I wasn't necessarily the type of kid who was completely intrigued with body piercings and huge stretched lobes when I was growing up, but there was still definitely a spark of curiosity there. That spark has led me through quite a few piercings, and since my 14th birthday, the day that I finally got the courage up to get my lobes stretched from an 18 to a 12. I'd got a bit of money from my grandparents for my birthday so a good friend of mine and I set out rip some holes in our bodies.
At A Glance Author vegas Contact v-e-g-a-s@hotmail.com When N/A Location Toronto She planned on getting her industrial done. At that time I had spiderbites and was completely in love with them, so much in love that I was afraid to compromise the way they looked by adding any more metal to my face. I'd long ago decided that I was eventually going to stretch my ears, so by then I'd done a lot of research into stretching your lobes and I decided I wanted to get it done in a shop, just because it was something new and I definitely didn't trust myself when it came to inflicting pain on myself. So instead of giving myself the opportunity to pussy out halfway through, I paid someone way too much (about 60$ with the purchase of two 12g tiny plugs).
My friend was already bitching about her industrial by the time the woman got around to my lobes. (Note that this shop isn't the shop I go to anymore, thanks to a fucked up septum piercing and the dawning realization of how shittily they all did their jobs anyways, but that's a different story.) The woman wasn't your typical idea of someone who'd work in a piercing place, she was Indian and middle aged.
She took a 12g taper and shoved it in my ear excruciatingly slowly, drawing out what could have been merely 5 or 10 seconds tops worth of pain into about 20 minutes. She didn't even lubricate the taper when my tiny holes met it with all that resistance. But, after 20 minutes of bullshit and getting ripped off, I left the shop with throbbing red lobes. Throbbing red lobes that I was proud of, for some reason. Retrospectively, I have no idea why I was so proud of those tiny plugs, but I totally was, and went around showing everyone who would give a shit.
At that time I had the plan to go all the way to 0, which seemed fucking completely gigantic to my cute little 12 gauge black plug. So about a month later, with another friend, who'd heard about my trip to the horrible Indian shop, dragged me along with her to show me where she got her shit done. As soon as I stepped inside I was fully relieved, it was so much lower key and definitely where I knew I'd be getting ripped at from now on. I bought some 8 gauge black tunnels and paid 10$ for the guy to do the taper shoving for me, again because I was a pussy, and I assumed every time would hurt as much as it had my first time. But now, the guy just popped the taper through quickly and before I knew it, my tunnels were in. I was so stoked that you could actually (sort of) see through the holes now.
I let my 8s heal for about a month before deciding it was time to upsize. This time, I grabbed some more threaded black tunnels, but this time at 4 and this time I picked up a taper with them. The night after buying them, I struggled only briefly with the tapers before popping in my new tunnels. I was so happy to be approaching my 0 gauge goal that I went out the next day and bought some more tunnels and a taper. After another slow month of healing, I was ready to get to 0.
I was kind of surprised by my ears' resistance to the taper, but I was determined and I sat in front of my TV for about an hour and a half, only partly watching while I slowly pushed the taper through and tried to ignore the pain. I finally pushed the taper, triumphantly, through the last bit and tried to put in my tunnels-but fuck it hurt so bad.
So I pushed the tunnel through a few more times, this time the hole cooperating a lot more, until I was able to get my tunnel in and somehow screw it shut over my swollen aching lobe. I took a 10-minute break and then dealt with my other lobe. Once I'd cleaned up the blood, I noticed there was a bit of skin in the middle of each tunnel. That was lovely.
I stayed at 0 for about six months, but eventually lost the back to one of my tunnels at a party. I'd never really gotten around to buying a new tunnel when, a week later, I was wasted at another party and realized that I had nothing in my left lobe.
So, being the innovative kid I am, I fished a pencil out of my bag and shoved it through the hole. That's fucking nasty now that I think about it, but at the time it seemed like a great solution. So, I borrowed a plastic double flared 2 gauge tunnel, keeping one of the flared ends in my lobe, and went out to buy myself something to replace my weak attempt at 0 gauges. Later, examining my new red silicones I decided I really wanted to go bigger. I wasn't quite sure how big at that time, but I knew I wasn't finished stretching yet.
So I began tape wrapping my gauges, while searching all around Toronto for some white silicone tunnels in either 00 or 7/16". After spending too long looking for some decent priced gauges, I decided I'd be better off to go online, so I ordered white tunnels in ½" and 9/16". The only problems about tape wrapping would be that it worked so well, that today when I got my new tunnels (about 10 days after ordering) putting the 9/16s in was actually a bit of a downsize, but I'm just happy that I don't have tape-covered tunnels right now that I'll deal with that until I order some 5/8"s.
I've decided I'm going to get to ¾", but I'm leaving myself open to the possibility that there could be 1" lobes in my future.