I regard this piercing, a vertical labret, as my first *real* piecing although it's hard to define what a real piercing is. I have 00g ears, a helix piercing and two "regular" earrings. This was a fairly large step for me, having someone shove a needle through my lip to be quite frank, but it was something I'd wanted for a long time, and I had my mind set on getting it.
At A Glance Author Inge Contact Inge@bme.anon When Three months ago Artist Jaap Studio Studio2000 Location Uden, Netherlands So, one night, I decided to carefully bring it up to my mother, because I know she's pretty hesitant when it comes to facial piercings (it took a while for her to get used to my ears as well). Conveniently enough, my sister brought up the subject of piercings earlier that night, because she really wanted her tragus pierced. After much debating, my mother approved and my sister was euphoric. However, I knew that a labret was quite different from a tragus, so I slowly brought the subject up.
Or at least I tried. Before I could say anything, my mum grinned and asked: "and what would you like?" Yeah, so much for subtlety. I figured it was now or never, so I just was honest. And to my surprise, my mum didn't put up a fight as I had expected. She said it wasn't her first choice, with the usual arguments as work, school and scarring, but as I reassured her that I'd done my research and *really* wanted it, she gave the go-ahead!
So, the next day my mum called a piercing studio we'd visited before, and made the appointment. No nerves... until the day of the actual piercing. (I actually skipped school for this, by the way.) My sister went with me to get her tragus piercing, and my mum drove us so she could see to it that everything went well.
We went inside, and I looked around for a while until the piercer arrived, trying to settle down – because at this point, I was getting more and more nervous. Thank goodness, when the guy arrived, he seemed really nice from the start, so that calmed me down.
My sister had ordered me to go first, so I followed Jaap (the piercer) into the little room, with the famous dentist-chair and a cabinet full of fresh jewellery, of which one would soon end up in my lip. I gawked at all the pretty bars and such for a while (me, postponing, never), before he nudged me into The Chair.
"Ready then?" He grinned, and tried to put me at easy by telling what he was going to do, and he kept talking during the procedure – this actually comforted me a lot, knowing what was going on regarding my lip.
First, he cleaned my lip and checked for any nasty vessels, which luckily were absent. Jay! Next step: marking. He didn't get it right the first time, so he cleaned my lip again and gave it another go – which was straight on.
And at this point, I really got a bit shaky: this was it then. But before I knew it, Jaap had everything ready and all I had to do was pout and wait, so to speak. And honestly, it hurt a lot less than I'd expected! I'd read on bmezine that you could feel the needle go through your lip layer by layer, which is true. A fascinating, somewhat surreal sensation. Poking through that last piece of skin did hurt, and then I was stuck with a needle through my lip. Which felt even more weird.
Putting in the jewellery did hurt, but as soon as it was in the sharpness of the pain was gone, and my lip just felt a bit dull, not in a great amount of pain at all.
Jaap asked me if I was satisfied as he gave me a small mirror, and I couldn't stop smiling. I'd done it, I had my piercing, and I was very happy with it. He smiled, said it looked good on me and suggested we'd go and give my mum a heart attack. That didn't happen, but my mum did gasp a bit. But after the initial shock ("Oh my god, she actually did it!") she said it did look good on me.
And there ends the story. Jaap gave me detailed aftercare-instructions, and after about 2 weeks it was as if I'd always had this piercing. It only hurt when I bumped into it (which happened from time to time while (un)dressing, but overall it healed nicely. Now, 2 months later, it's still there and I'm still totally happy with it. Trust me, it's worth the nerves and the 5 minutes of pain!
(For the Dutchies, I can really recommend this shop 'cause Jaap really does put you at ease, and he knows what he's doing regarding hygiene, anatomy and whatnot.)