After getting a vertical clitoral hood piercing about 6 months ago and experiencing no problems at all with it, I craved another genital piercing so I cruised things like bme and suicide girls checking out what I could get. I loved the look of labial piercings but wanted symmetry if I was going to get them done and, being low on funds, decided to go for the vertical Christina since it would kinda follow a tattoo that I have on my crotch and lead down to my vch. I figured that it was pretty unlikely that I'd reject since my body doesn't seem to do that ; I still have a splinter in my finger from like gcse art – gross I know.
At A Glance Author Vasilisa When Three months ago Artist Angela Studio Haunted Tattoos Location London After trying to get it done in Camden and being told that it was actually illegal for them to do a Christina there due to female genital mutilation laws (!?!), a girl called Niki (forgotten what the place was called, but she had these incredible collar implants...) anyway, she told me to go to see Angela in Haunted Tattoos in Soho – apparently she was a friend and was a great piercer. Walking from Camden to Soho when you don't know London is a mistake! Anyway, I finally got there thanks to a guy holding a sign for them who led me down to the studio, and was pleased to find out that they could fit me in that same day (I love it when they do that), so I went to the corner café to get some pancakes in me since I hadn't eaten and went straight back to Haunted.
The place looks teeny and has some pretty cool artwork on the outside. Inside it's clean and quite inviting, with a tattoo chair behind the desk and a few piercing rooms, from the list of piercings and the books it looked like they do a pretty good range of stuff.
I filled out all the forms, forked out £30 and was well informed about the aftercare, although I have to admit I got bored of doing that and just cared for it the same way I did for my vch and it's still fine – I was travelling a bit afterwards and saltwater was a bit impractical. I got taken into a back room, I was wiped with an antiseptic wipe and then the measuring process began...I never really gave much thought to how precisely you have to measure a surface piercing because of the chances of rejection. She used a curved barbell instead of the standard surface barbells because that's what she thought would suit my shape more. She measured me standing up a few times and gave me a mirror to see where the balls would be, and then remeasured me when I lay down on the table since the skin stretches and stuff, she explained that the problem with surface piercings was that your body constantly pushes on them and sometimes it's just inevitable that they reject – if it looks like it will then it's really best to remove it if you want to avoid a really ugly scar. After making sure that she'd got everything exactly right, she clamped the skin (that actually hurt more than the piercing itself, think it might be because the blood got stopped or nerves or something) and just asked if I was ready, when I nodded she stuck the needle through and it was done. She dabbed a bit with a tissue but I didn't really bleed very much and tightened the balls again to get them on nice and tight.
The only thing I can really compare it to was my vch and although the needle going through hurts more since there's more flesh, the retraction of the needle and stuff didn't hurt a bit (that was really uncomfortable with my vch for some reason) and it looked absolutely perfect when it was done, I'm pretty happy that it hasn't migrated either. Three months later and it still hasn't rejected and I haven't had any problems at all.
The day after I had it done I accidentally walked into a bollard in the middle of the street – that killed and meant that a 5 year old learned a lot of new words... I ended up kinda bruised but it didn't affect the piercing (amazingly) and if you forget that I'm a total klutz it's fine. I used salt water to start off with but decided that it would just be easier to use carex on it twice a day; it didn't ooze at all and it was healed within 2 weeks. Sex wasn't a problem either since I had sex that same day with no 'complications'.
I'd really recommend Haunted Tattoos since it's clean, got friendly staff and Angela seems to know what she's doing.