Ah my little Monroe, how I love you.
At A Glance Author ItsADeadmansParty Contact ItsADeadmansParty@bme.anon When N/A Studio club tattoo Location arizona I decided for my eighteenth birthday, that I would finally get around to having a hole put in my face. I had wanted a Monroe for quite some time, and damnit, it was time I had one!
So, on my birthday, and in retrospect probably not the smartest thing I could have done, I just started calling places to see if they were still open as it was rather late and went to the one that would be open the longest, which luckily for me was the very clean Club Tattoo. Which I was later bitched at by many for going someplace so "trendy," but what the hell do I know? I've never done this before and they were open.
I get the counter, and tell them what I want and they have me pick out jewelry. Only everything I pick out, they don't have or isn't an acceptable material. So I finally get fed up and ask "Well, then what CAN I have?" and the guy points to just one, but tells me the jewels come in whatever color I want. Jesus. Could you not have told me that in the first place instead of playing the "How about that one? No." game.
My friends start to dwindle into the shop to watch, and my boyfriend refuses to be near. Apparently watching his girlfriend get stabbed isn't very appealing. Go figure?
The piercer washed up and got his gloves on and cleaned the area, and then had me swish around this ultra strong mouth wash for what seemed like forever and then got out his marking tool (a very stylish tooth pick) and some purple dye and made a mark on the inside and outside of my cheek and had me check it out to see if I liked the placement, and then lay down. Laying down waiting for him to get the rest of the stuff was the scariest part of things. Then, all of a sudden he has a clamp on my lip and on glides through the needle, and to my shock and delight, it was almost painlessly. In fact, it would not be a stretch to say that it was painless--it was more startling than anything else. I got up, wiggled it around a little bit, and was told how to care for it. He took a picture, I paid, they gave me a baggy of sea salt and a bottle of mouth wash and that was that.
Then it was off to a hookah bar to completely disregard what he just told me about smoking..Hah. All in the name of birthday festivities...
Shortly thereafter, I started a job where I was not allowed to wear my jewelry and unfortunately could not get the ball off of my barbell in time so I had the oh so embarrassing pleasure of wearing a Band-Aid over it at work until I could find the time to drive the 30 minutes to the shop that I got it done and so that he could loosen it. It was so awful. I tried everything, even pliers and I couldn't manage to get it to budge and was near tears because all I wanted to do was have a good first day...But even the piercer said that he "Put that bitch on way too tight" for which he apologized and took another picture of it and said to come back anytime if I should have any more problems which I thought was pretty nice. I only had the piercing a week or two, and I had to put a plastic plug in it, which was not advised, but I had no choice. Since its porous by nature, plastic is a breading ground for bacteria and really shouldn't be left in a fresh piercing for long periods of time, but I was fine. No weird explosive infections or anything. Also, you may be interested to know, that those little microscopic rubber band that come with plugs? You don't need them. Don't stress yourself about keeping track of them. A Monroe piercing is one of the few that will stay in without regularly trying to wriggle out.
After I had been working there a while, I realized that I was the only one with a facial piercing that is really forced to wear any sort of plug, which I'm really upset about. It's unfair. But, I also work hand in hand with management, and I suppose I should maintain a certain level of "professional norm" but nonetheless, I'm no happy with being the only one that has to remember to stick a piece of plastic in her face in the mornings...
Anyway-
It was overall a painless and pretty enjoyable experience. I love my little Monroe, even though I rarely get to wear my actually jewelry because I work for a bunch of bastards...but oh well.
=)