For the better part of my life I have always wanted gauged ears. Like my suburban teens living under their parents roof, the idea was quickly shot down with the standard, almost robotic response, "When you leave you can do anything you want to your body". And that I did.
At A Glance Author Mike Contact Mike@bme.anon When Six months ago Studio Ace's Tattoos Location Detroit, Michigan During a normal college afternoon, my roommate out of the blue decided to get a tattoo, and due to my obsession with body modification I wanted to tag along and get something done as well. After a moment to think I decided to get my ears gauged, something I have tried before, with some brad nails... Unsterile to say the least. Anyways, being the impatient person I am I wanted to go the dermal punch road and start out with a 00 or something comparable. Shortly after arriving at 7 mile road in Detroit I walked into Ace's Tattoos, right by Marked for Life, and asked how much punches cost. He told me they were around 100 dollars and I had to make an appointment, so the idea was shot to hell. After looking at their standard 14 gauge jewelry, I decided on a pair of TINY plugs and filled out the form to have my ears pierced. After going over the usual talk every piercer should give, I was taken to the back room were I was placed in a chair and prepped. He took a marker to my ears and I gave the go ahead. After a little resistance on the behalf of my ears, I had two new piercings.
Around two weeks after my ears had been pierced I noticed the o-rings had begun to dig into the back of my ear and the hole was growing. So after making my way to Hot Topic to pick up some new lager plugs and to CVS to pick up my bottle of water based lube, I rushed back to my dorm where I yanked out my old plugs, lube the tapers and rammed them through with a little discomfort. Finally my tiny 14-gauged plugs were suddenly 4-gauge in one jump. After about a week or two of wearing these plugs I began to feel the urge to stretch again, and that I did. After another trip to get the supplies, I watered down the lube to make it a little more slippery and began to insert the 0 gauge taper. This jump was the most painful of them all. It took about 20 minutes and some blood loss to get them in. In those 20 minutes I soon found a rush of other onlookers from throughout the hall here to watch "The crazy shirtless cracker". From that point on, I found that using PTFE tape to stretch to the next size was by far the easiest and most cost effective. From 0 to 00, from 00 to ½, from ½ to 5/8, and from 5/8 to 3/4. The only thing was it took a while to stretch, and in trying to insert the tunnel with fresh PTFE tape turned out to be a difficult task because the tape would be so dry it would pull on my ear. Soon after I found out using tap water as lube helped ease the tunnels in a lot.
After I reached ¾ I ran into a little dorm trouble and in the moment took out my ¾ tunnels, used preparation h to shrink the holes (sounds really weird but it shrunk my ear lobes down to 00 in a night!) and put in my 00 plugs. I went months without any stretching but decided to stretch back up to ¾ once again because I have the perfect opportunity to do so. I began stretching my ear lobe on Friday, and had no troubles inserting my half inch tunnels, but after half inch I had to gauge much slower. Now I am sitting here with my 5/8's tunnels in with four wrappings of electrical tape hoping to get back to three quarters in the next few days because I miss them dearly. Stretching after I had already had my ears previously gauged turned out to be far easier than it was in the beginning which is great for me because I am very impatient.
During my journey I learned a few things, those being that I was arrogant in stretching and my ears are far stretcher than most people's. Listen to your ears, never force anything uncomfortable, I almost had a blowout. As far as aftercare was concerned, my girlfriend lent me her leftover Dr. Piercing from her nostril piercing and that kept everything from getting infected.
As far as my parents reactions, my mom hated in a whined about it forever, but now they have begun to realize this is something I love and not just an infatuation.