At A Glance Author vicky Contact vicky@bme.anon IAM vicky-dreamer When N/A Location UK August 24 '03:
When I first found play piercing on BME I detested it and thought it was sick. I couldn't understand or even grasp and concept of why people would want to push needles into their body for fun, especially when all you have to show for it the next day is a little red needle prick mark.
As time passed I grew to learn much more about the different sorts of modifications, I researched and found that I too was becoming intrigued by the different things you could do to your body.
I've often self pierced myself, with a list of 15 DIY piercings; piercing to me is a way to express myself, but I began to find that these impulse piercings weren't what I really wanted, so I'd remove them within days or maybe a couple of weeks of performing the piercing and then do something else, once again growing bored of it and repeating the process time after time.
I was at work one day and noticed the insulin syringes on the shelf in the back corner of the dispensary - I enquired how much it would cost me as staff to buy a single packet containing 10 needles, no questions were asked but I made the excuse that my diabetic grandmother was low on needles and I'd promised to take some to her.
They would only cost me £1.50 with my staff discount so I bought a packet and took them home with me that night.
As the evening grew into night and the sky grew dark I dropped the blind and closed my door placing the bolt across. I had already made excuses to my family telling them I was going to get an early night as I was tired and so I didn't want to be interrupted - so my scene was set.
I thought that there would be some way to detach the needle from the syringe tube itself but I was out of luck, so I started to experiment. I first dubiously pushed the needle into my thigh to get an idea of how much it was going to hurt - it didn't hurt at all, I was shocked so I removed the needle and picked up another, I removed my top and pushed the needle into my breast, around my areola seeing as it was so pain free I continued carefully pushing the needles through my skin until I had some going all the way around my nipple on the edge of my areola.
I was still shocked at how pain free the small 29 gauge needles were, but they were awkward and cumbersome due to the syringes so I soon removed them and watched as small specs of blood oozed from the tiny pin sized holes I'd created.
That same evening I ventured back online and browsed around many different sites looking for a UK company that would supply me with some 'play piercing' needles. I eventually came across Medisave and so I ordered myself a single box of 100, 27 gauge needles. It was late Thursday night when I placed the order and it arrived early Saturday morning, I was excited at their arrival and wanted to have a look and see what they were like but had to work.
When I got home that evening I waited until 8pm for my family to go out, once again I dropped my blind and locked the door, set some music playing on my computer and then opened the packaging. The needles were in strips of 5, each one individually sealed so I removed a single strip of 5 and removed their sterile packaging.
They had an outer layer of paper like packaging and when that was removed they each had an individual plastic sheath.
I removed a single needle from it's sheath and pressed the bevel point to my breast, it felt like a pin pricking the surface of my skin but as soon as the needle had broken through the skin there was no pain, I pushed the needle under the surface of the breast and then made it exit through my areola - I used the other 4 needles in the same fashion and then removed another strip from the pack.
When I had finished with my left breast I had a halo of 13 needles, the point of each close to my nipple. Although the halo wasn't precise and perfect it went the entire way around my nipple and I felt quit impressed at what I had achieved.
I removed more needles from their packaging and started on my right breast, this time I used 8 needles, again making a star shape around my nipple, but this time the needles were well placed and facing away from the nipple.
As time progressed I continued to play, I used another 12 needles to write the word "hate" on my left forearm and 8 needles to make an 8 point star on the back of my left hand. I finished off by pushing a needle vertically through my old chest piercing scar which bough my session to an end - with 42 needles used in under 2 hours for my second ever session I felt I had done more than enough.
I carefully removed each needle in the same order that I had put them in, replacing each in a sheath and then dropping it into a small sharps bin that I had picked up from work - also claiming its use was needed by my grandmother.
When I went to bed that night I felt incredibly emotional, I don't know what had caused it but I felt like a huge amount of stress had been relieved, the tears flowed down my face as the rain ran down my bedroom window.
I was alone at home and I couldn't stop crying, I had no reason to be crying I just felt as though a tonne of weight had been removed.
When I awoke the next morning I had small pin prick marks representing the location of each of the needles I had played with down my arm and hand the night before, when I looked at my chest I had what seemed to be small blood blisters sitting under the skin, thankfully though they did disperse within a few hours.
There are pictures of my 'play piercings' available on my IAM page, but you will only be able to gain access to the pictures of you are an adult IAM member.
Maybe play piercing is my form of 'self harm' to be honest I don't really know, I only bought the needles because of my curiosity but I do have a feeling it's an experience that I will be repeating. If you choose to experiment with play piercing then please make sure that the needles you use are sterile and make sure that you dispose of them correctly in a sharps bin.