To start off with I've only been into body-mod for a few months now. It started last august with a lighter. I was lighting pasta noodles on fire and eating them when they cooled down, when i accidentally touched the lighter and jerked back realizing that it was really really hot. I then remembered that my friend had a scar on his arm from heating up a lighter and pressing it on there twice to make a kind of mirror image. First off let me say that your forearm is not a good place to do anything that you don't want your parents or people that aren't your close friends with to see. But I suggest that everyone out there try some sort of modification/decoration on their body.
At A Glance Author Crawford Contact Crawford@bme.anon Artist Mexican guy Studio Mexican Studio Location Acapulco, Mexico On the main street towards the market. Anyway, my parents are really conservative and I go to an all guy boarding school that is also really conservative and they don't like half of the things that I do anyway (I push the rules to their full extent). Three weeks and a day ago, I got my tongue pierced in Mexico on a a trip with one of my teachers(not a school sponsored trip). I had wanted to and had bugged my parents about it for months. My mom would say that piercing are for girls. I told her that that was sexist, and she said it wasn't, but my dad backed me up on that one. But alas, my dad said that I couldn't get any piercing or bod-mods until I was 18 because it's a rule of society. Me and two friends had been looking for a tattoo/piercing place for about an hour, and were walking back to the hotel because we had to leave for Mexico City in an hour, but as we were walking down the street in Acapulco, Mexico (on the West coast), I heard a buzzing sound, and lo and behold there was a tattoo shop. I was thinking 'great this girl can get the tattoo she has wanted' Well the guy was working on a tattoo at that time that would take another hour and a half, time that we didn't have. So I asked "ĄPuede Ud. perforar mi lengua?" 'Can you pierce my tongue?' And the guy asked the tattooist who said he could. The guy that was getting a tattoo was from the U.S. and he said he could take a break for a couple of minutes while I got my tongue pierced.
So I chose a barbell: about 5/8 in. long and probably 14 gauge with a blue ball on top with a pot leaf in the middle. I wasn't really nervous before he did it, because I had heard from you guys and a whole bunch of other people that it doesn't hurt and I also have a pretty high threshold for pain. The guy put on clean gloves, then cleaned the barbell. He took the clamp out of the package and put a rubber band around it to keep it on my tongue. Then he made me rinse with listerine and dried off my tongue with a paper towel and marked it with a purple dot. He asked me if i thought it was ok, and I said yes(by the way, everything between me and the piercer was in Spanish). He put the clamp on, then took the needle out of the package and the barbell out of the cleaning solution, dried it off and put the bottom ball on. Then he stuck the needle through from the bottom. Absolutely no pain or bleeding whatsoever. I felt it enter my tongue, and i felt it in there but I couldn't tell exactly where it was in my tongue at any given time. I couldn't feel him putting the barbell in the needle but didn't feel it go through either. The only thing I felt was him screwing the top ball on. I could talk perfectly fine afterwards and started playing with it immediately. I would click it against the sides of my teeth and the back of my two front teeth. He told me to rinse my mouth out with water so I did and then he gave me the after care instructions. I didn't understand everything completely so the other guy working there translated words like 'gargle' and 'mouthwash' etc. It was great. You couldn't see it when I talked, or ate. And best of all I had my tongue pierced.
I could chew gum right after. And I ate on the plane on the way from Mexico City to Houston. I had breakfast, I just had to chew really slowly. It never swoll up at all, and I could eat perfectly without worrying about biting it by the night after. I assume it probably had something to do with the fact that I was awake all that time and never lying down, and the fact that I started to learn how to eat and talk immediately afterwards. I never had to take any advil because it never hurt or swoll up. I used mouthwash every time after I ate, but i wasn't so good with the smoking thing. If I didn't want somebody to see it, they didn't because you couldn't see it unless I stuck it out. I hid it from my parents for a week and from my teachers for two.
It is now Tuesday the 3rd and It was completely healed by yesterday. I could do anything without it hurting in the least bit. But there was a problem. Some self-riteous asshole at my school was 'worried' about me so they told the dean of students. The dean of students then told my advisor, who totally flipped and told my mom, who totally flipped too. They did all of this without even telling me. Anyway, I had to call my dad up last night and talk to him for about 45 minutes. Now I also have the Taurus symbol burned onto the top of my hand with a safety pin and a lighter. So now my mom thinks i have problems, my advisor thinks i am absolutely and completely nuts, and half the teachers think I need help. Last night my dad told me I had to take it out, and so after three weeks of fun and no problems whatsoever, I took it out exactly three weeks after I had it done. I hate these bigoted people who are conservative out the ass, and think that anything 'abnormal' is a sign of depression and somebody who wants to decorate their body is insane. The school also wont let me have anymore 'mutilations'. In other words, I cant cut, burn, tattoo, or pierce anything at all while I'm here.
Here are some questions i got while i had it and some i get now:
Q. Did it hurt? -
A. Not one bit, There was no discomfort or pain at any time when I had it, when I took it out, or
now.
Q. Why did you do it?
A. I've wanted to do it for years now, and it was all for me because I just like it.
Anyway, now that it's gone i miss it, and I plan on getting it done again when I am 18. Until then I will pierce my tongue web and my nipples. The only after affect is that there is now a small bump on the inside of my tongue that i can feel when I pull it through my teeth.
And by the way, when you see Mexico, you probably think 'dirty'. That wasn't the case at all. He did everything by the books: washed hands, wore new latex gloves, took everything out of sterile sealed packages, showed me when he took everything out of packages, cleaned the barbell, put down a sterile pad to place all of the stuff on, asked me questions about the placement, and walked me through the entire thing. When he was done he told me to watch him throw the needles and clamps in the biohazard bin. The piercer was very professional too. The entrire shop looked very clean, there was no dirt on the floor and everything was wiped down. It looked and sounded a hell of a lot better than a bunch of
piercing places I've seen.
Thanks for reading,
Crawford
Fight the system and fuck the world.