When I was thirteen I found a band called the Prodigy. I think this was the starting point of my infatuation with piercings. It was five years later when I actually got the nerve and 'ahem' permission to get my lip pierced. I was so nervous going into the parlour with the permission slip. I felt like I was buying a pack of cigarettes but instead of telling me off for being underage they were going to shove a skewer through my lip. The weird thing was it didn't hurt at all. Actually I can't remember it hurting or bleeding the whole time it had it. I loved it. At the time the band I was in was starting to get gigs so the piercing really gave me a punk look. Once I had it in I couldn't wait to get more.
At A Glance Author Fungtank Contact Fungtank@bme.anon When A year ago Artist John Studio Irish ink Location Galway, Ireland For some strange reason it took me two more years to get my next piercing. By this time I had taken out my lip piercing and my super cool band was toast.
This time I decided to get my eyebrow pierced. It's a very common one I know and that's part of the reason I chose to get it done. But I wouldn't be following the main trend. Oh no, thanks to a picture I saw on BME, I was going to go 90 degrees in the other direction to everyone else. I live in Galway, Ireland. Population around 90,000 yet I had never seen the horizontal eyebrow piercing in the city before. So I now had the thought in my mind. I just needed the right time to get it done.
As it turned out the right time was a Friday afternoon on my way home from college. Funny how the mood can catch you. I was walking down Shop-Street and I saw a gang of lads gathered outside McDonalds. Four out of the five or six of them had the standard vertical eyebrow piercing. The sight of this was motivation enough to go and get it done 'post haste'. So off I went to my local piercer.
When I walked in the door the smell of weed hit me and I knew I was in good hands!?! Anywho, I was determined to get it done so there was no stopping me. I expected to have to make an appointment, as I had done for my lip but the French guy that works there said:
"Yes no problem, come out the back and we'll get it done"
Now, I have to say this caught me slightly off guard but my mind was made up so off I went. From my huge experience of one other piercing I assumed the eyebrow couldn't possibly be more painful then getting your lip done. I mean come on your lip that's practically like getting an internal piercing right!! I now know otherwise. There was definitely a lot more blood. It wasn't terribly sore but enough that I could feel it after he was finished. What I did notice was, when the needle was going through it was hot as opposed to sore. This changed quite quickly. When he finished I was just about to get up and pay him when he said the words I'll never forget:
"Can I take a photo, this is the first one I've done like this."
I swear it didn't hurt for very long after I heard that. I was ecstatic, inside of course. So I said sure in as cool and uninterested a tone I could manage. My picture is still in the parlour to this day. My aim was to get a piercing people could associate with but one that was still unusual. I feel I definitely succeeded. To this day I still haven't seen anybody with it done.
What I really love about it is that it's so simple and inoffensive yet it gets a totally different reaction to the vertical type. Most of my friends didn't quite understand how it was done because the balls are across my eyebrow. One person thought I had two vertical piercings that's how unseen it is in my city. The other great thing about it is that it deflects the stigma attached to the eyebrow piercing. Where I'm from the vertical eyebrow piercing is associated with dance heads, guys into ecstasy and picking fights. But for some reason, maybe because the piercing is in the opposite direction, people have no problem asking me about it and, I feel, see it as a totally different piercing.
The piercing actually fell out two or three weeks after getting it done. I spent an hour trying to force it back in but to no avail. I have since gotten it redone. It was a bit sorer this time round but I put that down to the scar tissue from the first time and also the fact that I had my tongue pierced about 30 minutes before hand. All in the name of cool.