As the title suggests this is a sad story. A tale of loss. But anyone out there who has had a surface piercing will know it is not an unexpected loss.
At A Glance Author Affi'enia Contact Affi'enia@bme.anon When A year ago Artist claire Studio pro piercing Location the corn exchange, leeds About 3 years ago I felt the usual craving for a piercing. It had been a while. However I was bored with the usual piercing I had been getting. I wanted something a bit different. One of my friends had recently had her wrist pierced on the top and I loved the way you could just see these little balls resting on her wrist. Now one of my favourite parts of the human body, male or female, is the collar bone. "How would two bars over my collar bone look?" I wondered. Now I have to admit that when I first imagined this piercing I was seeing it like my friends wrist, just the balls. But the more I thought about it the more I wanted to be able to see the bars as well.
So when the time came to have it done I asked for two bars resting just over the bone. The first thing Claire told me was that it would grow out. This wasn't my first surface piercing so I was aware of that. She marked it up for me and got me to check the position. It looked like the balls were going to sit just at either side of the bone. I said it was perfect and she got everything ready to go. Claire sterilised the area and clamped the first one. It took her about two minutes to get the clamp to stay put as there wasn't a great deal of flesh to grab hold of. The piercing itself was pretty painless and putting in the bar was only a little bit awkward. Then came the time for the second bar. Now these bars were going to be quite close together. This meant the second one was quite hard to do as the area had already started to swell. After about five minutes of trying to clamp it Claire asked if I minded her doing it without the clamp. I said sure, whatever was easiest. The second one I definitely felt. Not a bad thing in my book but definitely a lot more painful than the first one. Once the balls were on and tightened and the piercings were cleaned she let me look at them quickly before she covered it with a dressing. Absolutely beautiful! I loved them.
Next began my general terrorisation of most people I knew. There were two reactions to my new metal. Either, "Oh my god that's disgusting! What on earth made you do that?" or "Wow. Can I touch them?" I was happy to let anyone run their fingers over them as I'd been doing that to my friend's wrist for months. I would spend hours playing with them. There were about 2 millimetres between the raised bars so there was a small dip when you touched them.
But, as with all piercings of this nature, they started to grow out. Not surprisingly it was the one that was not clamped that started to come out first. I let them both grow out as far as I dared as I wanted a full straight line scar for each of them. I couldn't let them grow all the way out though. The though of them just falling out of my body made me feel quite ill. Strange to be so squeamish after having something like this done. So to ensure the straight scar I actually cut them out. Because there was only a little bit of skin covering the bars I simply got a sterile scalpel blade, got hold of the bar by both balls, rested the blade against the bar and just pressed very gently. There was so little covering them they didn't even bleed. I cleaned the wounds, washed the bars and that was the end of that. In a couple of weeks they healed up and now I have two beautiful lines over the right side of my collar bone.
But the story didn't end there. I missed them. I missed them a lot. So about a year ago I had them done again but on the other side. This time neither of them were clamped as Claire remembered how difficult it had been last time. Part of me was relieved as it would make it easier but a large part of me was sad as I knew this meant they wouldn't last as long. The piercing went much easier this time. The bars were slightly lower but when I looked in the mirror they were fairly symmetrical with the scars I had. When they grew out I did the same thing as last time and cut them out so my scars would match. I actually cut one of them out a little early as it bled. But it wasn't too bad.
So now I have a matching set of scars. Guess what? That's right, the title wasn't referring to the past. I miss them again. I just can't decide between one on each side near the middle or two on the right near my scars.