Body Mod… Danger and Regret

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Brent Moffatt has experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows that a life in body modification has to offer. You may recall him as a former world-record holder for his piercing exploits, as well as for his Golden Palace casino URL forehead tattoo, something he came to deeply regret — you can read his thoughts on that in an earlier “Skinvertising” article. After Brent read the story of Lesya getting her husband Ruslan’s name tattooed on her face, he felt obligated to talk about his own experiences as a cautionary tale. Those thoughts follow here as he sent them to me, with minimal editing. Brent and I have not always seen eye to eye, but I share his deep worry that it’s very difficult to predict one’s future, and that the excitement of youth often leads people down body modification paths they later find incompatible with their later lives. -Shannon

Above: Brent Moffatt over time.

Body Mod… Danger and Regret
By: Brent “The Human Pincushion” Moffatt

I was reading an article by Shannon Larratt about a young woman that had tattooed her husband’s name across her face. I was also read the comments after said article, and I was horrified that Jim Ward and I were initially the only ones to openly say that this was a bad idea. So I decided to tell a bit of my story of dangers and regrets as it pertains to “my life in body mod”. I have had many many modifications and have been involved in the world of body mod for a long time, and in that time I have gotten both good work and work that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Unfortunately in the days when I first became interested in mods there wasn’t a meaningful internet — it was just in its infancy — so there really was nowhere to turn to know what to do and how to do it. Luckily young people today have so many more resources. Most of my bad modifications came from lack of understanding, immaturity — #1 fault — and the use of drugs and alcohol — #2 fault. My early misadventures include,

Scratcher tats done at parties while very drunk or stoned
Self-done piercings on my arm that turned septic and almost required amputation
Self-done tattoos while deciding if I had the talent to be a tattooist — I didn’t want to scar anyone else

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Juan’s Double Eyelid Piercing

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

juan-title

Eyelid piercings have wowed people ever since I first featured them on BME. Although they’ve shown themselves to be safe and viable when properly placed on a person with appropriately shaped anatomy, they remain one of the rarest piercings. Spanish pacifist Juan Carlos has a variation on it that is perhaps the rarest of them all — a single bar connecting the top and bottom lids, almost like an industrial for the eye. The reason this piercing is so rare is that in order to wear such a piercing permanently, it requires a very unique anatomy — the lack on an eye. As the first person to get this, Juan claims the “right of naming”, and calls this the “Tuerto piercing”, or “Eye piercing”, as it replaces the eye. I had a chance to chat briefly to Juan about his remarkable piercing and other mods, including his striking full-face tattoo.

When Juan was nineteen, he was required to serve time in the Spanish military, as all citizens were required to at the time — this happened almost twelve years before the government would finally abolish the requirement. Juan went on to join the elite Spanish Green Berets, but wasn’t comfortable with aspects of their behavior once he got to see it first-hand. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. The abuse ran contrary to his ethics — he has “Libertá” tattooed on himself three times — and knew he couldn’t live with himself if he became part of this. It was either figure out a way to get out of the military or commit suicide. Not wanting to die, on January 28, 1990 Juan took a needle and punctured his own left eye — a process that he describes as not particularly painful, but just a sensation of pressure. This wound became infected, resulting in the loss of the eye — and more importantly, a psychiatric discharge from the military.

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King of all Erls

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

I posted Eric Stango’s bridge piercing a little while back when he was at a measly 00ga (you may also remember him from a couple neat piercing projects — a set of “whiskers” and an anthropomorphic ear piercing). Since then he’s pushed it up to accept an impressive 12mm tunnel, just a sliver away from being an epic 1/2″ Erl. Here he is showing it off with some assistance of one of his four young apprentices (find Eric at Lifestyles and Krazy Eric’s in Connecticut).

Keloid to Phoenix

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Normally a phoenix is born from ashes, but on Dan Golan’s arm, with a little help from Mika Lazar, the phoenix was born from keloids that he’d had on his arm most of his life. Dan, who lives in Haifa, Israel, has always been interested in tattoos, and like many young people, as a twelve year old had acne on his arms, which ended up leaving him with large keloid scars on his arm that made him quite uncomfortable.

When Dan turned eighteen he got his first tattoo, a small lizard that healed well and he’s still happy with today. While doing his three years of regular service in the Israeli military, four more tattoos followed that first one. Nonetheless, his old keloids from childhood still bothered him quite a bit, and when his military service was finished he started going to doctors to see if they could help get rid of them. They tried some creams and other treatments, but nothing helped, so he started poking around online to see if he could use his love of tattoos to solve the problem. His whole family approved of the idea, thinking a big tattoo — “a medical tattoo!” — would be great.

