Those Who Matter Do not Judge, Those Who Judge Do not Matter.
At A Glance Author Granuaile Contact IsLeBrigid@gmail.com When Ten years ago or more Artist Elton Studio Miraculous Creations Location Worcester, MA USA By Granuaile
These were the words painted on the wall of the cubicle where I received my first two piercings. On the night of my appointment with Elton for my nipple piercings, it was those words which pierced my soul and have remained with me to this day like a marriage vow. That was almost nine years ago; now after all this time, I am writing about it. I recently had an experience which recapitulated the importance of that night and those words for me. Life has a funny way of doing that, reminding you of things you have forgotten along the way in daily living. Shaking you out of your numbness and helping you to remember what it really means to be alive.
I had been interested in body modification and what I call alternative or different standards of beauty since I was a little girl looking at my grandfather's collection of National Geographic magazines which he kept in his basement. As a teenager, before the big internet boom of the Nineties, I remember going to my school library and looking at images of teenage girls in other parts of the world with brass rings coiled around their necks, scars etched on their faces, or heavy earrings and plates stretching their ear lobes and lips. I have always loved television shows and articles about rites of passage rituals where the milestones of one's life are proudly marked on one's body so that everyone knows what one has accomplished. I was awed by the beauty and power of the young women whose images I saw. As the angst ridden adolescent I was, I often asked myself will I ever be as strong as the girls in the pictures. Will I ever be strong enough to be beautiful by less dominant cultural standards? Will I ever be brave enough to really live my life according to my own secret values and beliefs and not according to what I have been taught is strong, beautiful, and successful.
I guess that is what I was in Elton's cubicle that night at the piercing studio to learn about myself. Am I as strong as those women in the magazines? Am I strong enough to say to the whole world "this life and this body are mine and I will be beautiful by my own definition and not someone else's definition"? Until that night the only thing I had ever had pierced was my ear lobes, one hole on each side, "like a nice girl" as my mother and grandmother would say.
At that time I was 28. I had always been overly concerned about keeping up appearances, the appearance of being respectable, smart, beautiful, successful and strong to name a few. Yet I found myself in the middle of an extremely difficult and traumatic separation from my then husband who had made a very public spectacle of his inner demons which resulted in two days of front page news in our little corner of the world.
I liken that period in my life to trying to repair a broken vase. You can glue all the pieces back together, but it really never looks the same. You can see the fracture lines and the chips. I spent a great deal of time asking myself who I really was and sifting through the ashes of who I had tried unsuccessfully for several years to be. I was trying to reclaim my life and my body, my heart and my spirit, and fashion a life for myself which would make me truly happy.
It was one of the best and worst phases of my life. It is quite liberating to stand outside one's own cultural norm and with cold detachment observe as friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors greeted me daily with blank plastic doll smiles and looks of trapped animal terror in their eyes as if inwardly saying "Oh God, I hope she does not want to talk about it". Better still and more clinically interesting were the people who wanted to comfort me because it made them feel good about themselves or the people who wanted me to explain what had happened over and over again because they wanted to know all the juicy, sordid details and then talk about me in superior tones and look down their noses at me after church or during breaks at work....
I remember the experience that night at the piercing studio quite clearly. I went into the studio waiting room and Elton came out and greeted me. I had come with a friend who was having a second set of nipple piercings done that night. I had always been shy around people in the body modification culture. It was not because anyone had ever been mean to me but because I was in awe of their strength and their beauty.
Elton exuded confidence, competency, and professionalism. It set me at ease. He and I spoke easily about how much more common piercing and especially nipple piercing was becoming in Massachusetts. He explained the preparations and precautions which were standard practices and the procedure of nipple piercing. He took his time measuring with a ruler and marking with the surgical marker. He was a true artist.
While he was measuring, marking, sterilizing, and opening vacuum sealed autoclave envelopes he broached the subject of why I wanted to have these specific piercings now.
My eyes welled up with tears and I looked away so he and my friend would not see them. Without going into too much detail, I explained that I was in the middle of an ugly separation from my husband and was considering filing for a divorce. I stated that I was experiencing a lot of anger and confusion about who I was as an individual outside of my relationships with my husband, family, and community. I told him that I wanted to mark this struggle and search for myself on my body physically in some way so that I would remember what I was accomplishing by going through all of this emotional and mental pain. I stated that my husband had always told me he thought that my breasts were my most sexually attractive physical feature. I stated in as steady a voice as I could muster that this is the night where I make my body, my heart, and my spirit mine. That for the rest of my life, this night would be remembered as the night I cut myself free from the restraints of other peoples definitions of strength, beauty, and success. He pointed at the wall and said gently "See that? Those who matter do not judge, those who judge do not matter. Please, lean back on the table".
I leaned back on the table, the paper crinkling and crunching beneath me and sticking to the skin on back. It was winter and it was cold in the cubicle but I was nervous and my skin had become clammy with the cold sweat of anticipation. He placed the forceps clamp on my right nipple and in the softest and most supportive voice I have ever heard said "Take a deep breath and blow it out." As I did so he passed the needle through the skin and the eyes of the forceps.
I would not call it pain in the medical sense like having a broken arm set. It hurt, it burned, but this was something different. It was a liberating pain, I was breaking free. I was shedding a caul that I did not even know had been stretched over my face my whole life. Then came the ring, an ironic and potent a symbol of what I was doing. The ring was adhered to the needle with some sterile jelly like substance and it slipped easily through the puncture hole made by the needle. So there it was, in two deft strokes of a hand I had engaged myself to this rite of passage.
Elton looked into my eyes, placed his latex gloved hand on my shoulder, and asked supportively and compassionately "How was that? Do you want to do the other one tonight?" With the tears of my disclosures still in my eyes I nodded yes determined to see this through to its conclusion.
A new set of forceps was removed from their sterile envelope and clamped on to my left nipple. Again, the breath and the needle; it hurt more; it burned more the second time. The pain lingered a little longer that time. I knew in that perfect moment with all my nerve endings singing to me that I was alive and I was strong. I knew I had the strength I had always wondered about and the beauty of which I had always stood in awe. I burned with that pain and knew that I was no longer one of the plastic dolls who I saw every day of my life. I felt powerful. I had lifted the white, bridal veil of my comfort and my fear; I had married myself to the values I hold to be true in my spirit.
I belonged to me now and no one could ever diminish that take that away from me.
Granuaile