the beautiful vertical tragus

At A Glance Author blue Contact blue@bme.anon Artist brady Studio ancient art Location blacksburg

Heres a little story about a girl with a dream. One day while perusing the galleries in the ear piercing section of BME, I saw a piercing that I had to have. At this point I had very few piercings maybe my tragus, rook and snug. What I saw was a vertical tragus. I was amazed, I knew that I would have to have this piercing.

Skip a year in my life where I had been pierced oh probably 20 times. Including a lot more ear work and other random and various things. Every time I would talk to my piercer about doing a vertical tragus he would change the subject real fast. I knew that he must have been uncomfortable with this pierce or else he would be all about it. Finally I started bugging him about it again. Good thing he can tolerate me, or I might seem very annoying.

So I go to the shop with my roomate who was getting a tattoo. I was bored sitting in the shop and randomly asked about doing my vertical tragus. After plotting several scenarios and having extreme confidence in brady, we decided to do it! I was too excited to be nervous at that point. Anyway to get on with the important stuff I got in the chair he prepped everything, and we were ready. We made all the interested onlookers go away, the last thing we needed was the added stress of doing this hard ass piercing and having to look good doing it ;)The first three times he put the needle up I got freaked and he would have to stop. Here where knowing him so well came in handy, he was superduper nice about me being ready. We live in a small redneck town so he had never done this pierce. Then I was ready...I started my breathing and on like the 4th exhaleI felt the needle start to push through, after about 5 seconds honestly it was about five or six seconds of the needle getting pushed through, it doesnt sound like that long of a time until its you and its a few pushes of the needle going through your tragus, I finally felt the excrutiating exit of the needle. That was the most pain I have ever been through, it felt like the pain of my rook times 5 and I thought my rooks hurt really bad. Then he took the clamps off to releive part of the pain and now I have a cute bruise on my tragus because of them! So back to the story, the needle is in my ear and corked. I'm getting really light headed so we take a break and he gets me a soda. I knew I was NOT ready for jewelry yet, so I'm just chillin there with a needle in my ear, when someone else who had walked in right after we had gone back the room and had been waiting forever came in to get something changed. As with my other cart. piercings I know that jewelry is the worst part, I just didnt know how much worse. So here I am, I have had almost every kind of piercing and I think I have a huge pain tolerence, which most people agree with. When the jewelry, a 16g half inch curved barbell went through I cried, there are no words to describe that feeling other than really bad.

Only a day after the piercing and there is already a jewelry problem. Apparently the bead which is internally threaded is not attached to the thread very well and can be pulled off. Brady tried to change the bead today, but it was still way too sore.

Now comes the part where I am going to talk about just how great my piercer is. He has a naturally big head, and I continually make it figuratively bigger because, well, he does do good work and I'm not afraid to tell people. I know he was just as nervous about this piercing as I was, first of all he had his pride at stake. All the tattoo guys in the shop were like "yeah you can do this easy". I also had my pride, I have never backed out of a piercing and I never intend to. His aim had to be damn good to get it straight and nail the piercing. As I said before, I think that he does abosolute marvelous work and I trust whatever he does. Of course he got the piercing exactly how we both wanted it, its straight down the center of my tragus and looks awesome. Pretty damn good for his first try, although we will not be doing my other one that way, I can only handle *so* much pain. I have nice pronounced tragi...we are thinking of a tragus orbital...well, that is with a really small ring ;)