*bling bling*
Aug. 3rd, 2002 03:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikWhile chatting with a good friend online who recently had new holes poked in her, various piercing-related topics came up. One thing I realized is that even though I've been quite pleased with the single earring thing I'm trying to do, not many outside of my local friends have seen it.
The state my left ear is at is about stage 2 of 6 or so. What I want to do will proably take me until early spring to complete.
I had my first ear piercing back in college. It was a typical mall-shop-and-earring-gun type of thing. *bang*. Ow. It was kinda boring, hurt way too much, and never healed quite right. After having it for nearly 6 months I gave up and took it out; it healed up within days. I really resented that I couldn't swap to an earring I liked right away... that I had to keep the really boring-simple stud in until things healed. Overall it wasn't a good experience.
The next year, I wanted an earring again. I was going through my 'tough guy' phase about then, in a vague attempt to adopt a style other than 'geek'. I was heavyset, but not blatantly fat, and wore a nice long black trench. This was 1989 or so, before The Matrix and other cultural influences made trench-coats all trendy and stylish. Fingerless gloves (with knuckle studs), dark clothing, and a wickedly tall/wide mohawk (like a warrior helmet, not a shark-fin) all added to the look. I was still a computer-lab geek, but the 'tough guy' look coupled with being a DJ at the college station (where I was also the station engineer) just kind of worked for me. I have no idea what others thought of this. I'm not sure I really cared, at that point. I *felt* like a Tough Guy, and it was a fun feeling. Now, add to this that I had a roomate I wanted to scare off for his own good (a long story in itself), and the perfect opportunity arrived. I had previously bought an inch-long battle-ax shaped earring that would be just right for the occasion. Remember those things, from the 80's? Huge pewter dangling heavy-metal-wannabe jewelry bits, on question-mark shaped hooks.
In a big ol' worked up mood about said roomie, and egged on by my friends down the hall, I marched into my room brandishing a huge hatpin and a lighter. I made a point of growling moodily at the roomie for a while. I loudly announced I was going out and I needed an earring, dammit. *flick* *sizzles the pin for a while* *grab earlobe* STAB. Much to my surprise, it barely hurt at all; I was able to keep a straight face. A few bloody moments later, and I hung the blatant and ugly battleax-on-a-hook earring in the new hole. I stood there glowering at the roomate just long enough for a drop of blood to stylishly run down the little axe's handle and onto the shoulder of my trenchcoat. I felt surprisingly detached about it all, watching in the mirror... but I could see said roomie's eyes were like dinnerplates. I think he thought I'd come after him with a mace or something. I stormed out of the room, and down the hall.
...only to duck into my friends' room and go OW OW OW overactingly, finally breaking the tough-guy face, eagerly making use of their cottonballs and alcohol (they haid their own recent piercings to take care of). They couldn't believe I'd gone through with it, and I won $20 off of each of them. :)
Anyways, I kept that earring for most of a year. It was much easier to take care of, with a hook through it instead of a tiny stud, and the whole experience was much less painful. Daily maintenance was easier, and it healed quicker. It never even got swollen like my first one always did. Without thinking aobut it, I took it out for the first day of my summer job. By the next morning when I remembered I had it out, the hole was closed up. Within a week, it was gone. My ear just didn't like being pierced, and was determined to grow back at the first opportunity. Grump.
During the next decade of time I met various folks, online and off, with large amounts of body mods. Tattoos, piercings, you name it. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about such things when one of my roomates got his nipples pierced. I'll spare you the gory details; maybe he'll write his own LJ entry about it someday. I hope he does, actually... I've always wanted to know his reasons for giving it a try. Anyway, I did a lot of research, be it intentional or not. Eventually I came up with what I thought was a really cool piercing I wanted to try someday: an ear grommet. They can be tiny and not look too freakish, and then you can hang any earring you want through them. Also, a bit of your ear is actually missing (think 'core sample') or stretched out of the way, so there's no way it'd heal shut, even with hyperactively healing ears like I seemed to have. This seemed like a logical way to get what I wanted and have it stay. Still, I knew very little about the execution of such a thing and never really pursued it.
