Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills. The people it kills get up and kill.

After rejecting art school for a stint in the Navy, DJ Minor commiserated a few bad jobs at a tattoo shop near the base, and not long afterwards found himself tattooing tribal armbands on GIs… He just “kept waking up as a tattoo artist”, and the rest is history. You can find him at TastySquirrels.com and KantReed.com, and on Myspace as djminor.

Left: Done on one of the body mod artists from Joshua Carlton’s shop in Indy, Middle: the customer (a piercing apprentice in Texas) wanted a classic looking girl, Right: Earl’s foot, based on a painting DJ Minor did for another tattooer.

* * *

BME: How did you get into art and tattoos?

I wasn’t drawing portraits of my friends at age three or anything, but I was steadily drawing from the third grade on. I got into photography and technical illustrations in high school due to a very persistent High School Art Teacher. She got me all revved up about a serious art career — as long as it wasn’t photographing kids at SEARS she would be excited. Time goes on and I got a full scholarship for an art School in Savannah, GA, which I turned down for a trip to boot camp. This threw me into a different art reality of the tattoo parlors beside the base.

I would have been awesome at SEARS though.

BME: Were you also exposed to tattoos as a kid, or were the base parlors the first time?

My uncle was in the Navy and was covered with little demons, and flowers from all over the world. It was really interesting since South Carolina, where I am from, didn’t have legal tattooing, or many heavily tattooed people. When I got out of the Navy myself I was covered in the kind of tattoos that make laser treatment techs rich — but visibly covered none the less.

Living in the southern heartland didn’t really take well to a twenty-something all sleeved out with naked ladies and skulls. After a few bad job decisions, I decided to take a few hours break at a local tattoo shop with an artist named Crenshaw. Knuckle head thought I was still enlisted, and was crackin’ on me for my lovely collection of art. Next thing you know, I am rewiring broken power boxes and tattooing GIs from Fort Gordon with Crenshaw! I really don’t know what happened after that — I just keep waking up as a tattoo artist.

BME: Tell me about your first customer?

So my first customer walks in, and throws down with some seriously sweet red tribal arm band action. Oh yeah! After probably two and a half hours longer then he was ready for, we wiped off my glorious red masterpiece. The client base at the time was a lot different from the tattoo show watching public of today, a little less informed about current trends in magazines and the art behind tattoos — they really liked tribal and Old English tattoos!

Left: “Customer told me I could do whatever”, Middle: a gore whore model tattooed on Corey from Prick Magazine, Right: Jeremiah’s hand topper rose done at the Atlanta show right when DJ Minor got back from Hawai’i.

BME: Obviously your uncle doesn’t mind, but what about the rest of your family?

My grandfather was a Pentacostal preacher from the South, and my mom still thinks one day I’m gonna wake up and decide against them. Most of my family just doesn’t care anymore and it’s just who I am to them. The South isn’t like the rest of the country as far as ink and body mods go — I’ve been on the road for many years traveling, and I’m really happy to be away from the negativity from all of that Bible Belt mentality.

BME: Did you teach yourself to tattoo when you, I guess, just started doing it? How do you improve your work?

Tattooing was a sink or swim atmosphere and very intense. I quickly realized I needed more training, so I started traveling more and more until I just became a gypsy. I’ve been to every corner of this country I could, trying to learn more, and immersing myself into tattooing around as many talented artists and tattooers as possible. I owe any successes I have had over the years to my friends. Tattooing was a very private affair a few years back. The open ideas, and willingness to trade information of the last few years has really helped increase my tattooing technically. Lots of practice, and lots of technical critiques really have helped me push my tattooing to some very different places compared to when I first started. Fortunately the ability to tattoo more technically opened the arena to better art, so I worked on drawing and painting. Both mediums helped push the other. It’s kinda nice working with different mediums. You get stale and bored if you don’t. Recently, my wife has been pushing to work with oils more and more, and I’ve been on an art vacation the last three months while my the shop is being refitted.

I really get super critical with my work. I learn from each piece — little things to make it better, cleaner, and more crisp than the one before it, and improve on the next one even more. I try to outdo myself each time.

Critique from others is a large part of how I get better, so I don’t much care for open forums. You get a lot of washed out opinions on the Internet from people trying to be nice. I keep mine for artists I respect and that influence me. No matter how good you are, or think you are, outside eyes often can pick up things you never see yourself — whether it’s line weight, or contrast, you often just need a little extra outside opinion to help.

I also often try to incorporate as much non-tattoo art influence as possible too. There are so many possibilities with this medium that it just seems a waste not to.

Left: This customer wanted a tattoo with his spine cutting him deep, killing him slowly by bleeding him out, representing his struggle with pain after a broken back, Middle: Done on his buddy Stephen, a Def Leppard lyric (“Love Bites” — needs some salt), Right: Mr. Cagle, an ATL-area tattooer wanted something a little odd so they gave him a little birdie.

BME: You said you’ve traveled and worked with a lot of people — who are your influences as an artist?

Tattoo-wise, it’s always been Joe Capobianco, Josh Ford, Josh Carlton, and Eric Merril — guys like that have been on my radar since before I was a tattooer. Recently, people like Gonz, Jason Wheeler, and a lot more West Coast artists have been drawing my attention to more traditional themes and styles. I am looking forward to going back out to Reno and LA to work around them as much as I can. Currently, I am in Houston. Obviously Nate Beavers is a name heard a lot lately, and working down there with those guys was a pleasure. Rick Clark and CMFL are workaholics and make you feel guilty for not painting and working more. But, in this business, there are always amazing artists popping up out of the woodwork making your jaw pop. However, in saying that… I’m still gonna cut off Kyle Cotterman’s hands — maybe just his fingers, haven’t decided yet.

BME: Who would you choose to tattoo you?

Josh Carlton, Joe Capo, and my wife Jen — but I could name lists of people if I had more skin and time. Joshua is a quiet tattooer with loud ideas, and just slick tattoos. His Alla Prima Ink just really looks cool healed. I’d glady trade my black arm for a sleeve from Josh — might be time for some more laser removal? I still have a lot of open skin and I have barely been tattooed at all in the last few years… I would love to get some pin-up action from Mr. Capo. Finally, my wife is my new live-in tattoo artist. I love her work, and we are about to start my back project. I’m super-excited, but she is super-preggo, so I have to wait a little while longer. Once we move back to Reno, we will start on it.

BME: What have your favorite places been to work in your travels?

Each area I travel to really helps me expand. Hawai’i was still the most awakening experience I have had artistically, but the majority of my education was in Atlanta. However, every pin-poke on my map has increased my artistic vocabulary. I really can’t say enough about traveling — I made myself a promise, and this is my last year of being a gypsy full-time. I’m turning into a homebody as of late, so you’ll see me on the West Coast as a fixture not just a glimpse.

Left: Who doesn’t like vampires?, Middle: A dead Virgin Mary, Right: This piece was a collaboration with Nate Beavers at the Live Fast show in Houston where it won Tattoo of the Day — “Elmo wanted to get two dead bitches on him, so a lil dog skull and a zombie chick worked out for him!”

BME: What kind of machine do you use?

You can tattoo with a quill from a sea urchin with black soot from a fire, but I’m too lazy for all that. I still run electromagnetic tattoo machines. I haven’t given into the air machines yet, but who knows. Most of my machines are just random one-offs from different machine builders like Dave Riegel, Josh Ford, BadBrass, and what-not. I wish had more, but my buddy Jay in Atlanta talks me out of most of my irons when I go home for a visit. I have a huge ink rack from several companies, but ink brands don’t matter much. You just have to apply the ink to make a tattoo bright and solid. I got one of the fancy Eikon meter power boxes. I never really used the meter, but it glows all pretty in my booth.

BME: What kind of tattoos are your favorite to do?

