After a 5-year hiatus from piercing, something (my mid-twenties crisis?) made me want to bite the bullet again. I'd been on-and-off lusting after a lip ring or labret for several years. One day, a girl walked into one of my classes with a lip piercing I found so striking I stopped her to ask her what it was called. It turned out to be a vertical labret. So now I knew what I wanted - but where to go? Ever since I'd first discovered Black Sun Studio in Montreal – after my first piercing (my nostril) had been botched at a really dodgy tattoo parlour - I'd never gone anywhere else for a piercing. I'd been devastated to find out that Pierre Black had closed his studio when I called them last summer after swallowing the bead on my tongue barbell. I ended up calling every tattoo and piercing parlour listed in the yellow pages, asking every person who answered if they sold internally-threaded jewelry. Finally, someone I spoke to told me that the only place in Montreal other than Black Sun that sold that type of jewelry was a studio called Perçage Esthétique.
At A Glance Author Yolaine Contact Yolaine@bme.anon When It just happened Artist Derek and Pierre Black Studio Percage Esthetique and Independent Location Montreal So now that I was thinking about a new piercing, I thought I'd go to Perçage Esthétique, since I'd had a good experience there replacing my tongue jewelry. I got my vertical labret done, did the aftercare thing, and all was well. I noticed the piercing was a little bit crooked, but it wasn't too noticeable and I was still pleased with the results. Then a few weeks ago, about 3 months after I'd gotten pierced, the skin around the top hole of my piercing started to hurt, swell a bit on one side, and discolour slightly. I was also finding some dried blood around the top hole when I cleaned the jewelry in the morning. It wasn't terrible – most of my friends couldn't even see anything wrong when I pointed out the swelling to them. But I was worried about scarring or an infection, especially since I'd taken a couple of fairly painful hits to the lip during the healing process (once while out dancing, once playfighting - I wasn't getting boxed in the face or anything), so I went back to Perçage Esthétique.
The piercer took out my jewelry and took a good look – he was very thorough and commented on the swelling, the discoloration and the blood. He was very encouraging – he didn't think the jewelry was too tight, the lack of pus meant it wasn't an infection, and the swelling / discoloring wasn't a keloid forming, as I'd feared. We agreed it probably needed to get used to the Montreal winter (don't we all!) and that I should avoid caking so much Vaseline onto my chapped lips, then he put the jewelry back in and sent me home.
I was still concerned, though, especially when after a week, the bleeding wasn't stopping and the swollen skin on one side started feeling a little numb. I emailed Pierre Black, and he very nicely agreed to take a look at it for me. Funnily enough, my biggest worry before I went to see him became that I was making a big deal out of nothing and that Pierre would either laugh at me for being paranoid or be irritated that I'd wasted his time, so I was a little bit disconcerted when, my butt had barely having touched his chair, Pierre blurted "It's placed too far forward. I think it's rejecting." Apparently, a vertical labret needs to go well into the muscle under the lip so that all the movement doesn't push the jewelry outwards. Pierre told me that though I could probably get it to heal, it wouldn't be too stable, the healed skin inside the piercing would probably be visible as a bump on my lip, and on top of all that the placement was slightly crooked, so he recommended I just take it out and have it done again.
I thought it was interesting that while my friends couldn't see anything wrong with my piercing, and my piercer at Perçage Esthétique took my jewelry out and poked around, and noticed all the symptoms ("Yeah, I see some swelling around the top hole ... the skin's pretty dry ... there's a little bit of blood ... it's healed really well on the bottom"), Pierre knew right away what was causing all the problems.
This is the second time I've been told by Pierre that another piercer has done a botched job on me. It makes me wish you could go back to a piercing studio for your money back when the failed piercing clearly results from piercer error. I love my labret and hope to have it back soon – properly placed, this time.