?".

I stammered and said "It's a piercing".

She asked "Why did you do it?"

I said the first thing that came to mind, "Because it's pretty".

She stopped cocked her head, and then nodded and said "I guess it is", and went on with the exam, talking about how piercings and tattoos are a growing part of mainstream culture.

Another interesting moment was going through a sensitive metal detector at the airport. They kept telling me to go back through, first taking off my watch and jewelry, then my shoes, and then wanding me until they had isolated the metal through my clothes. Then they just looked at me and waved me on. I guess it had happened to them before.

After a while I got another one, on the opposite labia. One of the best things about them was the way they worked as handles to hold open my lips and expose my clit for sex. We used thin gold elastic thread attached to each side and pulled back. It looked so festive and it made of some outrageous oral sex and heavenly orgasms because pulling the labia back and away pulled the hood up and away from my clit.

I haven't worn them in a while. They tended to get sore when I was involved with a man and had vigorous missionary position sex again. But I checked a little while ago and they're still open. I'm with a woman again in a committed relationship and I think I'll put the rings back in and maybe get a triangle piercing. It is a frightening idea, because of the thought of something going awry with my clit, but also tantalizing.