Tattoos without a huge back story.

I am sure that everyone could come up with the most meaningful tattoo ever to be on TV, but there is nothing as fun or rewarding as doing a tattoo just because. No reason or rhyme — just a tattoo because it looks cool. I got an elephant shitting out a Dorito on my neck. It doesn’t mean anything but the fact that I have a nacho flavored chip on my shoulder. Most of my clients are pretty chill. I do a lot of odd zombie stuff lately. Not because I want to; people just like dead shit. Who can blame them?

BME: What do you think of those TV shows? They certainly push the idea that everything needs a long story behind it. Would you appear on one?

Hell yeah I would be on a show! I’d be the jerk from any reality show. I love the interest that the shows have brought to tattooing. I am just not really happy about the side they show on TV — any business will have drama. You don’t get a real sense about what is really going on tattoo-wise… “Come back in five minutes, I’ll have that sleeve drawn up and stenciled for ya.”

Um, yeah, sure. It may take a little longer in reality. Oh yeah… And you will not find a cat running around in my shop, or a tiger, or a bear, or even an alligator, oh my. I got a zoo at the house for that. The other shows like that Versus show were awesome, but didn’t have the drama the seventeen year-old MTV crowd wants to see like on Big Brother or what-not. Tattoo shows need to show more art — more conventions and art shows. Follow an artist from two weeks out till the day after a convention. That would make for a better show.

Left: This was done on a tattoo artist from South Texas who’s a huge fan of Peter Boyle from Young Frankenstein, Middle: One of many zombies, Right: This zombie girl was done on one of the shop regulars from LD Tattoo in Acworth, GA.

BME: Will you tattoo faces and other “public” skin?

An eighteen year old walks in and says, “Hey, tattoo this name on my neck…” Well, he probably won’t be getting tattooed. But if you have a fair share of ink, and understand the responsibility of a body mod, then it’s your choice. Don’t think there isn’t a price to pay. Walk up into any store with huge piercings or tattoos and you will quickly learn. People are less shocked these days, but sometimes, you still got to warn or educate a client before they take on certain work.

BME: Do you turn many people away?

Not too often… most of the clients I turn away are actually just referred to someone else who would be better suited for what they want. Most of my clients are here because they are open to my work already, so most often, people who come see me get me. If that Polynesian back piece is still on your mind, then I’ll hand you Ronson’s info and get you out to Oahu though.

BME: What’s the best way for someone to get into the industry these days? Any advice for wanna-be tattoo artists?

Be a well rounded artist way before you try to be in this industry. Make your own path, and don’t look for a quick fix.

BME: What do you think you’d be doing if it weren’t for having fallen into tattooing?

I would have to marry a rich girl to afford my Xbox addiction! Maybe a porn star… who doesn’t wanna watch a chubby guy wiggle on an ugly chick for fifteen seconds?

BME: Think you’ve found your life-long calling then?

Tattooing for my whole life? If this old body will hold up, I will. My tattoo retirement plan is a little lax right now, but my wife is younger, so I’ll just make her work when I get old.

BME: Is your body starting to give you problems?

Yeah, I got some nifty glasses — I look like an old man creeping up with my newly founded gray sprouting hair. My back is ok as can be from sitting on painfully flat chairs for the last decade. I would really like to see some major advancements in tattoo chair technology.

BME: Finally, what do you think about scratchers and their role in tattoo culture?

Trick question, right?

BME: Haha, definitely not… thanks for talking to us!

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

When I first saw Italy-born and now after various international locations Toronto-based — his Parkdale studio is actually just down the street from the BME offices — tattoo artist Fabrizio Divari’s work (www.divariart.com), I was struck that he appeared to be an artist in the traditional sense of the word first, and a tattoo practitioner second — it’s been my experience that it tends to be the other way around with tattoo artists. We recently had a chance to talked about both art and tattoos.

Paintings by Fabrizio Divari

* * *

BME: Have you always been interested in art? How did you get into tattooing?

I’ve been wanting to be an artist since as early as I can recall. I was born in Rome and grew up between Bologna and Milan, where the artistic and cultural richness that surrounded me all the time was certainly overwhelming. Everywhere you glance, you see art and beauty: in the shape of architecture, visual art, even the natural landscape. This doesn’t mean of course that everybody in Italy is an artist. I guess I was gifted — or condemned — since birth with a certain type of sensitivity and a very deep appeal for what we define as art. Since childhood I was especially mesmerized by paintings, and I started scribbling and sketching as a natural response to my environment.

My first contact with tattooing was totally accidental. While traveling through Spain one summer in the early nineties I bumped into this guy who was tattooing himself on a beach, sat with him, and immediately wanted to try it myself. We’re talking about three sewing needles wrapped together with a string of cotton and some Pelican ink — every poke became one black dot. When I got back to my seven or eight friends at the campground where we were staying I pretty much tattooed all of them with very simple symbols taken from an old record by the “Cult”. Every song was a different sign and they all got them — me too of course — with not a trace of meaning for any of us.

We were teenagers, all we cared for was to rebel in any possible way and this was just another sweet deal. However, once I was back in Milan, I actually started to get very interested in the process and tattoos as form of expression: I built my first machines using metal pens and a small tape recorder’s engine. I remember I didn’t even have a switch so to get the power — a really high power — on and off. I had to plug and unplug the cable to the wall!

At the time, Milan, and the south of Europe in general, was not really progressive in this field. Tattooing was a shady, underground activity perpetuated by an ignorant elite whose only claim was that they traveled a bit here and there. Because of this, and despite the fact that none of them had any artistic skill, they were acting like Hollywood stars and were very careful to not let the secrets of the trade leak out.

It took quite a lot of investigating and asking to get the basic keys that I would practice on myself, and again on my friends once back home. This painful process went on for a few years before I finally saw the possibility of making a future living of it. Slowly but inevitably I saw the potential of translating what I was already painting on canvas onto a different medium, one that would be in constant evolution, given the nature of the skin, and at the same time quite eternal.

BME: What did your family think of your decision to become a tattoo artist?

Ah! My family was quite horrified when they realized I was really undertaking this weird path — in conservative Italy it wasn’t even worth the name of “career” at the time. I doubt it is even today. Not to mention that my father used to be a high officer in the Navy — but not one prone at all to getting sailboats tattooed, as he was very disciplined. Sometimes I think I was adopted, for I can’t even pronounce this last word without panicking, haha.

To their rescue though, I must admit that in the last few years they turned out to be incredibly supportive and very proud of me and the seriousness of my job.

BME: How do people in general respond when they find out you’re a tattoo artist? I guess these days, here in Toronto, it’s certainly accepted.

I never brag about it, ever. I’m reluctant to say what I do for living (unless being asked of course) and don’t really like to talk about tattooing outside my studio. And I hate when as soon as they know you’re an artist certain people suddenly go, “oh my god! I wanted to get a tattoo for so long.” Fuck it, why didn’t you? I’m sorry, but I really don’t care about those characters that need to be part of a conversation in any possible forced way… Not for me.

BME: How do you grow as a tattoo artist, in terms of improving your craft?

When I started in Milan it was almost a joke — it was difficult to get any help at all, but I did meet a few decent souls who directed me the right way. Then in 1999, I took off and moved to Costa Rica where I worked at the same time in the capital, San Jose, with good guys, and at a little studio that I opened on my own on the Pacific Coast. After two and half years of tropics I moved to Miami and then New York City. Everywhere I went I had my machines and worked with many different artists, some mediocre and others very talented. This exchange and cooperation is at the base of any improvement.

BME: What advice would you give young tattoo artists, or people who want to become tattoo artists?