Fast-forward to March of this year. I was in a mood, with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scyllacat visiting... and we were walking Telegraph Road in Berkeley. There's a famous body-mod shop called "Zebra" there, with a really cool anthro-zebra standup logo on the streetcorner. My sister and roomate had both said good things about it; it was a well known shop with a clean bill of health. They did the disposable-needle thing, throwing them away after each use, used surgical gloves, the works. On a whim, I went in and asked what the biggest gauge piercing I could get was, and told them about my grommet idea.
As it turns out, the old way to do it (the 'dermal punch'...like using a hole-puncher on yourself) is no longer done, for safety reasons. The biggest any reputable shop will do is 8-gauge. You let that heal up (6+ weeks), and then come back to get 'stretched' to the next bigger gauge. You move down 2 notches at a time... 8, 6, 4, etc., until you get to where you want. My 'what the heck' mood was continuing even after all the talk, so I went ahead and did it, getting an 8ga ring. I was again surprised at how much it didn't hurt, even though they removed a little plug of flesh with a hollow 8ga needle. A little sting, a little pressure, all done. They put in a 'captive bead' earring -- a smaller size of the same kind as in the first picture I showed you.
Care and maintenance of this was incredibly easy. Because it was a full ring, I could rotate it to clean it. There were no flared out bits to trap air or dirt, and fiddling with it actually helps it, to some degree (unlike many other piercings where you want to touch it as little as possible). This leads me to my only bit of advice to anybody thinking of getting an earring, no matter how simple:
Within 4 weeks it had totally healed. I let it sit for two more before going back, and having the 8ga replaced with the 6ga I now wear. The stretching was almost painless; just a little pressure... and no bleeding or broken skin! The only reason to wait a month between sizes is to let the ears grow more cells there around the stretch so that you won't tear anything. I'm ready to go to 4ga now, and will get it done as soon as the ring I chose ships in. My goal is to get a grommet big enough for a 4ga ring to slide through, so I want the ring I buy for this next stretch to be one to save. I ordered a blue niobium 'captive segment' ring... which is a fancy way to say a blue metal solid ring. Once it's clipped together, it just looks like an unbroken circle... no silly bead at the bottom.
As the year goes on, I'll go to 2, 0, and then 00ga. Then I'll be able to fit the grommet in and put the 4ga hoop through it. The ring should spin freely through the hole, and I know I'll be terribly prone to playing with it. The other reason for the ring-through-the-hole is so if the grommet falls out (such as when my motorcycle helmet presses against it while taking it off), it'll just dangle on the ring instead of getting lost.
The silly thing? The sense of scale amuses me. I'm an overly big galoot (not just fat, but also tall/wide-framed, big-skulled, etc). Most of my friends don't realize how big the ring is until I take it off. It seems to be about the right size for me when seen in comparison to the rest of the body wearing it. Oh, and when I do finally get the grommet... if I can find someone to make me one with little etched symbols/wirelines on the outside flange, I'll probably do so. It would amuse me greatly to have it looking like some kind of Gibson-esque cyberpunk 'jack'. :)
The state my left ear is at is about stage 2 of 6 or so. What I want to do will proably take me until early spring to complete.
I had my first ear piercing back in college. It was a typical mall-shop-and-earring-gun type of thing. *bang*. Ow. It was kinda boring, hurt way too much, and never healed quite right. After having it for nearly 6 months I gave up and took it out; it healed up within days. I really resented that I couldn't swap to an earring I liked right away... that I had to keep the really boring-simple stud in until things healed. Overall it wasn't a good experience.
