DIY frenum
At A Glance Author anonymous When Five years ago Artist myself Studio my room Location netherlands This story is about the first piercing I performed on myself, or at least, the first one I actually wanted. At the time I had two piercings (tongue and tragus) done by a professional, and had decided that there was not much experience to be gained from being pierced by a pro. If one does it only for the aesthetics I'd say go for a pro, but to me (and I guess a lot of others) there's something more to be gained. I don't find something deeply spiritual in piercing myself, but it just fascinates me how one can modify one's own body, and thus appearance.
As I said this was not really the first piercing I did on myself. I'd done a helix on myself a month or two before, as a first exploration in self-piercing, but retired that one as soon as I felt it was kind of settled. Just didn't like the piercing altogether. But it was a good learning experience to go to a piercing I did desire.
As with a lot of people, once the piercing virus had struck me, it wasn't about to leave. So surfing on BME, I read all I could about the actual piercing-proces, healing and aftercare, and what else there was to read. I figured after the succesfull healing of the helix, it was time to pierce something I liked. Somehow, i felt a genital piercing would suit me fine. That I decided to go for a frenumpiercing was largely based on the fact that this specific piercing seemed not too complicated to me.
So one day, I gathered my stuff. I had some clamps (bought in a sterile bag from a piercing pro) and a 14ga canula needle. As jewelry I had a 14ga 10mm straight barbell, which I'd bought at a local piercing studio. The jewelry was more or less cleaned by boiling it for half an hour. After washing my hands and putting on some examination gloves, I started pulling and tugging on the skin of my penis. I tried a few times to get the marks the way I wanted them, and after this was done, I cleaned the area with an anti-septic solution.
Now it was time to perform the actual piercing. Placing the clamps was a bit difficult as I had to get the marks aligned and the skin was very loose (as I was very flaccid) but after a while I succeeded, and was ready to work the needle. Here, again, I had a slight problem with the skin that was so loose. To get the needle through the first layers of skin wasn't that big of a problem, but to get it out on the other side was not that easy. What happened was that the skin of my frenum seemed so elastic that the needle just wouldn't go through. In retrospect I think just should have had a little more patience and the guts to push harder, but what I did instead was twisting the needle a little bit. This helped in getting the needle through for sure. Now the insertion of the jewelry was a piece of cake. The big advantage of canula needles is that, once they're in you can withdraw the needle while the canula stays in the piercing. So at this stage I inserted the jewelry into the canula, and pulled the canula through, leaving the jewelry in place.
Damn, was I proud!
Initial healing went fine and without any problems. Later however, when I was stretching my piercing I had to pay for twisting the needle. Because of the twisting of a tri-bevelled somewhere within the piercing I made a slide cut. This resulted in a chunk of scar tissue within the fistula. I've had this piercing for 4 years, and then retired it in favor of a PA (the story of which will follow) After half a year i had slowly stretched it up to 8ga, and was wearing a straight barbell of 8mm long through my frenum. Up to this size stretching went pretty uneventfull, but the piercing just refused to go any bigger. This I blame on the chunk of scar tissue in the fistula, as every time i tried to insert something bigger it just got stuck in the same spot.
The stretching itself was done using the teflontape-method which i recommend wholeheartedly, with the remark that one has to make sure to refresh the tape regularly, to keep everything clean and tidy...
Concluding I can say that this piercing experience was a very happy one. It was fun and I think I learnt a lot from it. On the practical side of things I must say that the piercing didn't really do anything for my sex-life, neither for me nor my partner. If I was to do a frenumpiercing now (which just might happen very soon, as part of a ladder-project) the only thing I would do different would be the initial size. As this was only the second DIY-piercing I did, I was still a little intimidated by the size of needles, whereas I now would only pierce bigger, so next time I'll probably pierce at 10ga, as these are the biggest needles I can get without too much trouble.