Hi, I'm Mandi, and I'm a 20-year old virgin. Of the flesh, that is. That all changed July 24th, 2004. That is the day a couple of friends and I packed up our belongings, grabbed a tent, and headed up to Azalia for the Great Lakes 4.0 Barbeque.
At A Glance Author cuthalcoven Contact cuthalcoven@bme.anon IAM cuthalcoven When A month ago Artist Aaron Studio Great Lakes BBQ Location Azalia, MI Once we got there, we realized we had forgotten the poles for our tent, and had to share someone else's tent. This left me feeling a little irritated, so I wandered around and ended up watching punkyfish get a corset play-piercing from bullgod2481 and tribecanada. I remembered telling my friends that I had wanted to get one at last years barbeque, and they told me I'd never get it, and that I would most definitely chicken out. My boyfriend at the time even went so far as to tell me that if I got it, he'd never talk to me again.
Well, we were fighting at barbeque time, and he didn't come with me as planned. There were play piercing needles, piercers, and my own aching flesh. I inquired as to how much Aaron (bullgod2481) would charge me to get 5 needles done as a teaser, since it would be my first time getting play piercing. To my surprise, Aaron said he'd do it for free, since I only wanted 5. It was settled, I was getting holes put in me that night, come hell or high water.
As the night wore on, we watched lukas zpira do some scarifications and mingled, chatted, and made new friends. It started getting dark and I started getting eaten up by mosquitoes. I was determined to get pierced before I turned into an achy, itchy mess. I set off to find Aaron, only to realize that it was too dark to find him, and no one had seen him. Argh!
I caught incoggeno, who swore he had just seen him over by Lukas. I finally caught up with him, and asked if he could still do my piercings in the dark. Thankfully, he could. The only problem was lighting....no one had a flashlight to use! We finally settled down in front of a large tent that had tiki torches burning in front of it. Aaron pierced another girl before me, who got 15 needles in her arm, and then in was my turn.I sat in the folding chair next to him, as he prepped my arm with iodine. He talked to me the whole time, asking if I was nervous, etc. This calmed me down a lot, and made me feel better. FairyDust102501
opened the needles and handed them to Aaron as he needed them.With the first needle, Aaron had me inhale and exhale when it went through,. When I responded that it hadn't hurt at all, he purposely did the second one deeper to show me that it "could" hurt. *laughs* I felt it more, but it wasn't extremely painful or anything. I actually psyched myself up for lots more pain, so it was a lot less painful than I had expected it to be.
On the last needle, Aaron didn't give me any warning, and just pushed it through without the old "inhale, exhale" routine. I liked that better, because I'm the type of person that gets more nervous when I have to wait, or when I "know" something is going to happen. We took pictures, and then Aaron slowly slid the needles out of my skin.
I'm a bleeder. Yup, I've known it since I got my ears pierced at 4ga and stretched immediately to 2ga....I bled all over. So it came as no surprise that once the needles were out, I wouldn't stop bleeding as easily as the others, and Aaron had to hold my arm until my fingers went numb. Yay, how fun. *grin* I didn't bother me really, as I'm quite used to it. After a quick clean-up with some more iodine, I was ready to go.I grabbed a beer and headed over to the fire with PlayerRock04, a friend of mine. We stayed up for a couple of hours and then we headed into the tent to crash for the night. The next morning, the area was a little tender, and there was some slight bruising noticeable, but nothing major.
We made it home and I showed my parents what I had done. My dad chose to ignore it, and my mom told me I couldn't complain about having blood drawn anymore. (because I'm frequently a big baby about that!) I suppose she's right, so as a goodwill offering, I went two days later to have my checkup and complete blood count done. Ick.
On the third day, Tuesday, the bruising steadily got worse, and more noticeable. It didn't bother me, since I rather enjoyed them, but I guess it bothered other people. They seemed to think I had "mutilated" myself. Oh well?
It is now Thursday, 5 days after I had the play piercings done. I'm still really bruised, but even that is starting to fade. I noticed today that I can't see where the needles went in anymore, which, previously, I had still been able to see.
I enjoyed this experience a lot, and I'm already planning for the next one. My only regret was that I was frightened of the pain, and only got 5 done. I now wish that I would have gotten more, as they didn't hurt and I enjoyed it so much. I highly recommend that anyone who wants to get play piercings not be afraid of the pain, and to get what they truly want to get. Next year, I'm definitely getting more than 5, and I can't wait!