There is never a good "why" for getting any form of body modification. Logically, it makes no sense at all to subject your body to an experience that will force it to heal in an unnatural way. Perhaps the simplest reason is that it appeals to you on some level. Perhaps it's as simple as aesthetics; you like the way it looks. Some people are looking for a certain type of experience to fill some need inside their psyche. For myself, I'd say that it's a combination of the two. Many of my modifications I find to be attractive; I like the way they look, so I get them. But it also fills a need within myself. I find that the more work that I have done on my body, the closer I come to my idealized self-image. In that way, it's something more than just a look that I can assume or discard as I choose. For me, it's more of a lifestyle change.
At A Glance Author Nyarlathotep Contact shubnigurath@hotmail.com IAM Nyarlathotep When A week ago Artist Due to questionable legalities, I'm not saying at this time Studio See "Artist" Location Central Michigan, USA That said, I can't point to a single time when I first decided that I wanted a trans-scrotal. I know for certain that I wanted one in late July of 2001, and had wanted it for some months before that. If I was going to point to any single, defining incident that cemented the idea in my head, it was when I first saw one on a personal acquaintance.
I know that I had already made up my mind about getting one done someday when I did my scrotum piercings, because I ran two lines of rings down either side of my scrotum; the idea was that I would be able to have them there even after I got a trans-scrotal. (Had I put them in a single line, I would have had to take some or all of them out.)
A trans-scrotal is not a simple piercing. If you run a needle directly through the scrotum and insert jewelry (as per a normal piercing), it simply won't' heal. You need to have something there to grow scar tissue for the piercing, and since there isn't solid tissue through the scrotum, it won't work. The only way to force it to work is to clamp the front and the back of the scrotum together, make an incision, and then suture the front to the back, leaving a hole for the jewelry.
Finding someone that was local and that I could afford was a major problem. There aren't many people in Michigan that can do anything remotely similar to a trans-scrotal, Toronto is a six or seven hour drive for me, and I doubt that I could afford the fees of the capable artists there even if I could make the drive.
I expressed this desire to the friend of mine that I had first seen a trans-scrotal on. He's a piercer with approximately eight years of professional experience, and he, in turn, said that it was something that he would like to try someday. To start out, I found a place that he could buy some reference books on suturing techniques, and he spoke with a friend of his (who has a great deal of experience with suturing) to get some additional tips. Meanwhile, a friend at a dental supply company gave me free sutures that she had been given as samples. I turned them over to my friend so he could start practicing. (Aside: the best material I know of to practice suturing on is raw chicken skin, because it has a similar "feel" to human skin.)
My friend, once he felt confident that he would be able to suture without any major mishaps, procured a piece of jewelry. I had previously measured the thickness of my scrotum (while erect; the shape changes significantly during an erection) at the point where I thought the piercing would go. I came up with 2 ¼", but we decided that 2" would probably be better. The jewelry was very simple; a round piece of teflon 2" long, ½" in diameter, with a disc at one end and a o-ring groove on the other. He then needed a live guinea pig. He already had another person lined up that he knew wouldn't mind if the procedure took several hours, so that person got to be his first. I was the second.
When I got to his studio, he didn't have to explain very much initially. I already had a grasp of the basic concept, and had been talking to him for weeks about it. He showed me the jewelry (which looked enormous), and cleaned and prepped his area. His apprentice was there to assist in any way possible.
He started by cleaning and marking the area. He wanted it to be angled very slightly so the disc would be slightly above the o-ring (thus preventing it from accidentally coming out later). He also checked for large veins or anything else that would be bad to cut through. It felt as though it was an eternity, but I think that it was less than five minutes.
He had tried to find a pair of foerster forceps with a clamping area approximately 1" in diameter, but had no luck at all. He had managed to find a pair of canning tongs that he had thought would work. He ran them through the autoclave previously (to be sure that they wouldn't corrode), and was pleased to discover that they were entirely made of non-corroding stainless steel.
The clamping wasn't uncomfortable (at first...). Once the clamps were on, he used several small injections of xylocaine (2% lidocaine with 2% epinephrine) to numb the area. To test whether everything was properly numbed, he poked me with the syringe. Satisfied, he got out the scalpels.
I never did feel any of the incisions, even though it took nearly forty-five minutes to complete the cut. He told me as he was working that the membrane in the scrotum (which protects the testicles) seemed to be extremely tough. He had experienced the same thing with the first person he had worked on, but had thought that it was a result of using a different brand of scalpel than his preference. Every so often during the cut, he would test it to see if it was large enough for the jewelry. As soon as the incision was just large enough to the jewelry to go through without stretching the skin significantly, he started suturing.
He sutured with the jewelry already inserted. I still don't understand why, but he says that it's the best way to get the sutures in place. He used 3-0 silk sutures because, when he had his done, gut sutures had been used and he felt they were very uncomfortable. By this time the clamps had become quite painful. He had needed to move the clamps around to complete the incision, and every time he pulled the clamps up, it felt like they were tearing through the guiche area. (For some reason, I only felt pain at the rear of my scrotum.) The suturing was even worse. Although I couldn't feel the needle as all, the pulling was getting almost unbearable.
Suturing was very difficult. The biggest problem that he had was that the needle kept slipping in his needle driver. He eventually gave the needle driver up as junk and switched to a pair of hemostats instead and had much better luck. The first suture (the one closest to the body) was the most difficult because of the tighter working conditions. Once that was in, everything was downhill.
Finally, it was over. He re-cleaned the area to remove all the blood, took a photo, and off I went. The xylocaine was still active at this point, so I wasn't feeling any pain at all.
The next few days were pretty bad. My scrotum swelled up terribly from bruising and general trauma, I leaked blood and lymph through underwear and pants, and every time something hit the barbell I'd want to cry. It was bad enough that I was taking six ibuprofen pills at a shot to be able to walk around semi-normally and applying liberal amounts of hydrocortisone cream to try and alleviate the itching. After the second day, I started bandaging it with rolls of gauze and surgical tape; this kept the leakage to a minimum and kept the barbell from moving. The downside was that it put pressure on the other scrotum piercings, which made them hurt and itch.
I took daily showers, cleaning with Provon just to be sure that I didn't develop any kind of infection. I wore boxers and loose pants to prevent normal movement from irritating the piercing.
Less than a week after I got the procedure completed, I started bleeding moderately. I couldn't see the area clearly enough to be sure, but I thought I might have popped one or more of the stitches. I was also pretty sure by this point that 2" was too long, and that the extra length (once the swelling had gone down) was causing irritation. So back I went.
He started by removing the cleaning the area and removing the jewelry. And then, surprise!, he told me that yes, I had popped a stitch. But not just one. I'd lost all of them. But that wasn't bad news; it had been just over a week by the time I was able to see him, and the skin had already completely re-attached itself, so popping the stitches just meant that I didn't have to remove them myself later. The bleeding was a result of irritation from the too-long barbell. A shorter one was put in, I was bandaged up, and off I went again.
I kept an eye on the bandage for two days. By the end of the second day, all the bleeding had stopped completely. And I was down to normal lymph discharge. The pain disappeared completely along with the itching.
It's now been one and a half weeks since I got the trans-scrotal. There is no longer any significant discomfort, no bleeding, no irritation, no infection, nothing bad at all in fact. I'm nearly completely satisfied with it; all it needs now is jewelry more attractive than teflon.