The next year, I wanted an earring again. I was going through my 'tough guy' phase about then, in a vague attempt to adopt a style other than 'geek'. I was heavyset, but not blatantly fat, and wore a nice long black trench. This was 1989 or so, before The Matrix and other cultural influences made trench-coats all trendy and stylish. Fingerless gloves (with knuckle studs), dark clothing, and a wickedly tall/wide mohawk (like a warrior helmet, not a shark-fin) all added to the look. I was still a computer-lab geek, but the 'tough guy' look coupled with being a DJ at the college station (where I was also the station engineer) just kind of worked for me. I have no idea what others thought of this. I'm not sure I really cared, at that point. I *felt* like a Tough Guy, and it was a fun feeling. Now, add to this that I had a roomate I wanted to scare off for his own good (a long story in itself), and the perfect opportunity arrived. I had previously bought an inch-long battle-ax shaped earring that would be just right for the occasion. Remember those things, from the 80's? Huge pewter dangling heavy-metal-wannabe jewelry bits, on question-mark shaped hooks.
In a big ol' worked up mood about said roomie, and egged on by my friends down the hall, I marched into my room brandishing a huge hatpin and a lighter. I made a point of growling moodily at the roomie for a while. I loudly announced I was going out and I needed an earring, dammit. *flick* *sizzles the pin for a while* *grab earlobe* STAB. Much to my surprise, it barely hurt at all; I was able to keep a straight face. A few bloody moments later, and I hung the blatant and ugly battleax-on-a-hook earring in the new hole. I stood there glowering at the roomate just long enough for a drop of blood to stylishly run down the little axe's handle and onto the shoulder of my trenchcoat. I felt surprisingly detached about it all, watching in the mirror... but I could see said roomie's eyes were like dinnerplates. I think he thought I'd come after him with a mace or something. I stormed out of the room, and down the hall.
...only to duck into my friends' room and go OW OW OW overactingly, finally breaking the tough-guy face, eagerly making use of their cottonballs and alcohol (they haid their own recent piercings to take care of). They couldn't believe I'd gone through with it, and I won $20 off of each of them. :)
Anyways, I kept that earring for most of a year. It was much easier to take care of, with a hook through it instead of a tiny stud, and the whole experience was much less painful. Daily maintenance was easier, and it healed quicker. It never even got swollen like my first one always did. Without thinking aobut it, I took it out for the first day of my summer job. By the next morning when I remembered I had it out, the hole was closed up. Within a week, it was gone. My ear just didn't like being pierced, and was determined to grow back at the first opportunity. Grump.
During the next decade of time I met various folks, online and off, with large amounts of body mods. Tattoos, piercings, you name it. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about such things when one of my roomates got his nipples pierced. I'll spare you the gory details; maybe he'll write his own LJ entry about it someday. I hope he does, actually... I've always wanted to know his reasons for giving it a try. Anyway, I did a lot of research, be it intentional or not. Eventually I came up with what I thought was a really cool piercing I wanted to try someday: an ear grommet. They can be tiny and not look too freakish, and then you can hang any earring you want through them. Also, a bit of your ear is actually missing (think 'core sample') or stretched out of the way, so there's no way it'd heal shut, even with hyperactively healing ears like I seemed to have. This seemed like a logical way to get what I wanted and have it stay. Still, I knew very little about the execution of such a thing and never really pursued it.
Fast-forward to March of this year. I was in a mood, with
scyllacat visiting... and we were walking Telegraph Road in Berkeley. There's a famous body-mod shop called "Zebra" there, with a really cool anthro-zebra standup logo on the streetcorner. My sister and roomate had both said good things about it; it was a well known shop with a clean bill of health. They did the disposable-needle thing, throwing them away after each use, used surgical gloves, the works. On a whim, I went in and asked what the biggest gauge piercing I could get was, and told them about my grommet idea. As it turns out, the old way to do it (the 'dermal punch'...like using a hole-puncher on yourself) is no longer done, for safety reasons. The biggest any reputable shop will do is 8-gauge. You let that heal up (6+ weeks), and then come back to get 'stretched' to the next bigger gauge. You move down 2 notches at a time... 8, 6, 4, etc., until you get to where you want. My 'what the heck' mood was continuing even after all the talk, so I went ahead and did it, getting an 8ga ring. I was again surprised at how much it didn't hurt, even though they removed a little plug of flesh with a hollow 8ga needle. A little sting, a little pressure, all done. They put in a 'captive bead' earring -- a smaller size of the same kind as in the first picture I showed you.