Keep drawing day and night. This comes above of everything. You want to master completely the capacities of reproduction — and, therefore, creativity — of pretty much everything. Your specific direction, taste, and style will naturally occur with time, but before that stage, every artist should be above all a great illustrator, able to draw anything, and in any style. This sucks up a huge amount of time and energy but in my opinion it is the only way to go and become real.

Nowadays, tattooing has become such a trendy thing and so profitable that most of the newcomers skip this altogether and jump into the craft without the slightest clue or talent. We see the results of it every day — I know I do, and I don’t particularly like doing cover ups.

BME: I see that a lot of your tattoos are in the same style as your paintings?

My favorite pieces to ink are my own paintings. Nothing makes me happier, proud and rewarded as when a client commissions a piece of my own art. Right after that comes Japanese themes, although I try always to give a little twist as far as coloring and detailing go.

BME: Who are your least favorite clients?

I don’t like the confused ones — those who are constantly undecided of what, where, and sometimes why… I can’t stand this. Thankfully, these types rarely contact me. Let’s say you want to get a tribal for instance — if you navigate through my gallery you won’t see a single one, so I’m not your man. On the other hand, you mostly see in it large pieces, fairly detailed, and rendered with rich, bright colors (either Japanese, or the cubist-like fashion I paint my canvases in), so if you’re looking for something like that you reach for me.

Custom design is also a staple with me: when you walk into my studio you don’t see any flash on the wall — just my art, both on skin and canvas. I draw every piece from scratch (unless it’s a reproduction of a canvas by old Masters), starting from the client’s ideas and insights, but applying my personal touch and creativity till completion.

BME: Do turn many people away?

I don’t turn people away too often, although it happens of course. The only reason I do this is generally for artistic reasons. I guess I need to be captivated and challenged by the proposal in order to take you in — I have no fixed rules here. It can be anything really, although I do have preferences, but again seeing my gallery you know what I like to do and if you decide I’m your guy then generally you want something in these lines. Natural screening I suppose — can’t complain.

I feel bad every time I say no though, for in a way I have the impression that I’m offending you or your ideas; that’s why I always apologize when this happens and try explaining my point of view as an artist. I must admit that in most cases these people are very appreciative of my honesty and regard my opinion as valuable.

BME: How do you feel about the massive popularity of tattooing these days, and shows like “Miami Ink” that popularize them even more?

I think shows like “Miami Ink” have definitely helped the “image” of tattoos overall. Getting tattooed is now much more publicly accepted and it’s not something taboo or misjudged. The majority of people who up until a while ago used to think about tattoos as necessarily linked with something shady or evil — jail, prostitution, drifters, drugs, and so on — accept it now, and at times get also excited about it. If you own a TV and had never been interested in tattoos, it’s now pretty much in your face and nobody can deny a deep sense of intrigue and mystery that this curious art inspires. People are now much less ignorant about tattooing and more cautious in searching and deciding if, what, and by whom, they will eventually get tattooed. In a way it’s sad that it took a massive corporate media to make tattoos be accepted and admired.

On the downside, I think that in these shows they talk way too much about crap that I don’t care of — the stories behind the images — and far too little, if at all, about the technical process of tattooing, its history, and geography. I was actually offered by a producer client of mine to create a show right here in Toronto but I couldn’t do it. I’m a rather reserved artist and am reluctant to transform such a delicate art and relations I have with my clients into a circus for strangers. I like to think my integrity as an artist forbids me to sell what I reached in twelve years of experience to TV.

BME: As a part of this mainstreaming I’m sure you’re happy though to see that tattoo artist is starting to be shown in galleries and treated as legitimate “art” though?

Yes, I believe it is a great sign when you start seeing tattoo-related art showcasing in galleries. It means that finally it’s been recognized as a form of fine art, and in my opinion tattooing has legitimately earned a place among painting, sculpture, architecture, and such.

What you see around now more and more often are tattoos that truly are pieces of art, and most significantly even is that often you can name the artist right away — this means that certain artists are in fact creating a “signature” style, something that is peculiar to their specific way of representing the art of tattooing. If you see a piece by Filip Leu, you don’t need to ask who’s the author of it, you just know it. And so Guy Aitchison, Shige, Bugs, Admiral, and many others including my friend Rob here in Toronto… and myself, hahaha.

BME: Thanks for talking to us!

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

My friend “Jason” (not his real name) is one of thousands of amputees living with a huge secret. Years ago, after a lifetime of anguish due to having an extra hand — essentially a birth defect in his opinion — he took the radical step of amputating this hand just above the wrist. He’s never regretted his action, and feels that now his body is “right”. Other than his former BIID (“Body Integrity Identity Disorder”) affectation, he’s completely normal, and now that he’s surgically corrected himself his life has improved drastically. Jason was kind enough to speak with me candidly about his experiences.

* * *

BME: Tell me a little about yourself and your life — how should I introduce you?

Let me be blunt — I staged an accident. Nobody’s doubting it, and my friends and family, so many folks, came together for me back then, raised a lotta money, prayed, and said such sweet, loving things. There’s no way I want enough details to get out there that they could connect up me with my ‘accident’, with the person you’re interviewing, who’s voluntary.

BME: I understand completely — what was the “accident” you used to remove your hand?

I don’t want to be hugely specific, but I used a very sharp power tool, after having tried out different methods of crushing and cutting. I know first aid so I was able to stop the bleeding with pressure, but I was worried that I could pass out and not call for help and lose too much blood. No worries, though, I guess I’m in good enough shape that I didn’t even feel dizzy.

My goal was to get the job done with no hope of reconstruction or re-attachment, and I wanted some method that I could actually bring myself to do. I did experiments with animal legs I got from a butcher. It’s lucky I thought of that, because some of my early attempts were total fuck ups and would have ended up with a damaged hand which might have had to undergo years of painful reconstruction, and worse yet, no amputation.

BME: How was the aftercare and healing?

I had some shooting pains, almost like electric shocks in the end of my stump at first, as the cut nerves tried to figure out what to report. That was gone in a couple months, though for some people it goes on for years. Aside from that, my stump was completely healed when they took the bandage off a couple weeks later, with just a faint red line across the scar that went away in a couple months. In some parts it was quite sensitive, with strange mis-interpretations of sensations — like when I touched something cold, it got back to my brain as the sensation of burning. One real weird sensation was to run my fingertip from the top to the bottom of my stump, across the scar. It felt like I was running my fingertip right through my arm! Now it mostly feels like it ends where it ends. I can feel things with it, but nowhere as precisely as with my fingertips. A huge surprise at first was how much lighter my forearm was. Maybe it was because of that, or maybe because my brain didn’t ever completely accept that I had a right hand in the first place, but it didn’t take long to accept that I couldn’t reach out and grab stuff, and instead had to pinch things between my stump and my body, or a table or something.

BME: Can you still sense the missing hand? On the whole, how do you like it?

I can sort of sense my fingers, and can imagine that they’re moving, but I’m also really aware of the end of my stump — about 5″ below my elbow — and what I can hold with it, and how far it will reach. I feel like my body is correct at last, and that’s a way cool feeling. I’ve adapted to doing everything one-handed — not that I can do everything. For a while, my tennis game was off since I had to do everything left-handed, and my balance was a little screwy. Skateboarding took a bit of adapting. Running, swimming, no problem. I can’t play that cool jazzy sax anymore… that hurt… but I’m getting into hand drumming. Strange, but it works! I guess there’s a period of fighting it, but then your body just goes, “Hey, this is me now… what a groove”.

BME: Is there anything you’d do differently if you were to do it again?

No, it came off better than I ever imagined.

BME: Hahaha, “came off,” ok… Will you do any more amputations?

No, my body is just right now.

BME: We’ve touched on it, but I guess now the big question — “why”?