For his earlier tattoos Dan had gone to lower-end mall studios (“and you know this is not the BEST idea,” he admits), but for this project he knew he’d need someone with a bit more experience and began seeking a qualified tattoo artist in the North of Israel where he lived. Most of those that he contacted were unwilling to tattoo over keloids, but after some repeated recommendations from friends he found himself talking to Mika Lazar (mika-tattoo.appspot.com). Mika had never tattooed over heavy scars like Dan’s before, so she began by tattooing a small line across one of them to make sure the ink held and there was no adverse response. Since there wasn’t and the ink held perfectly, she began the process, which you can see here:

The choice to do a phoenix came about as they were sitting at the studio tossing ideas back and forth until a phoenix that Mika had drawn up earlier caught Dan’s eye. The tattooing and subsequent healing was no different than any of Dan’s earlier tattoos without keloids in the mix, and the tattoo was completed over three sessions (not including the test line) — the outline, the bird, and then the final touches and background.

Here’s how it turned out in the end. You can still see the keloids if you know they’re there, but most people won’t notice. Dan’s considering a little more tattooing to mask them entirely, and has not yet decided whether this tattoo is going to stay largely as is, or if it’s the beginning of a sleeve.

Rotating Suspensions

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

I’ve always been told that rotating or “rotisserie” are the most horribly painful suspensions you can do. I was just talking to Jason from Third Eye Perception Flesh Suspension out of Austin, Texas (or online at thirdeyeperception.com) about his — that’s him in the animated GIF on your right, which is nabbed from the video below of the 360 degree vertical rotating suspension (followed by an earlier horizontal rotation video of Tom Moore, recorded by Jared Anderson, just so you can see both), and he elaborates,

The 360 was the most horrifying yet peaceful moment of my life. I have never been an emotional person during any suspension, but as soon as the first hook pierced me, I was flooded with emotions and literally cried the entire time I was being pierced. The amount of people helping and contributing humbled me beyond expectation. Being tensioned into it — instead of the traditional method of rigging in — felt as if I was being torn into various pieces, but it also made me feel a bit more secure that I wouldn’t fly out of the device. As soon as I gave in and started spinning the pain was beyond anything else I have ever done, and I stopped after a few rotations. Once I stopped, I restarted and began spinning backwards, which is when I felt amazingly calm.

At the upcoming Suscon he’s planning a rotisserie, and after that will be exploring more suspensions along the same theme — maybe a full-on XYZ gyroscope. All of the fabrication of these impressive suspension rigs is by Tom Moore, an essential part of making these unique suspensions possible. Others contributed as well, for example, Emrys Yetz put together the tensioning rig, a ratchet set up (which Jason admits drove him insane because of the clicking noise, but getting the tensioning balanced and tight is what makes this suspension bearable).

Snaking Rings

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Gabriele of Maxart Body Piercing in Rome, Italy (ModBlog superstar) just did this wild play piercing scene using a just massive collection of captive bead rings, which appear to form a tube through which is drawn the soul of a flower — I particularly like the touch of the threading being pulled through a cheek piercing!

There are about 120 rings in all in this scene, and they took about three hours total to do, including some short breaks. The rings were taken out immediately afterwards at Gabriele’s insistence, I assume to keep scarring to a minimum (although it would make a cool scar to let these all reject!). I suspect that Gabriele must have been practically as sore as the client, after taking all those balls on and off.

Another White Palm

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Cross-spectrum body modification artist Wayne Fredrickson of Zodiac Tattoo in Moreno Valley, CA — one of the few practitioners who’ve been featured here for tattoos (don’t miss that crazy link), piercing, and scarification — just posted a good example of how clean white tattoos often look, and how successfully they generally heal. It’s weird, even in these edumacaterd days, the urban myth persists that white ink tattoos are next-to-impossible to do, to keep from fading or changing color, or are even dangerous (someone emailed me just yesterday concerned because they’d been told that white ink is fundamentally toxic). In reality white ink is as non-toxic and inert as any modern tattoo pigment (that is, safe to tattoo with, but a carcinogen if you spend a decade snorting large quantities of the pure powder base), and appears to last better than most, resistant to fading and other discoloration. In addition, when you’re talking about white-only tattoos, I feel like there’s some trick-of-the-eye that makes them more “forgiving” — slight breaks and imperfections in the linework are less likely to be caught by the eye, which makes them ideal for work on the palm for example, a location where it can be difficult to get ink of any color to stay perfectly (something which the eye instantly picks up on in black ink).

