[Moya] Repost: The stories of my piercings
Two posts from 2003 about getting my various body piercings
Two different stories here...
My senior year the Peeps were doing a Secret Santa-type deal. My advisor, Art (who was also the official Peeps faculty advisor), got me. Now, he knew me really well, and knew that I was into bodyart, etc. So, he got me a certificate for a free piercing. Have I mentioned recently how much he rocked? He did. A lot. Damn, did I have a crush on that man. If he hadn't since moved to Amsterdam, I'd've given a shot at pursuing him after I graduated.
Anyway, so that was my first outer labia piercing. Unfortunately, my body likes to migrate jewelry, and it didn't stay put well enough, so I had to let it go.
A few years later (five or so years ago, now), my then-boyfriend and I were struggling with poly/mono/jealousy stuff. I'm kind of on the extreme end of poly, and get massively squicked by feeling at all like I'm being marked as someone's 'territory', in terms of sexual possessiveness (although emotional jealousy I understand and can work with, oddly) and we'd had a few interactions about the topic that were really hitting those buttons for me. We were living several hours apart, and not seeing each other remarkably frequently. I was pissed off, and feeling a definite need to reclaim my territory for myself, so I went out to Piercology and got both rings done, that day, at a 10-gauge, without ever mentioning it to him previous. It was a very emphatic and aggressive "MINE!" and I still find them to have that connotation for me, emotionally. Most of the rest of my bodyart is about celebration of some concept or another, and all of it has at its core the idea that it's my decision to do with my body as I choose, but those two rings are deeply, deeply symbolic for me in that regard in a way that the rest of my bodyart isn't.
I found myself telling Friend that story last night during a snippet of conversation in which I was trying to relay how I feel about, and react to, sexual possessiveness. Sometimes I feel self-conscious about how intensely important my sexual freedom is to me, but I've learned over time that every time I try to ignore that, bad things happen with me psychologically. That's probably a topic for a whole other post...
________________________
I was explaining to Friend last night when and why I got my genital piercings. I've got a horizontal hood piercing (16g cbr), and matching 10g cbr outer labia piercings.
(I've been pierced 13 or 14 times over the past twelve years, but I only wear those three genital piercings, my 12g tongue barbell, and two 14g circular barbells in my earlobes.)
Anyway, my hood piercing was pretty much my first real piercing (I'd pierced my own navel while trying to avoid studying for some exam or another, but that was it other than my earlobes, which I had done when I was 14). It must have been summer of '92 or '93, and I was pretty active on rec.arts.bodyart at the time, mostly due to my interest in tattoos. Anyway, it was decided that we'd have a munch in D.C. It was my first online gathering, iirc. I met up with another woman from the group (a very cool librarian with the alphabet tattooed on her back -- we met for the first time at the shop of the tattoo artist we shared), and we drove down, picking up two other people along the way (one of whom she met for the first time on that trip, and later married). I haven't seen either of them in years, but for a couple of years we had a pretty cool friendship going, and hung out together whenever I was in Columbus. Anyway, we got to D.C. and met up with the thirty or so other people who'd shown up. We had the back room of a restaurant (which was a good thing, since there was a hell of a lot of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" going on.) It was a fabulous time. Afterward, a slightly smaller group went out wandering the local leather shops, then a dozen or so of us decided to take Drew and Tashi up on their offer of continued socializing back at their place (I think those were their names -- anyway, they were both piercers, sharing a shop, and they also had a full autoclave and piercing setup at home). We got back there, and the various piercers who'd brought jewelry with them ended up doing a lot of business upgrading, stretching, and replacing jewelry for various folks. Of course, show-and-tell had progressed to genital piercings as well, once we were in a private space. I'd been thinking all night about getting a piercing, and decided about 3 in the morning that I really wanted a hood piercing. Aardvark, a piercer in from Virginia, agreed to do it for me. She offered to set up a separate private room, but my logic on it was "Well, we all know I'm just going to come back out here and show everyone as soon as it's finished, so why bother?" So, she took care of the necessary autoclaving, and just laid a sheet out on the living room floor, in the middle of the party. As she was using the felt-tip to mark the entry and exit points for the piercing, before she clamped, my labia kept getting in the way, which lead to a rousing chorus of "Labia are falling down, falling down, falling down" from the rest of the room. It was a fabulous, supportive, silly, and thoroughly encouraging environment. When she did the piercing itself is when I first learned that my automatic response to release of tension is laughter. The first noise I made after she pierced me was a giggle-fit (which she found rather startling, apparently). That's generally been true for every piercing since that time. I'm always scared right before I get a new piercing, but I also love the feeling, and the combination of adrenaline, pain, and endorphins. I tend to laugh when I'm being flogged, too, although there's a different, deeper pitch to it. I giggle and chuckle and laugh a lot during sex usually, too.
So, that's how I got my hood piercing. I had to get it repierced once, when it migrated some about a year later, and Pat at Piercology did a great job on it, but as far as I'm concerned, that piercing dates back to that night in DC.
It came to mind because I loaned Friend my t-shirt from the event, and threatened his life if he didn't return it. It's got Da Vinci's "Human Proportions" on it, except that the circle is a circular barbell, and the man is full-body tattooed. I also got my Venus Modern Bodyarts t-shirt that weekend, when four of us decided to swing up to NYC, stay at the youth hostel, and explore the city for a day or so.
It was a damn good trip.
This has gotten long, so I'm going to continue with the labia piercing story in the next post. Not that I'm in manic-chatty-overshare mode or anything. Oh, no. Nope. Not me.