I’m one of those body-integrity-disorder (BIID) dudes. As long as I can remember, having two hands was a defect in my body — something that was not meant to be. For me philosophically, it’s totally different from body mods, which I also have. I don’t think I had any choice. My right hand just didn’t belong to my body. As a little kid, I soon learned that I was the odd one out, and that amputation was a bad thing. My parents reprimanded me for staring at amputations, but it was totally mesmerizing for me. Somehow I made it through high school, with hormones and peer pressure doing their best to mask my feelings. In college, I met a wonderful woman, and our love kept my thoughts of amputation at bay at first, but the need grew and grew. I don’t know how I ever made it through to getting my Master’s. My mind was more and more consumed, so that sometimes I would even blurt out an embarrassing word, like “stump” or “hook”. I don’t think she really grasped what was going down, but my lover couldn’t take my distraction, and we parted company very sadly.

That totally shook me up. It was way clear that I had to get rid of my hand so that I could live. I began doing research and experiments right off. Maybe that’s not exactly what the old college would think of as the best application for scientific method, but it paid off! Now that I’m free of my hand, I’m loving life, and have opened a cool little business with a partner who, it turns out, is none other than my lover from college. I still haven’t told her the truth about my “accident”, but she loves the change that’s come over me, and best of all, she loves being my lover again.

BME: Do you think you’ll ever tell her, or is this a secret that you’ll likely never tell anyone in your immediate life? It’s certainly something huge to hide!

It’s huge to hide, but for now, it’s huger to tell! Also, the “accident” has passed, so now the focus has changed to how I live with it. People perceive, rightly, that I don’t groove that much on talking about how it happened.

BME: It’s a very big secret to keep so deep “in the closet”.

Yeah, it’s a biggie. For sure it’s not rational to want to cut off your arm or leg. There’s no argument you can make that life will be easier, or that you’ll be more capable doing anything. Even though a hook can do some things that a bare hand can’t, a hand holding a tool can always do everything a hook can, and so much more. Even though you can run in prosthetic legs that give you a mechanical advantage, you can’t compete with those.

So it’s irrational, but is it insane? It’s true that a major amp makes your body less functional, so how can it be sane to do it? For me, I think the answer is in what I was going through before my amp. I was so consumed by the drive to lose my hand that I could scarcely function.

Now I’ve totally lost the desire to amputate anything. I’m totally used to doing things with a hand and a stump. It’s true I need to ask for help like once a day, that I’m a bit slower at dish washing, keyboarding, and stuff like that, but is that worse than being seriously overweight, or being short of breath from smoking, or even trying to walk in stiletto heels?

All that said, though, there’s no way that society is ready to accept me amping my hand just to get piece of mind. Like I said, I picked up real early on the feelings about amps, and they were all negative. Even little kids can sense taboos and know when to shut them up inside. I know that for me, hiding that away caused me to hide other feelings and emotions too, as if letting myself go in other ways would let out my big secret. From all I’ve read and experienced, amputating the unwanted part usually solves the BIID sufferer’s problem, and lets them get on with life. I’m certainly doing a lot better in living — taking care of relationships, doing well in my work, getting into my community — all stuff that totally got neglected before.

BME: Do you think that the medical system should offer amputation as a service, perhaps with the same type of screening as a sex change? And do you feel any guilt about “taking advantage of” the medical system, or your family and friends, who you mentioned were very supportive? Finally, do you think your life would have continued to spiral out of control if you hadn’t taken this drastic action?

I super feel like this “having a spare limb” is a definite body deformity, which needs to be cured by surgery to allow the BIID person to lead a normal life. It’s sort of like people who are born with a vestigial tail or a six-fingered hand. I totally understand that almost everyone would think that’s totally backwards from reality, that they would see our un-amped bodies as being normal, not needing a “cure” by amputation. Given that viewpoint, of course, there’s no justification for using public resources, but considering the mental health and, yes, increased capability of a healthy amputee over a tormented BIID sufferer, it’s more justifiable. I didn’t use any public funds, but a friend did, and I think that was justified.

That guilt is a whole nother thing. Yeah, there’s a lot of places guilt can get into all this. Guilt about not being straight-up about having the feelings of needing the amp all through your life, about falsifying the details of the “accident”, about acting believably upset about the amp, and then hiding the BIID and true history afterwards. Guilt about not coming out publicly to demand humane treatment for BIID. This can get real gut-wrenching real fast. Luckily there’s other BIID people on the Internet who share my reality. Without them, this would all be a lot harder. Thanks, dudes.

If I hadn’t gotten amped, I can’t imagine any way my life would have not spiraled out of control without a drug-induced stupor…something else that woulda been a huge drain on society. Rather than that I’m a healthy, active dude, engaged in my community, who happens to be an amputee. It that so bad?

BME: Not at all… And I have to wonder how many amputees share your story. I’ve interviewed and met quite a lot of people who are living with the same secret.

For most of my life I thought I was the only one, but I’ve met quite a few since I made my amp happen. We’re a lonely, isolated company, though.

BME: I think something that comes across quite clearly is that even though this was and incredibly drastic action to take, that this is something you were sure about for a very, very long time. Did you go through periods of self doubt, or even seek counseling?

That’s a really strange thing — thinking back, I don’t ever remember any self-doubt. There were times of my rational self saying that I had to keep down those ideas cuz I couldn’t function without that hand. So I always knew rationally that it didn’t make sense, but I never remember feeling that it was right for me to have that hand either. I was too in the closet to ever admit that to a counselor. Other voluntary amps I’ve talked to are the same. We would do anything to avoid being “talked out of” or “cured” of our need to lose that part. Well, I guess it kinda crept up on me, cuz I was mentally ready to focus completely on doing it after my lover had enough of my distraction.

BME: You mentioned you have “regular” body modification as well. How is getting those — which I see as “enhancing” the body — different for you from what you did — which I see as “normalizing” the body?

When I’ve gotten body mods, they’re always to make my body more outstanding. I guess there’s an element of “in your face-ness” in there. I was way into the punk scene for a while. Having gauged out facial stuff and some gothy tats in obvious places helps put that across. Usually, I want to keep that exposed, wearing shorts in cold weather, and so on. I think it gives out a statement about where I think society has sunken to, and that I’m not going to let things just cruise in that rut.

My amp, though, is totally different. At first, I was way weirded out by people staring. I tried to hide it by tucking my sleeve in a pocket. I was totally scared about meeting up with someone I knew who hadn’t found out yet. I actually ran and hid more than once. Even though it felt way cool to be in my right body, I’d hidden that drive for so long that the guilty feelings took a while to go away. Putting my stump right out there was huge for me. I actually met a voluntary amp dude on the Internet who totally worked through that with me, till I came to see how wonderful it is that I look the way I feel. I still get nervous about doing things with my stump in public, but that’s improving. Even though having an amputation makes me feel normal, I need to accept that most people don’t feel comfortable with it, feeling unsure about what to do, thinking it’s ugly, worrying about how hard it is for me and such. Usually, I just try to overpower that with humor or showing my excitement for life, but sometimes I’m not up for that, and those feelings flow.

BME: In terms of how it changes your life, what are some of the hardships that it’s induced, that while they’ve been worth it for you, would likely not be to someone who’s not in this for the same reasons? Why should someone NOT do this?

I guess the hugest thing is that it’s not reversible. You can’t decide you don’t like it later and have it cured by laser surgery or something. While it is possible to transplant body parts, that’s a huge thing, requiring lots of money and a lot of time to get a donor, drugs, and all that. I would never advise anyone to get a voluntary amputation. If I did, and they found out later that it wasn’t as cool as they thought, how could they not blame me? Even if it seems like it would be super cool to have that sensation, that look, and that whole experience of adapting to the handicap, seeing people’s reactions, and so on, the novelty of that wears off in like a year. After that, you’ve learned how to do all the stuff you need to for daily life, or ways to get others to help, or what to give up on; your friends are used to your way of doing things, so they hardly notice. Then you have the rest of your life to live as an amputee, with all the baggage that brings, and no more thrills.