In the example below, done on a palm (the location would have created more of a challenge than the choice of ink) you can see the tattoo progressing from fresh, to two weeks later, and finally to two months later. There’s no reason to believe that it will look nearly identical to that third shot two decades from now as well, although the lines may blur slightly due to the mechanics of skin. You may recall in November I actually posted a similar tattoo — click here to see a 13 year old white ink palm tattoo (that one is more yellow because of the pigmentation of the wearer’s skin, not because of its age). As usual, click the pic to zoom in.

Nasal Orbital

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Ruslan, who has both large nostrils and a septum (which can function as a nasallang) just posted a unique looking picture of himself wearing a ring through them, making for a nasal orbital, a very unusual look. It instantly reminded me of another creative icon in this community — there’s a 2007 photo on ModBlog of Eaten Placenta wearing a similar configuration.

nasal-orbital

A turn for the worse

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Something that often surprises people is just how quickly a trapped infection can move from nonexistent to serious. These cheek piercings were about two months old and by all appearance doing just fine, when the wearer decided to switch the jewelry. In the process, they somehow managed to drag bacteria into the still-healing fistula, probably bacteria that was on their hands. Within the week the piercings were seriously swollen or infected, so they headed to their doctor, who insisted that the piercings be removed and put her on antibiotics. This photo was taken when she got home from the doctor.

cheek infection

Mistake number one: Changing the jewelry in a still healing piercing without proper attention to contamination control. Be aware that cheek piercings often take a long time to heal, and perhaps more importantly, piercings of all types will appear healed long before they actually are healed (and even young technically healed piercings may have very thin skin, making them highly susceptible to injury). Ideally a piercing that’s still healing shouldn’t have its jewelry changed, but if it must, the jewelry needs to be sterilized and gloves and other appropriate cross-contamination must be in place. Whenever possible this should be done at a piercing studio — most will autoclave and change jewelry for a small reasonable charge, or even do it for free when you buy the jewelry.

Mistake number two: When a piercing is infected with significant amounts of swelling and discharge, the presence of jewelry is both good and bad. It’s bad because a foreign substance in a wound can greatly increase the population of bacteria by giving them a “foothold”, but it’s good because it can keep the wound open and is often the only thing keeping the infection from becoming an abscess. The piercing allows the wound to drain, as the antibiotics (or alternative treatments) work to eliminate the infection — saline soaks and other treatments can also work to draw out the discharge, but can only do so if the wound is open. Even if antibiotics eliminate the infection, you can still have serious complications if a large pocket of pus is trapped under the skin. For this reason I feel it’s important to always have someone familiar with the treatment of troubled piercings involved in such complications — doctors are notorious for making problems with piercings worse due to their unfamiliarity with them, even today. Any reputable piercer is always happy to take the time to look at a piercing having difficulty (whether they did the piercing or not) and give you advice on how best to treat it (and that advice in this case likely would have been “go to the doctor, but don’t let them take out the piercing”). Better yet, piercers, unlike doctors, rarely charge for this service in my experience — although you should always tip them!!!

Sure beats a tracheotomy!

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Shannon Larratt

Here’s a wonderful little story about the healing power of body piercing from Dion Jacobi at Modscene in Gladstone, QLD Australia (modscene.com.au). In this case I’m not talking about the oft-touted psychiatric or spiritual healing power of piercing, but something much more physical and literal.

Dion had a “young fella” about sixty years old come in, who after a failed nasal repair (centered on his right nostril) that was then made even worse by a blunt force trauma a month later, completely destroying what progress had been made, had been unable to breathe through his nostrils for the past fifteen years. As Dion says, “imagine what it would be like to have sleep apnea for a decade in a half, to not be able to do any major exercise, or to even eat and breathe at the same time.”

The guy decided that getting two large holes behind the collapsed passage might allow a little bit of air, so he went to Modscene to have them do a pair of 2ga nostril punches. What Dion found he was working around was as if someone had cut away the front portion of the septum, causing the tip of the nose to collapse in to the philtrum area, blocking airflow — the only way the guy could breathe through his nose was to physically push up the entire tip to open the airway. After the first hole was made, it was clear it was going to work, and after the second one was done — there were some unavoidable symmetry issues due to the extent and unevenness of the existing damage — he was, for the first time in a fifteen years allowed the use of his nasal passages.

“He left with the biggest grin,” Dion Says. “This is why I love my job!”

breathing holes