I discovered body piercing jewelry before I really discovered actual body piercing. I fell in love with the look of the barbells and captive bead rings. I decided to put a barbell in my gunned cartilage before knowing anything about stretching, it took some ice and a few hours. But once I had that sucker in, I was hooked, I changed all my lobe piercings to captive bead rings, and I haven't looked back. My first 'real' body piercing was my navel back in October of 2001. My 19th birthday present to myself.
At A Glance Author Chase Contact Chase@bme.anon When Six months ago Location Boston It is my completely uneducated guess that after ears, navels are the most common piercing, but like I said, thats just my guess. I had thought about getting my navel done for so long, I did all the reseach, read everything I could on the subject. This site helped a great deal. My mother had refused to take me before I was 18. So I knew I'd have to wait until I was at least of legal age. So, why wait until I was 19 you might ask...Well, I was a wuss, thats why! I hate going to the dentist, doctor, etc, and this place looked like a doctors' office. I'd been into the actual piercing shop a few times before, to buy jewelry and have casual conversations about hypathetically getting pierced. The shop had been recommened to me by a few other friends who were happy with the piercings they had gotten there. I felt pretty confident that the guy knew what he was doing. He himself had just about every possible piercing. I found out about surface bars from him, he has one in the nap of his neck, that was a totally new concept to me. He also told me about the proper ways to stretch using a taper. Good to know, I wish I had known when I was stretching my cartilage.
So, I finally decided to take the plunge and get my navel pierced. My friend Katie drove a whole 2 hours home from college to take me and be my moral support. I was so nervous before she got to my house. But once she got there she got me all excited about it. She was hyper from her long drive and she made me hyper too. The drive to the shop was a bit of a blur( Katie drove) , my mind was on what I was going to say once we got there. We went at like 9 pm, so it wasn't crowded at all. In fact, we were the only ones there. I walked right in and told the guy what I wanted. He asked if I wanted a ring with a jewel in it, or just a plain one, I went with the plain one, so it would go with anything I wanted to wear. He said he had done like 9 other navel piercings that afternoon and all of them had chosen the jeweled rings. My theory was that I'd wait until my navel was all nice and healed and then I could change it with my wardrobe. I like my theory, it has worked very nicely. H e gave me a piece of paper with all the aftercare instructions on it. And to this day I SWEAR he said to sign the bottom, so I did. When he saw I had signed it he asked what I was doing, and laughed. He and Katie both laughed. Then he put the real piece of paper I had to sign infront of me. I could barely write, my hand was shaking so bad.
Before I laid down on the doctors' office type bench he took his time marking the placement. Then he had me lay down. He was really good about telling me exactly what he was doing as he was doing it. I watched as he took all his "tools" out of plastic bags. I made the mistake of looking at the needle. YIKES! It was big. I really didn't know what to expect, but seeing the needle kinda freaked me out more.
He put the clamped on my navel and I said to him "this will only take a minute, right?" He said it would take less than a minute. He had me take a deep breathe. "1, 2....3"....OUCH! I let out a gasp, he laughed. He asked "are you going to die?" I said no, I was going to live! My friend had been waiting out in the waiting room for me. When I came out she said I had a huge goofy grin on my face. I was SO happy. It was such a high. Its been about 6 months, my navel is healing up nicely. After about 4 months I changed the ring to a curved barbell because I felt the ring was getting knocked around alittle too much. I was very careful when I changed it, and it didn't bleed or hurt at all. I still do sea salt soaks at night, and wash it with soap everyday in the shower. I love it, I can't wait until the summer, then I can really show it off
I've gotten other piercings in the recent months, mostly ones no one else except a priviledged few can see. HeHe. But, thats another story....