Care and maintenance of this was incredibly easy. Because it was a full ring, I could rotate it to clean it. There were no flared out bits to trap air or dirt, and fiddling with it actually helps it, to some degree (unlike many other piercings where you want to touch it as little as possible). This leads me to my only bit of advice to anybody thinking of getting an earring, no matter how simple:
- Do not go to a mall store and use the punch-gun. The punch gun is painful, limits your options, is done in a less sanitary way, and leaves you with a piercing harder to care for. Get over any negative social stigma you may have about piercing shops and get it done by a trained pro, using a needle. Get a hoop, even if it's teeny tiny, so you can spin it and clean it. Your experience will be much more enjoyable and the result will be healthier. You can also pick from a much wider variety of initial jewelry this way.
Within 4 weeks it had totally healed. I let it sit for two more before going back, and having the 8ga replaced with the 6ga I now wear. The stretching was almost painless; just a little pressure... and no bleeding or broken skin! The only reason to wait a month between sizes is to let the ears grow more cells there around the stretch so that you won't tear anything. I'm ready to go to 4ga now, and will get it done as soon as the ring I chose ships in. My goal is to get a grommet big enough for a 4ga ring to slide through, so I want the ring I buy for this next stretch to be one to save. I ordered a blue niobium 'captive segment' ring... which is a fancy way to say a blue metal solid ring. Once it's clipped together, it just looks like an unbroken circle... no silly bead at the bottom.
As the year goes on, I'll go to 2, 0, and then 00ga. Then I'll be able to fit the grommet in and put the 4ga hoop through it. The ring should spin freely through the hole, and I know I'll be terribly prone to playing with it. The other reason for the ring-through-the-hole is so if the grommet falls out (such as when my motorcycle helmet presses against it while taking it off), it'll just dangle on the ring instead of getting lost.
The silly thing? The sense of scale amuses me. I'm an overly big galoot (not just fat, but also tall/wide-framed, big-skulled, etc). Most of my friends don't realize how big the ring is until I take it off. It seems to be about the right size for me when seen in comparison to the rest of the body wearing it. Oh, and when I do finally get the grommet... if I can find someone to make me one with little etched symbols/wirelines on the outside flange, I'll probably do so. It would amuse me greatly to have it looking like some kind of Gibson-esque cyberpunk 'jack'. :)
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no subject
Date: 2002-08-03 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-03 09:39 am (UTC)I have now learnt that one cannot use lj-specific faux HTML tags in comments.
no subject
Date: 2002-08-03 10:59 am (UTC)piercing guns are evil
Date: 2002-08-03 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-08-04 11:18 am (UTC)piercing guns
Date: 2002-08-07 02:10 am (UTC)The two earlobe piercings (the first ones I got) started to get infected a couple of days after, but this seemed to be because the disinfectant they give out is garbage; I started using alcohol instead and they cleared up. I also put alcohol on the piercings after I've showered, just in case some water's gotten trapped in there.
I think they give out weak disinfectant because their usual clientele are 13-year-old girls (who probably have a higher tolerance for pain than they're given credit for). The girl who did most of my piercings would cringe when I asked her to do two cartilage piercings beside each other, like I was going to scream in pain from it. Maybe some people do... I never thought of myself as having a particularly high pain threshhold.
Re: piercing guns
Date: 2002-08-07 02:26 am (UTC)As for the badass ritual bit? Well, I don't understand that part all too much, but I have seen it happen. One guy I knew up at Ferris State (the school I went to) was really into that, and made a huge deal about getting psyched up to go down to Grand Rapids and get 'needled'. He didn't seem to care for the resulting jewelry as much as the process of getting it. I'm still a bit puzzled about that one. I do admit guilt in attempting the role of badass to drive off that roomie. While the action did cause the desired result, I still don't know if it came off tough-guyish like I wanted or just kinda gross and squicked him into leaving.