Two different stories here...
My senior year the Peeps were doing a Secret Santa-type deal. My advisor, Art (who was also the official Peeps faculty advisor), got me. Now, he knew me really well, and knew that I was into bodyart, etc. So, he got me a certificate for a free piercing. Have I mentioned recently how much he rocked? He did. A lot. Damn, did I have a crush on that man. If he hadn't since moved to Amsterdam, I'd've given a shot at pursuing him after I graduated.
Anyway, so that was my first outer labia piercing. Unfortunately, my body likes to migrate jewelry, and it didn't stay put well enough, so I had to let it go.
A few years later (five or so years ago, now), my then-boyfriend and I were struggling with poly/mono/jealousy stuff. I'm kind of on the extreme end of poly, and get massively squicked by feeling at all like I'm being marked as someone's 'territory', in terms of sexual possessiveness (although emotional jealousy I understand and can work with, oddly) and we'd had a few interactions about the topic that were really hitting those buttons for me. We were living several hours apart, and not seeing each other remarkably frequently. I was pissed off, and feeling a definite need to reclaim my territory for myself, so I went out to Piercology and got both rings done, that day, at a 10-gauge, without ever mentioning it to him previous. It was a very emphatic and aggressive "MINE!" and I still find them to have that connotation for me, emotionally. Most of the rest of my bodyart is about celebration of some concept or another, and all of it has at its core the idea that it's my decision to do with my body as I choose, but those two rings are deeply, deeply symbolic for me in that regard in a way that the rest of my bodyart isn't.
I found myself telling Friend that story last night during a snippet of conversation in which I was trying to relay how I feel about, and react to, sexual possessiveness. Sometimes I feel self-conscious about how intensely important my sexual freedom is to me, but I've learned over time that every time I try to ignore that, bad things happen with me psychologically. That's probably a topic for a whole other post...
________________________
I was explaining to Friend last night when and why I got my genital piercings. I've got a horizontal hood piercing (16g cbr), and matching 10g cbr outer labia piercings.
(I've been pierced 13 or 14 times over the past twelve years, but I only wear those three genital piercings, my 12g tongue barbell, and two 14g circular barbells in my earlobes.)
Anyway, my hood piercing was pretty much my first real piercing (I'd pierced my own navel while trying to avoid studying for some exam or another, but that was it other than my earlobes, which I had done when I was 14). It must have been summer of '92 or '93, and I was pretty active on rec.arts.bodyart at the time, mostly due to my interest in tattoos. Anyway, it was decided that we'd have a munch in D.C. It was my first online gathering, iirc. I met up with another woman from the group (a very cool librarian with the alphabet tattooed on her back -- we met for the first time at the shop of the tattoo artist we shared), and we drove down, picking up two other people along the way (one of whom she met for the first time on that trip, and later married). I haven't seen either of them in years, but for a couple of years we had a pretty cool friendship going, and hung out together whenever I was in Columbus. Anyway, we got to D.C. and met up with the thirty or so other people who'd shown up. We had the back room of a restaurant (which was a good thing, since there was a hell of a lot of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" going on.) It was a fabulous time. Afterward, a slightly smaller group went out wandering the local leather shops, then a dozen or so of us decided to take Drew and Tashi up on their offer of continued socializing back at their place (I think those were their names -- anyway, they were both piercers, sharing a shop, and they also had a full autoclave and piercing setup at home). We got back there, and the various piercers who'd brought jewelry with them ended up doing a lot of business upgrading, stretching, and replacing jewelry for various folks. Of course, show-and-tell had progressed to genital piercings as well, once we were in a private space. I'd been thinking all night about getting a piercing, and decided about 3 in the morning that I really wanted a hood piercing. Aardvark, a piercer in from Virginia, agreed to do it for me. She offered to set up a separate private room, but my logic on it was "Well, we all know I'm just going to come back out here and show everyone as soon as it's finished, so why bother?" So, she took care of the necessary autoclaving, and just laid a sheet out on the living room floor, in the middle of the party. As she was using the felt-tip to mark the entry and exit points for the piercing, before she clamped, my labia kept getting in the way, which lead to a rousing chorus of "Labia are falling down, falling down, falling down" from the rest of the room. It was a fabulous, supportive, silly, and thoroughly encouraging environment. When she did the piercing itself is when I first learned that my automatic response to release of tension is laughter. The first noise I made after she pierced me was a giggle-fit (which she found rather startling, apparently). That's generally been true for every piercing since that time. I'm always scared right before I get a new piercing, but I also love the feeling, and the combination of adrenaline, pain, and endorphins. I tend to laugh when I'm being flogged, too, although there's a different, deeper pitch to it. I giggle and chuckle and laugh a lot during sex usually, too.
So, that's how I got my hood piercing. I had to get it repierced once, when it migrated some about a year later, and Pat at Piercology did a great job on it, but as far as I'm concerned, that piercing dates back to that night in DC.
It came to mind because I loaned Friend my t-shirt from the event, and threatened his life if he didn't return it. It's got Da Vinci's "Human Proportions" on it, except that the circle is a circular barbell, and the man is full-body tattooed. I also got my Venus Modern Bodyarts t-shirt that weekend, when four of us decided to swing up to NYC, stay at the youth hostel, and explore the city for a day or so.
It was a damn good trip.
This has gotten long, so I'm going to continue with the labia piercing story in the next post. Not that I'm in manic-chatty-overshare mode or anything. Oh, no. Nope. Not me.