Waking up in the dreary summer morning, I knew that this was the fateful that day I was going to go through with my long awaited plan.
At A Glance Author anonymous When Six months ago Artist Corey Studio Freedom Location Vernon, B.C. I had wanted to get surface piercings before any other mods but since they're a piercing genre all of their own, I got the right side of my lip done about 4 months previous. That sort of warmed me up, confirmed my dedication and showed that my body could also heal something without too much complication.
After some consulting and pinching of my chest meat with Corey, my handy, trusted piercer, we set the date. My gym pal Nikki and I warmed and "pumped" ourselves up in the morning, kick started the adrenaline and woke us up. Then it was off to meet up with our faithful sidekick, Megan, and disregard the weather that could potentially set off the mood.
Ascending the "second thought" staircase up to Freedom, we were greeted by the familiar scent of Nag Champa incense and the soothing buzz of the tattoo gun. Lani, our favorite receptionist and piercer in training, was there to our delight and Corey was busy with a client, so we made ourselves somewhat comfortable in the twig furniture and talked about genitals.
Once Corey was free, he and I went back to the piercing room and tweaked my skin one last time. Before we could bring anyone else in, he checked to see if there was even matching jewelry kicking around. Of course, there wasn't. There was no way I was going to be lopsided. This was a disappointment. Some thoughtful planning could have prevented this, but it would also take a lot of waiting for an order to arrive.
Today had to be the day, I couldn't wait any longer. Nikki had some connections to a guy the next town over who, apparently, was very experienced in the surface piercing area and used only custom jewelry. Well, after a few phone calls, intense decision making and stopping to buy munchies, we headed off on a mini road trip. The plan was to drive the 45 minutes, pick up the bars and drive back right away in order to get in well before Freedom closed. I was set on having Corey do the piercing, mostly because we were both pondering about it for the last little while and I had at least met him before so there was some trust involved.
Well, we filled the car with gas, munched on grapes and candy and watched the clouds lighten above the highway. It didn't take long, and it wasn't hard to find the shop. Oddly enough, it reminded me a lot of Freedom.
I felt pretty awkward explaining things but I exuded great selfish confidence with my decisions in defense to their great confidence with their experience. I'm sure they would do a really great job, no doubt about it, I just had my own shop loyalty and gosh darn it, I had a plan. Than plan included paying for two internally threaded, well priced, 14g surface bars, and driving back home before Megan was late for work.
All went smoothly but Meg couldn't stay for the actual act, so Nikki's boyfriend took her place. We all headed into the piercing room to mark my skin and check out the bars. Well, turns out that not only were they externally threaded but also the threads were 1.6mm thick instead of the usual 1.2mm. There was a just small series of random unfortunate events that were occurring that day and I was crossing all limbs that the unlucky streak wouldn't follow through to the actual procedure. It did follow through to the markings though.
It turned out that my rib cage is off center. The center dip between my clavicles is off to the right by about half an inch so we couldn't center the bars to the center of my chest. It took 5 brains and a lot of time to get them spaced apart enough, lowered or raised just right, and figure out why they just didn't look right. Finally, Corey had a break through and realized that they had to be aligned with the sides of my neck as a reference point and it all came together from there.
Now was the best part. I was way too excited to be really nervous, I think all of us were just ready to do it and get it over with by now. It had already been a long day so it was a relief to have the plan truly coming into fruition.
Another reason I wanted Corey to do it was because he would freehand instead of using a clamp and he's very gentle and relaxing. So he prepped then felt around with the NRT and got me to start some deep breathing. I kept my eyes closed, mostly for relaxation purposes and because I'm a tactile person, so I'd rather concentrate more on the feeling and experience than the lights on the ceiling.
On my last out-breath, he pushed the needle through smoothly and quickly. Sliding the bar in after was quite uncomfortable and a little painful, but not intolerable. Right away, he got ready for the second side; lubed up the needle, positioned the NRT as I breathed and felt it slide through on the exhale. This one I definitely felt more but at least had an idea how it was going to feel, not like the first one. Chest flesh is definitely different than lip tissues.
There was only one lonely drop of blood and I was feeling quite content. I sat upright along with the chair and was given a mirror to check out the final work. It was more than I could have asked for, it was really all I wanted to do with my body and I was beyond thrilled. Everyone else was really pleased, especially when the ceremonial suckers were passed out after.
It was half an hour past closing time so I tipped and thanked Corey, paid and said goodbye to Lani and descended the staircase in pure elation.
They started healing very well, we were quite impressed and I went in for weekly check ups but around the 10th week they showed signs of rejection and were removed to prevent further complication. There were too many incidents involving other people. I couldn't properly hug anyone, they got hit a few times and once my friend's hair got caught and accidentally pulled one of them. That almost hurt more than getting them done.
Most incidences were unavoidable accidents, which was really unfortunate. No other body mod has ever really held such a connection to me, for some reason I loved them more than anything else I could pierce. So I took them out on my birthday as a way to start clean, let them heal up and re-do it when the time is right and with better jewelry and better sense of what happens and how to prevent the wrong people from coming in contact with them.
The scars look really cool though so I hope that if I don't get it re-done that at least these will stick around for a long time.