For people with BIID, it’s totally different. The things that are negative about having an amputated limb are the normal things that we should have been living with all along. We don’t need to be advised about whether to get an amputation or not, whether it’s cool or not, how it will feel, how people will react or anything else. I would never put anyone on the spot by asking them to counsel me about anything so life-changing.

I’ve so forgotten how I did things before my amputation, that it feels like I never hand that hand. In a weird way, that makes me a lot more capable… I don’t spend time trying to figure out how I’ll do a new thing one-handedly, I just start doing it, just like all you two-handed people would.

BME: Any last things we should cover?

I’m very concerned that I’ve made amputation seem right for someone wanting an extreme body mod, cuz it is a major handicap, something that could totally fuck up a person’s life, unless they have the right outlook. If someone does this without much consideration they will have a lotta regrets soon after.

BME: Agreed. Thanks for talking to me about this — if someone wants to get in touch with you, is there a way to do that?

They can write me at [email protected].

For stories and pictures on voluntary amputation,
visit the BME/extreme members’ archives.

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

“Paul Oneball”

My friend Paul — “Paul Oneball” — has been a body modification enthusiast for his entire life, but a few years ago discovered he had cancer, which due to complications resulted in extensive damage to his genitals as well as the loss of a testicle. During the process of healing, he discovered the underground world of silicone injection, which he used to reconstruct his scrotum. His shaft was too scarred to accept silicone, but he’s become an active enthusiast and promoter of silicone work as the moderator of an online discussion group for men interested in injection. His story is an excellent example of the therapeutic and healing value of body modification.

I’m publishing this interview as an introduction to the lighter end of silicone enhancement — as we chat about a little in this interview, many individuals have pushed themselves much farther and into almost alien territory… Those interviews will follow in the future.

“No wonder that I get some strange looks when I go out on my bike.”

Tell me a little about yourself and how you got into body modification?

I was born in 1954 in the UK on the South Coast and sent off as a child to boarding school, where I was raped by a teacher and moved to another boarding school. I was very interested in body modifications then — from 1970 onwards — but could not find out much about it. PFI Quarterly and Gauntlet later became an inspiration. I did my own PA, and subsequently met Alan Oversby (Mr. Sebastian).

During this time I was training as, and then qualified as a lawyer. I fell in love, married — still am — and started a family. Body modifications were very much in the background. When our family was big enough, I went in for the second commonest male body modification — vasectomy. When the surgeon did the procedure, he found cancer. One ball was lost and I acquired a nasty infection. The end result was an even more drastic, involuntary body modification, which ended in extensive skin grafting (the skin come from my hips). I suppose the effect is rather like that of a radical circumcision — which is basically what they had to do to stop the infection spreading — it was that or amputation.

Did you have much sensation or mobility damage after the grafts?

I have no “skin” feeling along the shaft, although I can fell pressure from the remaining nerves in the underlying tissue. The skin has no mobility it was grafted directly to the base layers in most places.

I came to BME, to see how others coped with semi-castration and so on, and rediscovered silicone. At first I went in for the procedure to replace what I had lost, but it felt so good on me (and still does) that I went back for a little more, and a little more, and now I have 500ccs. My wife is pleased because it’s given me back the confidence I lost. I believe that we need mainstream recognition for the silicone procedure, which is far safer and simpler than the insertion of a prosthesis.

We hear all the time about silicone work being risky — you think it’s safer than a prosthesis, even a simple fake testicle?

Whoever said a prosthesis was safe? All surgery carries risks — as I know all too well. There can be allergic reactions to the “neuticle” unless it is very rigid and smooth, which does not leave a realistic effect. The issue with silicone is the problem of removal if anything goes wrong. If I lose my scrotum, so what? I’ve faced worse.

“Whether or not I’m pleased to see you, the bulge stays.”

Let’s go back to the beginning — tell me about when you did your PA?

I did it using a leather punch, twisting a leather bootlace around the handles — like a Spanish windlass — to force the jaws closed through my penis. It worked very well and I wear a 7mm segment ring in the hole. My PA gives me some sensation which I lost due to the grafts. In addition, the PA was very useful for the surgeon doing the skin grafts — it gave him something to grip on to and which could have traction applied whilst the grafts were healing. Luckily the pre-op nurses did not remove it as they wanted to.

What made you want the PA in the first place?

Possibly what I read in the Kama Sutra, together with issues of self-harm after the rape (the perpetrator hung himself). Also, the PA gave me back control — I did this to myself for my own pleasure. From reading other people’s experiences it seems there are quite a few of us in the same boat — going for a modification as a method of resolving a major physical or emotional trauma.

Perhaps that’s true — do you mind telling me more?

I’m referring to the custom of removing digits to express grief, and the self-harm desires of abused kids. Professionally I had a lot to do with boys taken into “care” by the authorities in our area, who were then thoroughly buggered by the guy running the home where they were put. He even sold them on to his cronies. Yuck. A number of these boys were seriously into self harm, body mods, and tattoos — and some found it helped them get back a feeling of control over their bodies, and their lives.

When you had the liquid silicone injected, what procedure was used?

The silicone is put in using a silicone cannula, and is pumped in through an infusion line, so that the syringe pump can be refilled without disturbing the cannula. I have seen a guy take 500ccs in his sack in one go — he already had 500ccs there already — and the result was extraordinary, and a very visible modification. For me, the weight and bulk of the silicone is very pleasing.

Have you ever thought about a subincision to expose more nerves?

My wife and and I have looked very seriously at this — she is a veterinary surgeon. The two drawbacks are getting enough skin to heal to the cut edges of the urethra and the probability of bladder infections. I had enough of those living with catheters etc.

What about vacuum pumping to help expand the tissue?

Pumping is a difficult issue because they took out the lymph gland in my left groin as well.
Another guy I’ve been talking to was into complete cock skinning — !!! — and of course was left with an intensely scarred and shortened penis, about 50% of the original length. His approach was far more radical — he would cut strips out of the scar tissue and pull it apart, letting it fill in with additional tissue as it healed [editor’s note: this is an upcoming interview]. Over time, he got back all of the length… Not that I recommend this method, and I doubt everyone could heal from it.

Apart from pumping I had a lot of traction and massage to persuade the skin graft scars to stretch enough to give a reasonable erection. Like I said earlier, this was where my PA really came in useful. The surgeon was very encouraging, but a couple of his juniors were seriously upset about the PA.

I see a lot of silicone guys that go very far with silicone work and really have extremely large genitals that must impact their day-to-day lives to some extent — do you ever worry that you’ll go “too far”? Not that I have a problem with “too far”!

After a lot of heart searching, I feel I have gone far enough with the silicone. Any more will start to affect my everyday life, whilst now I can dress to minimize, as well as maximize, the effect. It is something that the practitioner and I have discussed at length — along with other guys who have visited for silicone. A few conversations come to mind…

One man — we’ll call him Peter — has always had a fantasy from childhood of grossly swollen genitals. Silicone gave him the opportunity, and after the practitioner’s first session, he, Peter, having access to all the kit as a medical professional, has gone further and further, until now he is impinging on his working life. He is happy though that he has achieved his obsessional fantasy, and his genitals are forever swollen, to a massive extent — he carries well over 2000 ccs. Mark Savage (www.siliconefreak.com) has set out to go to the extreme. Now he cannot hide what he has done and uses it as a selling point — he is in the sex trade. He cannot use his penis for penetrative sex.

