At A Glance
Author	Katya
Contact	Katya@bme.anon
When	Six months ago
Artist	Noah Babcock
Studio	Evolution Body Piercing
Location	Albuquerque, NM

First semester in college I started dating this guy with a LOT of piercings (by my former definition, anyway). He had his tongue, septum, snake bites, stretched lobes & daiths in each ear, and one dermal punch in his cartilage when I met him. At some point, the metal just started taking over my thoughts.

I had wanted my lip pieced for like three years. But the agreement with the padre was that as long as he was paying for all aspects of life, tattoos & piercings were STILL forbidden... (He'd never really been happy about the three holes in each ear. Something about one was fine, but I just looked stupid. heh.) So my solution to that problem was get a piercing that I liked that he could not see. At the time, genital piercings freaked me out and I really hate standard navel piercings. Then I got to thinking... I wonder if you could pierce your belly button from the bottom... apparently you can and it's becoming more and more common. But I lived under a rock all my life so of course I had never heard of an inverse or lower navel piercing.

So I got my heart set on it for like two weeks & brought it up to the boy-toy. He said he knew exactly what shop to take me to so I asked him for a price range. He said something like $40-$60. I didn't mind the price but I sure did not have that kind of money. I think he liked the idea so he offered to spot for me until whenever I had the money. At the time this guy and I were not quite dating yet, that's why it was only supposed to be a loan.

We decided to do it the night one of my best friends was visiting me from out of town. So we go and he had decided on also getting a dermal punch in the other ear to be all symmetrical. I explained how I wanted it and then they told me that was actually a surface piercing and would be $91. & apparently it also takes longer to heal including three to four return trips to change the tygon. I was cool with it & boy-toy didn't mind paying so it was a go.

We go back into the piercing room & I made him go first. There was lots of blood, which apparently was surprising to both the boy-toy & our piercer, Noah, because the other side had barely bled at all. Slightly traumatized, it was now my turn. I lay down and pulled up my shirt. He cleaned the area & marked me. I looked in the mirror to make sure, lay down again, and took a deep breath. All I felt was a TINY little pinch while the needle went through. A slightly larger pinch when he slid the tygon through. He screwed on the balls & said "OK, take a look." I think I said something like "aww, I have metal in me!" I was quickly corrected, "No, you have metal on you. You won't have it in you for another 6 to 8 months" "YAY I have metal on me!" My friend translated: "yea, that means she likes it..."

As the swelling went down I almost got freaked out a few times that it might reject, because the tygon became longer and longer poking out. But it was just the swelling. I didn't notice because it never actually looked swollen. I just made sure I was religious about keeping it clean and my paranoia also went down.

I made sure to clean it everyday and for a few weeks I was sure to soak it in sea salt twice a day. Funny side story: to soak my piercing I would lay on my back with the cup of salt water inverted on my stomach. The waiting there with a cup on my stomach got pretty boring and one time I fell asleep for an extra 10 minutes with a cup on my stomach, dorm room door WIDE OPEN! Thankfully my neighbor walked in and just laughed at me & closed my door. No telling how many people saw me like that...

Anyway... I made two trips back every other month to get my tygon changed. Apparently everything went perfectly. The second tygon change Noah told me I would probably be ready for steel in another two months. When I went back, I got my 'metal in me' for real.

So I've had my lower navel piercing for almost seven months now and I love it more as time goes by. I think it's classy. My friends that were skeptical seem to be won over by the fact that I wont be able to wear a 2in diameter pink rhinestone playboy bunny from my navel even if I became possessed and somehow wanted to.