I've always had a fascination with my wrists. I got my first tattoo on my left wrist. I don't really remember when this happened, but I decided that I wanted to pierce my wrist. I had never heard of that being done before, so when I found it on BME I was even more intrigued because I could actually do it. A surface bar seemed to be the way to go, so I went to this piercing shop near me, which was the cleanest piercing place I had ever been to (well, this was only my second piercing, my septum was my first, but I had been to a bunch of shops to get tattoos), and asked Rebecca, the piercer, about surface piercing. She said she had pierced two people's arms before, but they left town and she never got to see the piercings before they grew out or were taken out. We came to an agreement that she would do it for free if I came back every week to show her the progress. That was no problem, since I live right by there (Lark St in Albany, NY). I told her I wanted a surface ba r in it, but she didn't know what that was. After explaining it, she still was hesitant about it because she didn't have the tools to bend a barbell without damaging it. She suggested a PTFE barbell because they were flexible and lymph doesn't stick to it as much as it does to stainless steel. I decided to go ahead with the PTFE barbell because I really didn't know much about surface piercings at the time, only what I had read on BME. We decided to go with the PTFE and then do some more research on surface bars and maybe get one.
At A Glance Author julia Contact julia@bme.anon IAM afilmbombs When A year ago Artist Rebecca Studio Viva Lark Vegas Location Albany, NY The piercing day came, in October of 2002. I thought it was going to hurt incredibly bad, even though the tattoo on my other wrist was enjoyable and didn't hurt at all. Rebecca didn't really know what to expect or how she was going to do the piercing. She tried grabbing my skin with a clamp, and that worked, so she stuck the needle through. We were both like, "what? that's it? wow that was easy..." It didn't hurt at all, it was kind of weird feeling, but it definitely didn't hurt. I could immediately tell the straight barbell wasn't going to work out. She contacted her jewelry supplier, and faxed a drawing of the surface bar she wanted made. About a month later I had that put in, but the ends were way too long. They stuck out too high and caught on stuff a lot. Plus, since I didn't have the piercing done with that surface bar, it was pretty pointless to put in, but I didn't know that at the time. Another surface bar or two were ordered to get it right. The last one was great, but the piercing wasn't going to last much longer because of all the stress I had already put on it. In mid December 2002 I took the surface bar out because it had rejected so much that I could see the entire bar through my skin. I really liked the look of the scars and wanted more, like a bracelet.
In April of 2003 I went back to Rebecca and had her put two good surface bars on either side of the old scars. Again, they didn't hurt at all. I loved them so much! They looked so much better than the first one...and I ended up getting a tattoo around them that incorporates the scars into it. I had the piercings when I got the tattoo, but expected it would still look good when I lost the piercings. In August the outside piercing was constantly bothering me and hurt all the time, I just couldn't take it anymore so I removed it. Oh yeah, I wasn't able to remove the last one or that one by myself, the balls were screwed on too tight and I couldn't unscrew them with one hand. I wasn't in Albany when I removed the first one, so I went to the closest shop I could find and had a guy unscrew the ball for me. He was totally baffled by what was in my arm, it was a terrible shop and I would never go there for any real work, and recently I found out it went out of business. For th e second barbell I had a friend unscrew the ball for me, he also unscrewed the third barbell, which I ended up removing in November 2003 because it was in the way at my new job. I constantly caught it on things and it got really irritated and bled all the time. Every time I lost one of my surface piercings I felt like I lost a big part of my life. They meant so much to me and I really loved how they looked and loved explaining to people how they worked. I got some pretty weird questions about them....like this one girl at a grocery store who asked how they "got the studs in there" and I said it wasn't done with a piercing gun, and that piercing guns are horrible for any piercing. Her response was "but it's like a piercing?" no, it IS a piercing. I don't think she got it, but hopefully my lecture about piercing guns was understandable.
As for cleaning these things, it wasn't very hard. While they were fresh I washed them by running water over them, but didn't like to move the bars back and forth because that just irritated them. I figured as long as they were soaked and I got all the lymph off them they'd be fine. I also did sea salt soaks every once in a while, but they were really difficult to do because of the placement...I couldn't hold my wrist in any sort of container to soak them, so I did sea salt compresses with paper towels occasionally instead. The second two never got infected, but the first one did. I expect that was because I kept switching barbells and didn't take very good care of it. I learned a lot after that piercing.
Anyone looking to get a surface piercing done, do your research and make sure if you decide you want a surface bar that it will FIT. It's extremely important that the surface bar doesn't have anything wrong with it, because even if the ends are a little too long, it will cause a lot of irritation because it will catch on EVERYTHING if it's in your arm at least. Also, you have to be constantly aware that it's there or you'll hit it on stuff or people will grab your arm. Also, now I suggest tygon rather than a surface bar for surface piercings. As far as I can tell, they are a lot more successful with healing.