Last night I was having dinner with three guys. Two had been siliconed, and one wanted to go further, but his boyfriend who didn’t have any silicone was against this as he felt it would be cutting down his partner’s options. By all means be big, so big that it would be obvious in intimate situations, but do not go so far that it might prejudice the non-sex side of life and relationships. This is the attitude I have — any more and I might embarrass my sons (not that I don’t embarrass them already) and prejudice everyday life. I couldn’t care less about respectability, but extreme silicone, like facial tattoos, can cut down life options.

As a lawyer, how do you feel about practitioners doing procedures that — such as silicone work — that may not be legal for them to perform?

The concepts of underground and legal are difficult ones. My view was — 25 years ago — that if the “victim” was legally capable, was aware of what was being done, and freely consented, then, provided no prescription-only medicines were used, any procedures would be legal. That was before the infamous Operation Spanner. [Editor’s note: in short this involved men being charged with assault over consensual sex and modification play.]

“It really does stick out — and this is forever — the choice I’ve made.”

How should both practitioners and the people seeking procedures protect themselves and take steps to make sure everything is trouble free?

Discretion seems the wisest course. As long as what is being done does not come to the direct attention of the authorities through death, serious long term consequences, or dealings with minors, incapables, or those under duress, and no attempt is made to assume false medical qualifications, the practitioner should be safe enough. Consent forms or correspondence are helpful, but are no substitute for common sense. The infamous “Doctor Brown” was put away for sawing some poor guy’s leg off. Alan Oversby was convicted for sending “obscene” pictures — one of them was of me — through the Royal Mail.

What is the legality where you are?

The procedure is “legal” in the UK and Europe. In France, Holland, and Germany it is an accepted but not advertised, procedure. I know one Dutch doctor, and one German who will do the procedure reluctantly… Usually there is a quid pro quo, which I find ethically dubious.

Who do people go to for the procedures, and how do they find them?

The only one in the UK is not a doctor at all, but a materials scientist, who sourced the silicone and has worked out a method of sterilization that actually works. Word of mouth and referral by people through the online groups are the usual ways.

Since the skin on your shaft was grafted right to the underlying tissue, I assume you were unable to do silicone in the shaft?

Absolutely correct — the skin was grafted directly to the smooth muscle of the shaft, which had ended up buried in my pubis after the infection destroyed the original skin structure.

How did your doctors respond to your silicone work?

My GP is very positive about the procedure — and has made serious inquiries with a view to making it a serious alternative to the implant of prostheses (false balls or neuticles).

Did you approach them about it before going with an underground practitioner?

Because of the possibility of the infection flaring up, further surgery to insert a prosthesis was not advised. My GP did not feel that I had much to lose over the silicone procedure, although he warned me about the issues of infection and hardening, from work done on this topic in France.

All in all, how do you feel about the modifications you’ve done?

I find my mods enjoyable and satisfying.

Thanks for chatting, Paul!

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Pain for Troy

When I first started doing videos in the 1990s, one of my first friends to help on that project was “Troy”, whose interests centered around a variety of forms of CBT (cock and ball torture), especially those that got bloody. There was no worry that this was a form of self abuse or actual “torture” though — this was very much a route to pleasure. After all, how many guys can cum while fucking a cactus?

In this brief interview we chat about the motivations behind his CBT adventures.

* * *

Tell me a little about yourself, Troy.

I am thirty-eight years old and work as a computer trainer and support specialist. My hobbies include creation of amateur video, music, reading, and creating and collecting auto-erotic art. I am single, bisexual, and have a few family members living pretty far away from me. I am only close to one of them.

Are you usually single? Does that influence your play activities?

Mostly I’ve been single. When I am, I can generally play around more and get more extreme.

Is that because you don’t have to worry so much about explaining bruises and such, or because things escalate more quickly if there isn’t a more “traditional” way of meeting physical needs?

Mostly the first of these. If I’m not needing to be concerned with hiding marks on my body I can do pain-play and go to the levels I want and need.

Bleeding…

Do you still enjoy your activities when you have a partner, and do you involve them in your games?

To some extent, although I would like to find some partners more into hard CBT and bloodplay… Some of my partners have gotten into CBT and such to a certain degree — but most are reluctant to go to some of the extents that I like.

Can you be more specific?

Many Masters prefer heavy bondage and sex, and some whippings, even some kinds of CBT — all of which I also like — but not too many get into graphic brutalization of my cock and balls. Many shy away from blood games, which I like. It is very arousing for me to see my cockmeat, balls, ass, and nipples beaten, abraded, and needled until truly bruised, swollen, and bleeding. For example, I really get off on seeing my blood spraying out of my cockhead.

Cockhead Play Piercing

How would you characterize “what you are”?

I suppose I would categorize myself as a pain-pig. I get very aroused from being physically or mentally abused or in pain (either inflicted by others, or very often by my own hand). This has developed over many years. I do not have any mods or piercings, but get into heavy “play-piercing” as well as other forms of intensive CBT. Some of my interests include the use of clamps, catheters and sounds, and weights on my cock and balls, hot wax on my cock, balls, and ass, electrical torture, abrasion, flogging, nailing and needling of my cock and balls, and bloodplay.

While I’ve had these desires even since my early teens, I first began experimenting on myself about twelve years ago after seeing some things on the Internet and in some magazines.

What kept you from trying it earlier? Was it just a matter of having the feelings but not really knowing how to apply them?

That’s pretty much it — although the feelings and desires increased in intensity over time.

Why do you think that is? Just getting comfortable with farther limits, or some sort of other escalation?

Some of it has to do with getting comfortable with passing previous limits, and some is curiosity about how far I will decide to go. I am still on a journey of exploring the realms of my pain tolerances and limits for graphic abuse of my genitals. Some of it also has to do with seeing how far others go, and whether I wish to try to match or exceed them. Finally, it also is about always pushing my personal graphic art barrier.

CBT Play

I’m sure it was nice to know others were doing this to and that at least on some level it’s “normal”?

Exactly — seeing pictures and hearing of others experiences encouraged me to try things out, and gave me some ideas. I then wanted to work beyond some of what I saw and heard about and be creative with my “play”.

Tell me about how your play evolved over the years.

I started with simple things like snapping rubber bands against my dick, slapping it with a ruler, and running a toothbrush along the underside of my shaft and glans. I then tried some hot wax, and was surprised at how much it hurt the first time, feeling the sting of the burn on my flesh. I poured a few drops on my balls the first time, then pushed it to dripping on my cockhead a bit. I loved the pain sensations though — a real turn on, and knew I wanted to work up to more.

Urethral Hot Wax Play

I bought myself a small TENS unit that still packs a punch, and started experimenting with shocks through my dick, ass, and balls. I was trying out all kinds of things — clothespins (first a few, then many more), sounding q-tips into my cock (starting with one, then two, up to four), and really stuffing my urethra to the max until the pain was very high… fucking my cock with the q-tips and telling myself to take it.

Q-Tip Sounding Play

Next were the needles and nails. I saw a few pictures on the web and tried with a needle through my foreskin — there was some discomfort but not too much. I needed more. I began to tack my scrotum down to a board with small nails. Then I tried pushing a needle through my glans. It really hurt at first — I was determined to get the needle deep through the meat of my cockhead. Finally it was through. What a turn on it was, seeing that needle completely though my glans. When I took it out, my blood jetted out of my dick and I was mesmerized. I loved seeing my cock bleed as I jacked off.

Troy Candling His Nailed Nutsack

From there I just built up the intensity of all my play. I dripped wax right into my pisshole, totally covered my cock and balls, and poured wax into my asshole. I did intense q-tip fucks of my urethra, flogged my meat until it was very swollen and bruised, and nailed my cock to boards through the foreskin. I put a dozen or more needles at once into my cock and balls, shooting cum while bleeding, and trying to fill up bowls with the blood that gushed out of my punctured meat. I combined many tortures at once. The more I ravaged my own genitals, the more powerful and mind-blowing my orgasms were. I went from a couple small spurts to a number of long blasts — sometimes up to my face and past my head when laying back. The ultimate Viagra!

