Last year when I was sixteen, sick of my parents saying "no" to my pleas for a navel piercing, I finally took matters into my own hand and snuck off to Strange City where I nervously filled out the forms and showed my ID, and then picked out a beautiful barbell with a deep red jewel on the bottom ball. The jewelery was pretty pricy but I would soon come to appreciate the fact that I spent 80$ on it. The piercing was uneventful and perfect but my joy soon came to an end when, a few months later it became horribly infected, and a few days later my not-very-happy mother caught me with it- that was the end of that.
At A Glance Author Kate Contact Kate@bme.anon When It just happened Artist Jenn Studio Strange City Location Edmonton Fast forward to now, more than a year later. The night before, I walked into my mom's room and asked her if I could get my navel re-pierced the next day. To my complete shock she said yes and asked me where I was going to go- and of course I said Strange City, being my favorite out of the three or four places in the city I've been pierced. That night I hardly slept and woke up long before Strange City was even going to open, but I didn't care. When they finally opened I called and made an appointment for "as soon as humanly possible" and was at the shop forty five minutes later. I still had the barbell from my previous experience and being the amazing people that they are at Strange, they allowed me to re-use my jewelery and threw it into the autoclave. The sterilization process took about half an hour, which I nervously spent playing with my cell phone and reading and re-reading the same page of aftercare instructions that I knew off by heart. Finally my jewelery was sterilized and Jenn and I headed into th e back.
Greeted by the sight of the familiar sage green and wood furnishings, my nerves were at once calmed and jolted into a frenzy. I have had my tragus, several standard earlobe piercings, my nipple, and my navel pierced once before and to this day my navel remains the most painful piercing of them all, so I was nervous due to the amount of scar tissue that Jenn would have to pierce through.
Once in the room Jenn washed her hands and put on gloves and walked me through aftercare instructions. She went to show me the needle but I said absolutely don't let me see it due to my horrible fear of needles, so she put it back down and showed my mom when I wasn't looking. She tightened the elastic on the clamps and explained that she just used them to keep the skin still and wouldn't be using them very tightly on me. She changed her gloves again, cleaned my navel and the area around it thoroughly and marked my navel even though there were still scars from the previous piercing, she said she would mark it for good karma, I approved the marks. Jenn then explained to me that she would be piercing right through the scar tissue from my previous piercing, because it was in the perfect place and the initial piercing had not migrated. This made me really nervous because I was terrified of the pain, but Jenn went on to explain that since the scar tissue was already there, I was cutting the healing time by a lot a nd that there would be less problems with the healing stage of my piercing, which thrilled me because it's always so hard to wait for a piercing to be healed fully. She changed her gloves again and I laid down on the table where Jenn put the clamps on my navel, they were tight but clamps have never really bothered me so I didn't really pay much attention to them. She then promised me that she would never surprise me with the needle and that we would be taking three practice breaths and on the exhale of the fourth one she was going to pierce me. The pain was this red hot flash that lasted maybe a second or two and then it was the perfect and beautiful release that always comes with body mods. Jenn threaded the jewelery through and told me to sit up slowly, which I did. A few minutes later I felt great and checked out my new navel piercing in the mirror- it was perfect.
I had paid before the piercing so all that was left was to leave a tip for Jenn, which I did happily.
Strange City is my favorite piercing shop in the whole city and they do amazing work. I would definitely recommend it to anyone, all the piercers there are incredible and do incredible work. I love my new navel piercing (it's only about ten hours old as I write this) and so far, everything seems to be going well with it. Happy piercing!