Re: piercing guns
Date: 2002-08-07 03:02 am (UTC)At first my consideration was monetary-- I didn't want to spend $40 a hole on the project --but I started to like the idea of rebelling against the whole body-mod aura. It's like, I require this many holes in my left earlobe, this many in the cartilage, in these positions, this many in the right ear, etc., and I will follow this regimen using the most straightforward and cost-effective technique available, which is the mechanical piercing gun. Bang bang bang. Almost like a production-line approach, which fits in very much with my self-image. I even came to prefer the piercing studs over the rings I'd originally planned, mostly because I've never seen anyone else wear them like I do.
I liked the self-piercing story... you've never told me that one. Your ex-roomie probably just thought you'd lost your mind and didn't delve into the specifics too deeply. *smile*
Re: piercing guns
Date: 2002-08-07 03:47 am (UTC)Since I'm up anyway, Here's the roomie story: His name was Richard, assigned to my room mid-term. He was from Haiti. Exchange student. I thought he was quite a cool guy, at first. It turns out that he was having serious problems with the rednecks my school was populated with, since he was black and french-speaking. Double whammy for racial and cultural hatred from the beer guzzling masses. Combined with his 'I am not worthy' attitude about being a transfer student from a poor neighborhood, he acted like the most servile person I'd ever met.
At first it was amusing, like some kind of running joke. The way he'd offer to do things for you, or run your errands, or whatnot. I'd just laugh and thanks-but-no-thanks him. This only made him redouble his efforts to try and impress me. It escalated to the point where I started to avoid my room, because Richard would be waiting there, expectantly, to see What He Could Do For Me Today. The more uncomfortable I got with someone trying to do everything for me... the more he felt he was disappointing me and he had to try harder. The guy even would do my laundry and buy snacks to stock my little fridge with when I wasn't there to stop him.
Another one of his Haitian buddies, Jon, was living down the hall aways. Jon's roomie had failed out the prior term, so he had a room to himself. He kept coming down and trying to convince Richard to do things with him, but Richard would have none of it... that might show 'disrespect' to his 'wonderful american roomate who is so nice to him' (that is, I was the only one he'd had that didn't try to beat him up). It only took about three months of this for it to just about drive me psycho. I spent a lot of time hanging out with Jon, trying to figure out ways to get Richard to break this self-depreciating attitude.
Both of us (and our RA) agreed that Richard and Jon should move in together. We'd all win. Jon would get a roomate he could trust. Richard would be with a friend who could help him break the 'must serve the americans' habit. I'd get my own room, which is what I wanted anyways. When Richard discovered that Jon and I were plotting ways to get him to change rooms, he took it in exactly the worst way possible and thought "Oh no, my roomate is displeased with me and wants to be rid of me, I must not have done enough!" He redoubled his efforts to serve and impress.
The best tactic Jon and I came up with was to scare him into leaving. I spent the rest of that term acting the part of Bad Ass Big Guy with a 'Tude. It was something I'd wanted to try anyways, and I went all out. Part of it was appearance, but most was behavior. My buddies would call me and I'd overactingly scream them out on the phone, shout about how I was gonna kill them for whatever-reason-of-the-day, and storm out of the room carrying whatever blunt-trauma weapons were handy. They loved being in on the joke, and played it up... things like screaming in terror and running from me in the dorm hall.
The earring bit was just the final moment, and it worked as planned. I guess seeing blood made him finally realize that I was either psycho or a seriously violent person, and indeed it would be best if he took Jon's gracious offer and moved rooms. He moved that night.
Months later we let him in on the joke. He was pissed (which was a good sign), but we made up. He was much more self-confident after Jon's deprogramming efforts and had a much better attitude. He seemed much happier too. He did say he still thought I was deranged for stabbing myself in the ear like that. He probably tells people these days about the 'crazy bastard roomate' he had in college.