Going for the one

At A Glance Author anonymous Contact anonymous@bme.anon Artist Ricky Studio Voodoo Tattoo Location Denver, CO

After I got my first nipple piercing about a year ago, my best friend was astonished I had done something so different from my otherwise clean-cut, vanilla appearance. I told him I liked it so much I wanted to get the other nipple pierced. "What's next?" he kidded me. "You'll be wanting a PA." "Not me," I told him, "just the other nipple, and then I'm done."

Uh-huh. So here I am now, with a shiny steel ring rising out of the head of my dick and curling down into the shaft.

What changed my mind? I remember talking to a buddy and his boyfriend about their PAs and frenum piercings, and thinking, maybe that isn't so far out. When I discovered BME I started checking out the photos and stories, and I was immediately drawn to the look of the PAs.

The more I saw, my first attitude--"that is too fuckin' weird"--turned into "that is so fuckin' hot!" I fantasized about the heightened sensation some people talked about. I was turned on by the wild, hard look of it, the surrealist twining of metal and flesh. Where the natural, animal adornment of foreskin had been taken away, adding a steel ring seemed to make up for missing skin.

The piercing itself was the easy part. The pain is real but it's a small thing--fear of pain can make it worse than it really is. I knew that nipple piercing usually hurts more than a PA, and I had already been through that. Once I tuned out my fear, the sensation wasn't bad--strange, amazing, eye-opening, but not completely unpleasant. Some pain is a signal to do something, like removing your hand from a burning surface. But piercing is just an experience. You don't have to do anything about the pain, except be there for it, for a brief moment.

To me, what was more daunting was the bleeding afterwards--I was glad I'd read the stories on BME, because they prepared me for that. The second night, while I was in the middle of changing the dressing, the phone rang and I picked it up. It was an ex-boyfriend on the phone, and he had all sorts of stuff he wanted to tell me. He'd freaked out when I got my nipple pierced, so I didn't want to tell him I'd got a PA. I certainly didn't want to explain what I was doing when he called, so I just stood there talking to him, catching in my hand the bright red drops cascading from the head of my dick, thinking, "if you only knew!"

The hardest part for me about getting a PA was deciding to make a change to my body--especially a change with such strong sexual meaning. To me it meant giving up a kind of naturalness for something chosen, self-determined. I knew that I would feel differently about myself afterwards, and that people who might find out would probably have reactions--some positive and some negative.

I reminded myself of some of the other physical changes I've been through. One of the big things for me about getting my nipple pierced was the idea of adding something inorganic to my body. I remembered how strange the thought of that was at first.

Another physical change I've experienced was deliberately changing the size and shape of my body through weightlifting. It wasn't so long ago the muscular look that's almost common today was freakish to people. I've worked at it for years, at least an hour a day, six days a week, and the result is very different from nature left to run its own course. Not everybody approves of that, and I think it's funny that I've even been asked if I use steroids, but the truth is, it's just been a lot of hard, sweaty work.

Another body modification I've been through was getting a cornea transplant last year. Now, when I look at my typing on the computer screen, I read these words through someone else's cornea, stitched into my eye. I can even see the stitches when I look closely in a mirror. The transplant came from a young man who lost his life. It's mind-bending to me, whenever I think about it, that my body is no longer completely my own, and that part of someone else's body lives in mine. I'm no longer 100% factory parts, so to speak. My own physical boundaries have changed, and I owe a debt of gratitude to the fellow who made my continued vision possible. (Organ donation's a great gift, guys--think about signing those donor cards.)

Thinking about all those other physical changes I've experienced was one way of telling myself it is okay to make changes to the body. A lot of changes happen whether you like it or not, so you might as well make choices about the ones you want while you can. The key to making the decision to get a PA was admitting to myself I really wanted it. Somebody else on BME expressed it perfectly: do it and be proud.

Once I decided I wanted my dick pierced, the fun part was getting pumped for it. Even on the big day, I wasn't sure I would go through with it. I brought my gym bag so in case I changed my mind on the way to the piercer, I could just keep driving down the road to the gym. For a last-minute motivational boost I watched a Jim Buck video (Naked Highway), which focused my mind on how hot a PA looks in action. Then I got in my car, drove down to see my friendly neighborhood piercer, and told him what I wanted.

I haven't regretted it. Bleeding stopped on the fourth day, and I made my first test drive on the fifth day. Let me tell you, the sensation is awesome. I started with a 10 gauge ring, and I can't wait until it has healed enough to stretch up to a 6. It's still too soon to do anything too heavy with my boyfriend, but I'm counting down to that.

If you want it, go for it!