At A Glance Author jr Contact jr@bme.anon IAM ratwerks When Ten years ago or more Artist me Studio home Location Austin, Texas In about 1985 I ordered a 10g circular barbell from the Gauntlet along with a 10g piercing needle with the notion of doing my own Prince Albert. I felt pretty confident; I'd been a medic in the Army and done a pretty good job of piercing my left nipple while assigned to Womack Army Medical Center. Moreover, in 1985 there just were not so many piercing studios in Texas.
I've done all manner of strange things to myself over the years and this is by no means the strangest. On the one hand, I'd not recommend to anybody that they take too cavalier an attitude about modifying their body. On the other, if your body is not yours to do with what you will I cannot think what is. Just know that if you don't take the time to learn what you need to know you can seriously mess yourself up.
I'd read the PA article in PFIQ. I had the ring and needle from Gauntlet all nice and sterile in their autoclave packets. I had clean towels, Q-Tips and a new tube of Neosporin for lube. I scrubbed my hands and penis, laid out the gear on towel covered tray, laid a towel down on a chair and sat down to work.
Work is the key word here. In 85 the recommended procedure for doing a PA was to lube up a Q-Tip, insert the Q-Tip into the urethra and press the needle from the outside into the head of the Q-Tip then use the Q-Tip to guide the pointy end of the needle out of the urethral opening.
Q-Tip inserted I lined up the point of that 10g needle to the underside of my dick and pressed for all I was worth. I barely got the very tip all the way through, but the rest of the point just would not go. I had only the needle to hold on to and I could not grip it tightly enough in my fingers.
I rummaged around in my box of medical tools and came up with a Beaver brand scalpel handle. This is a sort of tiny stainless steel X-Acto knife for doing tiny surgery. With the blade holder screwed out the base of the needle fit neatly into the end and gave me a larger piece of knurled metal to push with.
Now that I could push hard I found that Q-Tip was not really providing much support for that big fat needle. So I went back to the medical tool chest and selected a piercing needle that would just fit inside the 10g needle, maybe a 14g. I put the point of the 14 into the hole left by the tip of the 10 and tried to push that into the Q-Tip. The 14 was wobblier in the end of the Beaver handle and I could not get it through either.
Back to the box to find an 18g piercing needle. I found a sterile 18g needle, but not a piercing needle; it had a syringe ferule on it. Hmmm.
The recommended procedure was not working but I was not ready to give up. I decided that the outside to inside thing was maybe a bad idea with such a big needle; it was just too hard to support the skin from the inside with a Q-Tip. (I've since seen video from London around the same time showing a tube used inside the urethra rather than a Q-Tip, much better idea.) Back to my story.
I gave everything that had been out of its packaging a good soak in alcohol and my hands a fresh scrubbing. New towels down and I was ready to start again. I unwrapped the 18g hypodermic needle and pushed it through from the outside into a fresh Q-Tip. I then took the second 14g piercing needle, slid it over the point of the 18 and pushed it from the inside out, using the 18 as a guide and the Beaver handle to push. I now had the 14g piercing needle stuck though my urethral opening out out the bottom of my dick. Pretty hot.
I slid the 10 over the back end of the 14 so that I could once again push from the inside out. Even with the 14g needle as a pilot it took a tremendous amount of pressure on the 10 and much prodding of the flesh to get the point of the needle all the way through.
That done the rest went quite easily, I peeled the autoclave pack back from the ring, put a gob of Neosporin on the needle and used the ring to push the needle from the inside out. Screw on the beads and, tada!, a shiny new Prince Albert.
The whole thing took maybe two hours. While there was never much in the way of spurting blood, the towels were a mess. Of all my piercings this one took the most time and caused the most pain but has given me the least grief. I've got a 2g ball and socket ring in it now, some 17 years later.
jr
San Francisco, 2002