Blood Feast!

I think for the vast majority of people into CBT that’s the underlying drive — the quest for the ultimate orgasm… Am I interpreting that correctly for you as well?

Yes, that and getting off on having others see my cock and balls receive pain, and see creative treatment of them.

Any idea what got you into this in the first place?

As mentioned, I just had some of these desires even in my teens, and in my twenties I started to explore it more fully. After that, I kept wanting to push the envelope and see what I could work up to. Talking with others that have similar interests and comparing experiences keeps me wanting to explore more. I am not sure if I will explore permanent mods, or extreme damage, but I know that I will continue to crave pain, and see how graphic I can make the abuse to my cock, balls, and ass.

Having shot videos and being an artist, how important is the visual aesthetic of the torture?

Quite a bit — I like to present shocking and intense scenes of my genitals in many forms of CBT. The graphic (and sometimes bloody) scenes of my genitals hopefully arouse like-minded people — and I also enjoy looking at them myself later, to view the levels to which I’ve progressed, and decide where I’d like to go from there.

I look forward to seeing where this path takes you — thanks for chatting!

Hypodermic Needle Glans Skewering

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

 

“Pioneers may be picturesque figures, but they are often rather lonely ones.”

– Nancy Astor

 

When I was twenty in 1994, my 3/4″ earlobe piercing was shocking enough to the public that I was stopped regularly so people could take photos. Today, with a societal foundation laid where the public is “used” to seeing body modification, I doubt anyone would even notice — it takes something far more radical to turn heads. My friend Toph certainly falls into that category — with roughly an inch plug in each nostril and a nearly two inch lip plate, as well as a myriad of other modifations, he’s tormenting the programmers of facial recognition software by pushing the limits of a modern human face is.

I’ve split this interview with Toph into two sections, beginning with a discussion of his amazing modifications, and with the second section being about him and his life. As well as via the comment forum at the end of the article, you can contact Toph via his IAM page, toph.

PART ONE

How did you do your lip stretching?

I got my center lip piercing done at a 16ga — I didn’t have a choice in the matter because the shop I went to only had that size, so when I went home I immediately put it to a 12ga. A few days later I put in an 8ga — my body stretches rather easily I think compared to most people. My steps were either every week or every other week until I got to 3/4″, which was done all with a taper up until that point. Once it got to 3/4″ it became loose every other day, and then I took my steps one millimeter at a time, every other day or so. By this time I was just “popping” them in without tapers or tape — I didn’t use tape until about 28mm.

How long did the lip stretching take in all?

My lip took a total of six months to go from 16g to 40mm (1 9/16″).

How do you usually wear your lip?

I wear it down 24/7, even when I eat, but drinking is always with a straw!

How about your tongue stretching?

My tongue was a different situation. I wanted to split my tongue, but I needed a good back brace, so at first I started my tongue off by scalpelling straight to 6mm, then stretching it up to 9mm the next day. I wore that for four days, and then scalpelled it to 16mm and stretched to 19mm the next day. By then I was ready for the split — I first cut it to 20mm, stretched it to 21mm, and used a scalpel and cut from the underneath up until the plug fell out and my tongue was split.

And your nostrils?

My nostrils were pierced when I was eighteen at a 10ga and immediately stretched to 8ga. I waited a good four months before going to 6ga, and then every month I went up to the next size until 16mm. Then about every week or so it was 1mm at a time until I took a long break at 22mm — about 5 months. I tapered them the whole way until 5/8″, then slide the next millimeters in by hand. I just recently started stretching them again.

Finally, tell me about your ear stretching? What happened to your ears?

My ears have been a work in progress since I was sixteen, when they were done with a gun at the mall. I took it slow the most of the time, but I did stretch a few times faster than I should have. Unfortunately both my lobes were cut by a bad pair of eyelets at 19mm, and then thinned out pretty badly, so I had to take it really slow after that. Then last year I had plastic surgery on my left lobe due to a landscaping accident — I was weedwhacking a lawn at work and a rock got kicked up and split the 1 1/2″ lobe!

What are the differences in stretching the different types of piercing?

The differences I came across stretching the different types of piercing were that on the ears and lip weight worked really well, whereas the nostrils were all about time — if they didn’t have enough time they just wouldn’t stretch. My tongue was cut the whole time so it was a piece of cake, and I learned that if you really really want a 20mm tongue you can cut it there in a week without a hitch.

Did you have any problems in your stretching?

I did get some scar tissue on the front of my lip during my journey, which was cut off each time it happened and healed perfectly fine. I didn’t come across any problems with my nostrils, mostly because I was really careful. The have minor scar tissue but it went away with the pressure of o-rings in under a week. With my tongue I didn’t have one problem — besides blood and drool!

You managed to upsize all of them incredibly quickly — did you have a secret to doing this or does your body just tolerate stretching really well?

I think it’s a mixture of the two — on one hand my body handles stretching really well because I keep it on a basic schedule, and I think my body adjusted to it and went with it for the most part. My goal sizes are 28mm nostrils and a 63mm lip plate. My ears are as is and if they go bigger then good, but if not I’m still satisfied.

Toph in the early stages of his modifications

Are all of your piercings publicly visible, or do you have private mods as well?

I have had a 00g PA, a 4ga scalped frenum, three ladders and two pubic surface piercings. I do my own genital mods and plan on starting my full subincision soon — I’ve already done the meatotomy.

Do you have plans for further modifications?

My future modifications will include more facial ink, full sleeves,scarification, and large conches. It’s a short list but over the years I’ve had a lot of different stuff done and I’m pretty satisfied with the way my image turned out.

Other facial configurations that Toph has tried

And if you change your mind about all of it and want to go back, do you have a “Plan B”?

If it ever came to a reversal, I would downsize the same way I went up and hope for the best — but I’ve never once seriously thought about changing my image. I’ve been planning this out and making it a part of my life, and plan on keeping it for life.

How much do you think you’ve spent on jewelry so far — you must have gone through a lot?

Over the years I’ve spent about $8000 on jewelry. That was another addiction — I collected jewelry, never thinking I would actually wear it all in multiple piercing over the years. I collected anything from normal stainless steel to one of a kind $200 plugs. Once I met Karl (iam:MobyK), he offered to make me Delrin plugs if I ever needed them. At first I was like “no thanks”, but the more I got into it… like you said, I went through a lot of jewelry.

Karl became a mentor to me and a godfather — we have been very close friends for about three years now, and have never once met. I met Pauly Unstopable through Karl who showed me how big a nostril can go — he was my inspiration for that single piercing. Jesse (iam:pillpoppinfun, featured in BME’s first article on lip plates) was my original influence for the labret. He wore pins and plugs and it interested me. Throughout the years I’ve had a lot of positive influence through the industry, not to mention the movie ‘MODIFY’ which gave me the idea to scalpel my own frenum.

PART TWO

How old are you, what do you do for a living, and what “life plans” do you have?

I am twenty years old, and currently unemployed. I worked restaurants for five years and landscaping for two before I moved to Oklahoma. Now I’m back at the challenge of finding a new occupation. My life plans are to find someone to apprentice me so I can take what I love and make it into a living. This is my life and it’s what I think about day in and day out. I’m just hoping for the opportunity to get into the modification industry to fulfill my life goal.

Tell me a little about yourself in terms of interests?

I am a big fan of extreme sports — skateboarding, aggressive inline, four wheeling, motor cycles, and jet skis. I’m big into nature and photography and consider myself a decent artist.

What’s your peer group like?

