My Piercing Experiences
At A Glance Author dEE Contact dEE@bme.anon When N/A Artist Erin Studio Absolutely Skin Images Location Hanover, PA Navel
Since I was a little girl I had a love for piercings. But due to the over protective parents, it took me until the 3rd grade to even get my ears pierced and until 8th grade to get my second holes done. When I turned 16 I had always heard my friends talking about a place in Pennsylvania called Absolutely Skin Images. There were no laws in Pennsylvania about having parental consent to get a piercing but the shop still had its own rules and regulations. So what better of an opportunity for me to get a piercing. So one weekend my friends and I took the hour trip up to Skin Images. When we get up there my friends started to chicken out. I decided I was going to go through with it since we drove all the way up there. I decided to get the top and bottom of my navel pierced. A piercing that would be easy to hide since I never really showed my stomach.
When we got to the shop I looked around to see how clean it was. I was pleasantly surprised about how clean the inside was because the shop is an older looking row home. After a little bit of a wait I met the girl who would be doing my piercings. Her name was Erin and she had every facial piercing you could imagine. She introduced herself to me and had me fill out the paper work. After all that she took me over to pick out the jewelry I wanted for each of my piercings. I choose two curved barbells. She said she was going to get set up for me and call me when she was ready.
At this point I wasn't so nervous surprisingly. I walked around and looked at the tattoo designs and watched someone who was getting a tattoo. About 5 minutes later Erin says she is ready for me. She takes me back into the room and asked me which I would like to have pierced first, the top or the bottom. I told her I would like to get the top piercing first. I made the mistake of looking at the table of needles and this made me extremely nervous. She then cleaned around my belly button. As she was marking the area my palms were sweaty and my friends started making fun of me because they could tell I was starting to rethink the idea. But Erin said they couldn't do that anymore because they chickened out of their piercings. After she made the markings she asked me if I liked the placement which I did and she told me I could lay back on the table. She put the clamps on and asked me if I was ready. I told her I was and she said relax and take a deep breath and she pus hed the needle through. I'm not going to lie it hurt some but nothing too bad. She put the barbell in and let me take a look at it.
After I had my look at the first one I laid back down to have the bottom of my navel pierced. She had me double check the marking and make sure it was where I wanted and to make sure I thought it was centered. She had me take another deep breath and she pushed the needle through. I flinched on this one and she said it didn't break through the top layer of skin so she had to give it another push. When she pushed it the rest of the way through that hurt more than the needle going through most of the skin. But it wasn't that bad. She put in the other barbell. The treads on the barbell hurt going through on this one. I guess because its was sore from having to push the needle through twice instead of just the once. I sat up and looked at my new piercings. I was completely satisfied.
After everything was pierced she gave me the care slip and went over with me how to clean it and what to watch for if it started getting infected. I was surprised that they only hurt for about two days. I wore low rise jeans to keep anything from hitting them so they wouldn't get irratated. I washed them in the morning and at night with antibacterial soup and I would use seasalt to loosen the crust off throughout the day. It hurts sometimes if you try and clean the crust if its still hard. The only thing I probably would have done differently is instead of getting the barbells put in I would have had hoops. From the swelling the skin was tight around the barbell which made it uncomfortable at times.
I'm 20 now and I still have those piercings, plus more.