A few months ago, I was looking for a unique piercing that I could do that would look good. I have a few other piercings: both sides of my lip and an industrial on my left ear, but I wanted something on the right side. I finally decided on a spiral cartilage piercing. (As far as I know, it's just called a spiral; I'm probably wrong but that's what I'll call it in this.) I plan on getting a second industrial, parallel to the first one, so that will make four holes in that ear, and while I don't want my piercings to be symmetrical, I do want them to be of similar sizes in general. So I had decided on a 14 gauge barbell going through the side of my ear four times.
At A Glance Author Sara Contact Sara@bme.anon When A month ago Artist Tim, aka Wolfman Studio Earth Moon Imports Location Wheelersburg, Ohio The first thing I did was talk to my piercer about it. He had never heard of or seen the piercing before, but he's done all my other piercings, and some of my friends, and is very experienced so I trusted him. He was willing to do it, but we had to work to find the right barbell. We both searched for months, when we finally found it in an online body modification store (not BME, though I did look). I was so excited. Now I just had to wait until I was in town again (I'm in college three hours away from the studio I go to) and we were good to go.
I called several times, asking if it had come in yet, talking about it to see if he was really sure he could do it correctly, things like that. So finally, we decided on the day after Christmas. Normally I don't make appointments or anything, but I wanted to be sure that everything would be ready and the shop would be open.
When my friend and I arrived, we were the only customers in Earth Moon Imports. I was happy about this, because the last few times I had been, there had been several people, strangers to me, asking to watch my piercing, and this only makes me more nervous. Anyway, Tim was there, and it turns out he had ordered several of the barbells. We picked out the one we were going to use, and put it, along with four needles, into the autoclave. The short time it took to sterilize everything seemed like forever, but finally it was time. I (very nervously) made my way into the piercing room and sat in the chair. We discussed how the piercing was going to be done, since he had no experience doing one like this, and finally decided that the bottom hole would be pierced first, then the barbell would be spiraled through (this part made me cringe, jewelry insertion is usually the worst part about a piercing), then the next hole, and so forth. He marked where it would go and got the first needle ready.
The first hole was easy, and the ring went through without any problems. The next one, however, was much more difficult. The needle had somehow gone through wrong (he normally doesn't use clamps on ear piercings), and after about 10 minutes of tugging and stretching and attempting to get the jewelry in, we decided it had to be redone. I didn't expect this to hurt much, but it hurt more than any of the other holes, more than any of my other piercings. This time he used clamps to make sure that it went through at the correct angle, and then it worked. After that he spun the chair around to look in the mirror. I looked, and then started flipping out.
I was bleeding! I've never bled on anything else, and this was a shock to me. I had assumed that there would be a little blood, but it was all over my ear and neck. He promised that it would be ok, that it had almost stopped, and waited a minute or two for me to calm down some. When I was less freaked out, he marked for the third hole and did it, then the fourth. By this time, there were a few people waiting outside, and a guy who kept looking in the room saying that it looked "sweet".
Tim then informed me that he had to autoclave the second ball again, since it had fallen on the floor. Then, while we were waiting on that to finish, he tried to convince me to go for five holes instead of four. His reasoning was that I had already gone through that much pain, what difference could one more make? Plus, the barbell was a little longer than we thought, and had enough extra on it to go through again, and there was extra room on my ear. At first I refused, but then the friend that had gone with me started saying that it would look good. A few of the other customers came to the door of the room and agreed, saying that five would look great. So I finally agreed, and we did the fifth hole. It hurt, obviously, but by that point I didn't care anymore. When the ball was finished, he screwed it on and cleaned up my ear. He took a few pictures of it and I was done. It hurt really badly, as I was outside in the cold for most of the rest of the day, and cold wind really hurts new piercings, at least industrials and spirals. It's been a few weeks now and it's healing nicely so far. I love it so much, and all of my friends do too. Yes, it was a lot of pain, but it was 100% worth it. It is a little difficult to clean, but I've gotten better at it. (If you get this piercing, q-tips and H2Ocean help immensely in cleaning.) It's one of my favorite piercings. Not only does it look good, but I'm very proud of myself for going through with all of it. :)