Why do people always look at me so incredulously when I say this? Is it because the idea of a needle being pushed through the sensitive skin of your lip causes most to cringe? Perhaps we'll never know...but I have forgotten my story...where was I? Oh yes, my "ashley". a silly name for a piercing in my humble opinion, but its a lot easier to say than inverse vertical labret. The piercing in general is quite difficult to explain to someone who is not familiar with piercings...
At A Glance Author Jessica Contact dragnnstarr@yahoo.com IAM InkedDragon When A week ago Artist Louren Studio Demi Gods Location Chico, Ca The first time I saw this piercing was on some rockabilly princess on MySpace...you know the type...but I fell in love with the piercing immediately. "I must have this," I said to myself. So I contacted my local mod-guy Louren (he also did my industrial), and he was down for it, but he didn't have the jewelry so unless I wanted to wait for him to order it I had to go on a bit of a hunt. I didn't want to do the standard curved barbell, because I knew that the ball on the inside of my lip would drive me mad. I wanted the curved labret, with the ball on the top and the flat back, not easy to find, let me tell you. I found the jewelry in our local trendy goth/alternative/rock shop and was thrilled, only $10.99. I called Louren and made the appointment.
I showed up for my appointment about 15 min early and he was in the middle of a small foot tattoo, so I hung out in the lobby and waited for my friend Jaime, who was also getting pierced (a labret). We are pretty friendly with our Mod-Guy as we are regular customers, so after he was done with his client, we hung out and chatted and had a smoke, picked out some appropriate modding tunes...All this helped to alleviate the major case of adrenaline butterflies I had going on at the time. One of the best parts of getting body mods if you ask me. Louren got all cleaned up from the tattooing, set up his piercing stuff and made the motion for me to sit down...I was so excited.
He marked the place on my lip and asked me to go check it out, everything looked great so I gave him the go ahead. He clamped my lip, which is not very comfortable, but not painful...counted to 3 and Voila! I now had a curved needle through my lip...It was over before I knew it...no more painful than getting my earlobe pierced. He gently slid the jewelry through but we hit a snag, the ball was very small and difficult to manuver and while trying to screw it on, through no fault of his own, he dropped it. It was actually pretty funny. So I had to wait a bit for him to re-sterilize it, he used a pair of clamps to hold the post on the jewelry steady (accidentally pinched my lip in that process, which I gave him shit for afterwards) and then he used one of the ball clamp thingys to get a good hold on the ball and screwed it on tight. It was done, I hopped up and looked in the mirror, my lip didn't look happy at all, I had almost immediate swelling, and It was a bit shocking. But I was happy. Louren gave me the typical speech about aftercare, and warned me of the dangers of it becoming embedded. I watched him pierce my friend, we paid him, said our goodbyes and we were on our way.
My first stop was AM/PM to get an icee, the swelling was ginormous by now and I was getting a little worried. I rushed home and promptly took some monster ibuprofen, some vicodin and attached an ice pack to my face. By the next day the swelling was lower. I had a couple scares with my ball coming unscrewed and falling off, once while I was sitting home at the computer and another while I was at the lake with my friends (the latter being the worse as the shore is all gravel). I just learned to be super-anal about tightening it up after I eat or drink anything. By day three the swelling was almost completely gone.While I experienced no real pain, I got a few cramps in my bottom lip but nothing too serious. It has now been a little over a week and I'm loving it. It is a bit interesting having to re-learn how to eat and talk and I have only caught it on my bottom teeth a couple times. I would recommend this piercing to anyone who has the lips to pull it off, as I don't think it is very flattering to those with t hin lips. But it's fun and flirty, and an all around good time. :)