It was the best of stretches; it was the worst of stretches. Ok, so enough of the Dickens plagurism. Recently I decided to stretch both my PA and my ampallang, I figured if I was going to be in some discomfort from stretching the ampallang I might as well get the PA out of the way at the same time. Why did I want to stretch them? Partially it was to see if the 'bigger is better' ethos was true (it had certainly proved true when I stretched one of my nipples a few months previously, and partially because I wanted to get something done. I was waiting for the design for my back piece to be finished and I wasn't in the frame of mind to get any more piercings for the time being; I am still trying to heal both my nipple piecings completely so I decided not to get anything else done until they are healed.
At A Glance Author Arete Artist Rob did the piercings, I did the stretching Studio Snakebite, and then at home Location Dublin, Ireland The PA was about three years old at this stage, and there was already space around the entrance so I figured that shouldn't be a problem. The ampallang was about two years old, so I thought that should have been ok. As both were at 2.4mm I decided to go into Snakebite (in Dublin) and get a taper and the relevant jewellery. When I informed them of what I was stretching I was told that the PA would be no trouble, but that stretching the ampallang would hurt like hell. They were right.
The advice I was given was to soak in a hot bath for as long as I could, and then lubricate the taper and slowly push – fairly straightforward advice for stretching so that was fine by me. I then went out and bought some lubricant for the taper and hopped on a bus home.
I got home, and while I was waiting for the water to heat up I laid out some things beside the bath: a towel to sit on; the taper; lubricant and jewellery; a large glass of water; and a glass of whiskey, just in case. Eventually the water was hot enough and then I had my bath. I don't particularly like soaking in the bath for a long time, so brought a book in with me so I wouldn't get bored.
After about an hour I got out of the bath and sat down on the towel, made sure I had everything I though I needed nearby and took a deep breath. I decided to start with the ampallang as I figured it would hurt more (amn't I the clever one) and that it would be easier to stretch the PA at a later stage.
I took the taper out of the packet, squeezed some lubricant onto it, removed the existing barbell and inserted the taper. It seemed to go in easily enough, and I was quite relieved. Then it stopped – so I pushed a little harder, and then it started to get sore.
After a certain point no matter how hard I seemed to push the taper wouldn't go in any further. I tried sitting in the hot water (it hurt less, but seemed harder to push the taper through), I tried switching sides, and inserting the taper from the other side, but to no avail. No matter how hard I pushed the taper would get to a certain point and just stop. I even left the taper in, walked into another room and sat watching TV for a while, but that did no good either.
>From what I could gather it seemed to be stuck trying to enter the hole on the other side of my urethra. So I decided to leave that for the moment and try the PA instead. Immediately I ran into a problem – I couldn't remove the cbr that was already in it: no matter how hard I twisted and tried to open the ring it just wouldn't budge. Not wanting to be doomed to complete failure I decided to see if I could get the cbb in beside it, and what do you know, it fitted. So instead of going from 2.4mm to 3.2mm I now had two rings in my PA. I actually liked the look of the rings in there; they made a nice clanking sound when played with.
Since then I stretched the PA up to 4mm, and over the weekend I got it up to 5mm, it seems to be no problem to stretch at all, except for when I forget to tighten the balls enough and one of them falls off and rolls down my leg whilst waking into an Indian restaurant. Alas the same cannot be said for my ampallang, I've tried to stretch it twice more, but I still can't get the taper all the way through. Someday, who knows, but for now I'll leave it the way it is.