The sad tale of my two surface piercings begins not so long, long ago in a little seaside town called Brighton. Basically I have a few piercings already and had not so long before got my hood pierced vertically so was feeling like my set of piercings was maybe complete now.My boyfriend had recently started an apprenticeship at a studio called Perforations and I often popped in to visit there because the staff are always so friendly, this is a place where you feel instantly at ease. He mentioned that they had recently been doing a few surface piercings for people and this was something that intrigued me because I had seen a few already whilst browsing BME before. The more I thought about it the more it kept nagging away at me, I was supposed to have finished my little 'project', I suppose you could call it, for all the piercings I wanted - I guess you can never have too many, though.I kept asking him about it and he told me all about the procedure and what was involved. I popped in later on that week and discussed it with the manager, Warren. He told me to let him know exactly what i was after and what length I wanted the piercings to be and he would autoclave some PTFE up for me and keep it sealed for me until I was next around, because I live in London and just visit at the weekends.I made an appointment for the next weekend and had decided on two piercings, one horizontal above my navel, about just under an inch long, and one vertical under my navel, almost two inches long so the bottom bead is almost at the top of the mons. I arrived at the studio and was a little nervous waiting my turn, although I seem to do these things to myself fairly frequently I cant seem to help getting into a state about it!
At A Glance Author cath Contact cath@bme.anon Artist Dom Studio Perforations Location Brighton,UK Finally it was my turn and I went downstairs to the studio with Dom,
I was nervous but luckily he is a friend so he put me at ease and put some music on to help calm me down a bit.He spent quite a while marking up the piercings and after about half an hour of making sure they were dead straight, we were both happy with them. He clamped up the top one and gave it a spray of ethyl chloride for me. Then he did the piercing and fed the PTFE bar through my stomach and then cut off the ends and screwed the balls on, leaving a little bit of space each side just incase there was any swelling. Then he clamped up the bottom one, i found the clamps a bit incomfortable, because the piercing was so long it took a while to work all the skin up into the clamps and make sure the skin didn't crease in the centre otherwise the bar would be crooked.He sprayed a bit more ethyl chloride on this one as it was pretty deep and I was worried it would be really uncomfortable, it was not a kind of piercing I had experienced before and I was a bit worried not knowing really what to expect. He did the piercing and it was a bit painful in the centre at the deepest point, but soon he had screwed the beads on and I was all done. I just layed there for a couple of minutes and got my breath then stood up carefully and looked in the full length mirror. The piercings were absolutely perfect, completely spot on, I was really pleased with them. He put a dressing on them to stop my trousers irritating them and off I went! I cleaned them carefully using antibacterial soap solution and the next day they seemed fine. The day after that I was travelling home on the train to go to work and I noticed that when I sat down my stomach moved and the bottom one poked up out of the skin a good half an inch or so. It felt a bit like a kind of burning sensation. I got to work, cleaned them up and tried to work and ignore the fact that they were really starting to sting a bit now. I persevered for a couple of days but by now they had started to go red and swollen around the entry and exit holes and it really felt like the bars were trying to push out of the skin. My boyfriend told me not to worry because PTFE takes a little while to settle and soften and then it starts to bend in accordance with the contours of the body.It was getting a little too uncomfortable by this point, and coming home from work on the tube, I sadly decided that when I got home I would try to take them out. I got in, washed my hands and the area, and put on some surgical gloves (handily lying around because my boyfriend has a fetish for them!). I removed the top one without too much trouble and the second one was a bit uncomfortable because the thread was catching on the inside.In total I had my surface piecings for 5 days, and was really saddened by the loss. Having looked back and given it a bit more proper thought, there is too much movement in the abdomen for a vertical piecing of that length to settle and heal properly, in retrospect I think they would have worked a lot better and had a better chance or survival maybe if I'd had the vertical one at the top and the horizontal one at the bottom, but anyway I have some very nice little scars to show for it and to remember my experince by.