I am a 32 year old stable, well educated, professional, well spoken husband and father of 2 sons, and I love to get pierced!!
At A Glance Author Johan Contact Johan@bme.anon When A year ago Artist Retha Studio Rudy's Location Centurion My experience with piercings began many moons ago when I was 10 years old. For a real BOY who played rugby and stayed in the Karoo (a very dry sheep farming area in South Africa) it was most certainly very uncommon to have piercings. People in that area were extremely conservative and piercings for men were taboo. But for some reason I have always liked piercings. My first piercing was a self-done ear piercing. It did however not have time to heal because I had to go to school the next day. I had my ears pierced after I finished school and had many piercings since then.
I work in the Financial Services industry, so I must always hide my piercings (like septum) or get pierced where one cannot see them when I am dressed for work. This is why nipples were ideal for me.
My piercings normally heal easily, but for some reason I must always be careful with my nipples. My first nipple piercing was my left nipple in 1997. After about 10 months of soaking it twice a day and trying to look after it well, I gave up and took the ring (14g)out.
Last year, however, I decided to give it another try. And am I glad that I came across Retha at Rudy's Tattoo Studio in Centurion. I drove by that studio often, but never went in, until that day. Everything was clean and the place even smelled like a hospital (antiseptic cleaning solution). I asked to speak to the piercer and Retha came out of the piercing room. I explained to her that I wanted to have my nipple pierced, but struggled to get it to heal. She looked at my nipple and said that it was pierced too deep previously and that might be the reason why it did not heal. She also said that I should be careful when playing with my sons, because they tend to jump on you, climb over you, etc, which constantly hurts the piercing. And no golf until the piercing fully healed.
So I got the courage together to face the pain again (nipple is really the worst piercing in terms of pain that I have experienced) and made an appointment for a Friday afternoon. I drove past the studio on my way home, so it was easy to pop in for a piercing. I prefer to get pierced on a Friday afternoon because then I have time to clean it nicely and the new piercing can settle over the weekend. We again discussed what I wanted to have done. I wanted my left nipple pierced horizontally, but not too deep this time. She explained that she could not pierce it too shallow either because then my body would reject the piercing and leave a nasty scar across my nipple.
I chose the jewelry (again a 14g ring), went to the piercing room and sat on the bed. Retha went through the whole exercise of putting on new gloves, cleaning my nipple, marking the insert en exit holes, erasing them, marking again and made sure that I was happy with the placement. She showed me that it was a new needle and opened it in front of me. The fact that she showed me that everything she used was new, really put me at ease because I did not want to get any strange illnesses in this manner.
Retha clamped my nipple and pushed the needle through. I just held my breath as the intense pain shot through me. Retha did a sterling job and my piercing was perfectly placed. I loved it from the first glance in the mirror. Afterwards she made sure that I understood the cleaning procedure. Wash with an antiseptic soap (I always use Cetaphil) twice a day and soak in Saline solution or salt water for 5-10 minutes afterwards.
I followed the cleaning instructions, but my nipple was still very tender and sore for 5 days. I could not even sleep on my left side. It gradually got better though, and after about 3 weeks the tenderness and pain was gone, but it was not fully healed yet. It took about 4 months to heal.
Then I phoned Retha to get my right nipple pierced as well. It looks unbalanced to have only one nipple pierced. So the next Friday afternoon I went through the same process and that piercing also took about 4 months to heal. After healing, I changed the rings to straight bars. I found that the straight bars were best for me because they don't pull or bump as easily as the rings.
I subsequently started to stretch my nipples. They are currently at 10g and Retha will take them to 8g next week. They take about 3 weeks to fully heal up again after stretching.
Next on the piercing agenda is to get double nipples, e.g. getting them pierced vertically as well.
I absolutely love my nipple piercings and will recommend anyone to have it done. Once healed, your nipples are much more sensitive - a nice sensitivity. Every now and then they just gently remind you that they are pierced.