First off, this was one hell of an experience. I didn't really expect it to be this intense, but boy, was I mistaken. I had seen pictures of corset piercings on BME about a year and a half ago and absolutely fell in love. I started going to my piercer, Dan, a little over a year ago. In the summer of last year I had expressed an interest in getting a corset but we never really talked about it. He said it would be neat, but that's all the further it went. Recently I had seen more and more pictures of corsets (almost ALL of them done with CBRs of course) and I had even received an e-mail with the subject line "New Summer Trend" and pictures of all these girls with corsets. So I thought "well shit, if its the new bellybutton piercing, why am I so afraid of it?" I don't really remember when I decided I was going to get it, but a big factor was prom. My best friend's prom was coming up and I thought I had to do it for prom. It would be the best!
At A Glance Author Sara Contact Sara@bme.anon When A week ago Artist Dan Studio Big River Tattoo and Body Piercing Location Davenport, IA We also had a big piercing/tattoo convention here [may 6th, 7th, 8th], so I called my piercer up two weeks prior to the show. I told him I wanted to get a corset done for prom and for him to give me the rundown on information. I asked if I would want to get it done at the convention by some big fancy piercer, if he wanted to do it, if any piercer around my area had done one, basic information. We decided it'd be best if he did it. It would be his first corset and I knew that, but I trusted him. I told him what I wanted to do and I came in a couple days later to get my back measured, show him where the dress fell, see how much space I had to work with, and how the lace would look with the dress. He made a tattoo stencil that would mark my back and ordered all of the jewelry. We planned on Wednesday the 4th.
Wednesday night I came into the shop around 8:30. They closed at 9 but I knew this was going to be a project in itself so it would be better if the shop was closed so no one would be roaming around waiting for their cute little 18 gauge nose piercing and just happen to wander in and see chunks of my back being pierced. I don't prefer an audience anyway. I took my boyfriend Danny in for moral support, but it turned out he would come in handy anyway.
I put on the shirt they use in the shop for back tattoos that had the back cut out of it and Dan put the deodorant on my back and laid the perfectly measured stencil on my back a couple times. He absolutely HAD to make it just right, so he told me this would be the longer part. The measuring and re-alignment of all the drawn out holes on my back. Dan said the "mathematical" part would be the longer part, the piercing part would take about 20 minutes. That reassured me because that's the part I was worried about. Once again, boy, we were way wrong.
I finally laid down on the table he had and he got out all the needles, q-tips, staples, clamps, towels and ball ends he needed. Let me tell you, it made me kind of nervous. It was a lot of equipment. I was so excited but what I was afraid of was that he was going to pierce me once and it would hurt so bad that I wouldn't be able to go through the rest of them. I had eight two-inch bars going through my back. I couldn't flake out. He took the clamps and clamped up the first part of my back. We decided to go from the bottom and work our way up my back going from the right side, then doing it's mate on my left side. And good lord, I'm glad we did. Dan and Danny both kind of gulped when they saw the amount of skin he had to pierce. It was pretty thick. I'm not a fat girl, but it was a thick part, especially that low on my back. I watched the floor while feeling the pinch of the clamps and trying to place my mind anywhere else. I counted the number of random ball ends that littered his floor or I just stared at the wooden tile and waited for the push of the needle through my back. Dan said "Here we go, hun" and shoved that fucker through.
And honestly? It wasn't so bad. The actual pushing of the needle through took about 30 to 40 seconds total, which is pretty long, but the more Dan did, the quicker it went. The insertion of the jewelry is what hurt the most. He shoved the staple in and since I couldn't watch it, I didn't know what was happening, but it seemed relatively fast. Danny came in handy because Dan couldn't hold the clamps with the needle in while putting the staple in all at the same time, so Danny held the clamps while Dan put the staple through.
We worked our way up my back and every row up he went the more the needle stung and the worse the insertion of the jewelry felt. After the first four Dan took a break because he was almost as stressed as I was. He kept saying things like, "What did you get me into?" He smoked a couple cigarettes and I kind of danced around in front of the mirror slowly, looking at the bars already in my back. Movement was really, really, really difficult, I could barely stretch and just sliding off the table took a lot of effort. Once Dan was done smoking I got kind of nervous and didn't want to lay back down because I knew we were only half done and still had a lot more to do.
Every row up stung more and more until I was clenching my teeth and gripping the table with white knuckles. In between piercings I kept saying "I would NEVER do this again!" and whining about how I wanted it to be done and over with. On the sixth piercing we ran into a little trouble though. He lost connection when he was feeding the jewelry through, following the needle. He had been worried about it and it took a little longer than the other ones had, but he salvaged it. It didn't hurt much more than the other ones, but hearing him say "Oh shit, Sara, DON'T move. fuck!" could make anyone nervous when someone's piercing them. Since then, its the only staple that looks a little "off". Nothing too intense, but it'll be the one we keep our eyes on. The only other problem we had was on the seventh piercing, he nicked my skin with the needle so I had a little cut near the exit wound, but I didn't even feel that.
After everything was done I slowly walked around, took pictures, saw how far I could stretch out my arms [barely] and showed the rest of the guys in the shop. It was art! I sat rigid in the car on the way home. I could hardly move anything. It wasn't so much pain, it was just a dull ache, but sharp pains stung me every once in a while when I'd stretch or move a little too fast. I was really glad I had my boyfriend to help me out, because there was a lot of stuff I couldn't do. I could barely put my shirt on by myself. I couldn't raise my arms very high up. He helped when people wanted to see the piercings and of course, he helped with cleaning them. For the first couple days I just let really hot water from the shower beat down on it and then switched to soaking them in sea salt water.
Now that it has been a week I've gone through a lot from bleeding, to swelling, to stinging, to numbness and everything else. Right now it just itches really bad. The soreness has almost gone away, I can lean back against chairs and lay on my back in bed for short amounts of time. I couldn't sleep like that yet, I'm still just lying on my side.
Overall, this was an extreme experience for both piercer and pierced. It was great experience for Dan and it taught me a lot too. It was an undeniable amount of pain but I proved it to myself that I could sit through it and endure. It taught me how to place my mind in other memories to distract myself from the pain. A couple people have actually referred to my back as 'art' and it makes me feel extremely lucky. It was an insanely painful piercing to go through but in the end it was completely worth it.
And yes, I know its not permanent. But what in life really is these days?