I don’t have a big group friends outside the Internet and I like to keep my life limited to family and close friends for the most part. When I go out in public I like to inform anyone who has questions about myself and what and why I do this, to my best ability, to try to help the public understand that we’re not freaks or assholes. I do this mostly to help the next generation of modders so people don’t get the wrong idea about us — this is very important to me.

How do people respond when they see you?

When I’m out in public people freak out… when they talk to me, it’s very funny. Once they see I’m willing to talk to them they just let go and ask me a million questions. People jump up and down, spin and laugh, saying “oh my god, that shit is crazy!” I’ve found that I get more attention from middle aged and older African Americans than I do from white teens and young adults… I don’t know why but I like it.

What got you interested in body modification originally?

I was around fifteen years old and I was a troubled kid, and I met a body piercer named Paul Kriner. He changed my life. I had already had a major interest in body modification, and so when I met him I tried to spend all my free time up at the shop that he worked at. He taught me a lot about the industry, proper aftercare and stretching, and became my mentor and someone I could look up to no matter what. I learned a lot from a young and very talented artist (he was only twenty at the time), and since the day I met him I knew what direction my life was going.

I know the why question is hard, but “why?”, and can you think of earlier influences?

This is my passion. It makes me very happy doing this, and it satisfies an empty spot in my life. I believe in concentrating and self-inflicting pain — it’s putting myself through more challenges in life… As if life wasn’t hard enough! I don’t think life should be easy, and if you’re doing something you love and it makes your life harder, and you have the ability to work through it, it only makes you stronger. This is the love of my life — more than family and friends even. If I wasn’t able to mod myself I’d feel as if I was walking around as a fake. I also find the way I look attractive — I’m absolutely amazed at what one can do to one’s body to make it completely change form.

Really, why should everyone look the same?

Like I said, my piercer was a big influence on me in my teens, but as a kid my uncle was in a state prison and all I could see were endless tattoos. He was a great guy — he just screwed up. I had a very positive image of body modification at a young age, although it went against everything my parents ever told me. As a kid I pierced my ears with safety pins and my labret with a sewing needle, as well as numerous surface temporary piercings. The more my parents said no the more I got into it… Then I discovered BME — oh my god, BME — once I was shown that site it was over. It was a candy store for me. I started hanging out at tattoo shops all summer long and every day after school for around five years until I went off on my own.

All of this added to my obsession… The interest was already there, but when my eyes were opened to how far it can be taken I never looked back. I dedicated my life to it, and to this day still do and plan on doing it until I die. It’s a part of my life that’s too good to let go.

What made you decide to start to push your modifications in a direction that’s far more extreme than most people can relate to?

My interest got so deep into it I didn’t see a reason to stop at a certain size just because it was more accepted to stop there — being accepted by the community is something I can do myself no matter how I look. After seeing some of the famous modders like The Lizardman, Pauly Unstoppable, and the movie ‘MODIFY’, I knew I could put up the fight, and so far have succeeded. I take this part of my life so seriously, and I believe you can change the way people think with the right attitude and perspective. It’s all about being nice no matter what, and fully informing them no matter how unbelievable what they see is.

Given that you’ve made these changes in such a short time, I’m sure you’ve got some remarkable insight into how people who look different are treated?

My immediate family does not accept my body modifications at all, and still don’t completely understand me. I’ve done my best but they don’t want to believe this is who I am. My friends love it — they refer to me as a rock star when we go out in pubic because I have five to twenty confrontations each time I go to a store… nothing but tons of questions, excitement, and disgust. The public is very interested but not everyone can gather the courage to confront someone to ask questions and to fulfill their curiously. You’re always going to get bad attention, but there is a lot more good attention than most people would think.

What advice would you have for people who are considering doing something radical like this?

I would seriously encourage people to take a long hard thought before doing something like this. You receive so much criticism, and it’s a lot to deal with on a daily basis. It is very difficult to handle and you have to be emotionally strong to get through it all. But if it is a decision the new generation is willing to take, it is only going to get easier as time goes on.

Since Valentine’s Day is coming up, would you like to meet and date someone as radically modified as yourself?

I believe it would be so much easier to date someone that looked like Duff or Miss Kayteek Etemine because it would be easier to deal with the constant modifications and the public response as well because they would have already been use to it in their own lives, instead of having to adjust to an extreme amount of constant attention.

It can be a lot for someone to handle who has never experienced it before. I recently lost my marriage over my body modifications — she told me it was her or the modifications…. I couldn’t believe my ears. I basically laughed, then cried, then said good bye. This path wasn’t meant for everyone and it takes extreme dedication to do what I have accomplished.

Not to mention sacrifice…

Thank you to Toph for taking the time to talk to us! Please visit him at iam:Toph.

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Inflated!

I first met my friend “Anon” when he sent me photos of his mineral oil injection which had, as they always do, gone terribly wrong. In his early thirties, his interests centered around body inflation of all sorts — saline, air, water, pumping, and more — but he had catastrophically deformed genitals thanks to his body’s response to the mineral oil. After hiding it, untreated for half a decade, he met the woman who was to be his wife and eventually had to face the wages of his fetish with her.

Ultimately, his story is a love story, and with her support, he went through a difficult repair process and now enjoys his fetishes with borders that they can both enjoy without risk.

Anon’s deeply damaged genitals prior to surgery

* * *

Tell me a bit about yourself.

I was born and raised in the Montreal, Canada area and am a strictly heterosexual male, married, with no kids yet. I came from a normal family — you know, we ate dinner together every night — not super happy and close knit like the perfect families you see in the movies, but we were all pretty much normal and content. I was always more reserved and kept to myself growing up, with no girlfriends until I met my wife five years ago…

I breezed through high school and then did one semester of college. I didn’t really like the way the teaching structure was set up: “Ok, class, read pages 100 to 975, do the exercises on pages 976 through 980, and if you have any questions ask me later” — a quote from almost all my teachers… If I wanted to teach myself everything, I would have gone to the library. I dropped out and went to work and had several jobs over the years until I found I had a talent and passion for computers. Now I work in the IT industry in a corporate environment.

What body modifications have you undergone?

The only permanent “mods” I have are one nipple ring in my right nip, and a huge asshole from regular stretching.

I had tried genital beading a short time after having read an article in Penthouse. I didn’t know how so I just cut slots in the skin and pushed the beads in and taped up the holes. After a couple days, the holes hadn’t healed and were starting to look bad, so I got scared and opened them up. I hadn’t used stainless steel so the beads were turning black… I popped them out, washed everything, and let it heal.

I now have skin graft scars on my entire penis and scrotum except for the knob. The graft was the result of that stupidness with mineral oil…

Why did you inject mineral oil into your genitals? It almost always turns out badly when people try that… I hope it wasn’t after you saw it on BME!

I decided to do this on my own but it happened in two steps. Once, before I had heard of BME, I wanted to do something to make my dick bigger a little more permanently. Thinking of the different things around the house, I came up with the bright idea of injecting mineral oil. The reasoning was “if we can drink it, I can inject it.” Thing is, I didn’t know at the time that mineral oil is used to help with constipation — the body can’t absorb it so it gets expelled…

The first time I only used a little — maybe a couple of CCs. It made a small bump on the top of my cock about an inch long by 3/4 inch wide and 1/4 inch high, roughly oval in shape. I got scared at that point and stopped. The lump sort of flattened, like a saline injection and stayed sort of soft for about a day, getting firmer and firmer. It stopped changing texture after a day or two and didn’t move in any way, shape, or form after that.

When I did the major injection I was twenty one or twenty two and it was several years after the first injection. I hadn’t had a girlfriend (or sex) yet and my dick was all lumpy. I was depressed and looking for a way out, either up or down — I don’t think I cared. I started obsessing about my dick and I can remember thinking that if I made it bigger and smoothed out the bumps, maybe I would get some confidence back and find myself a woman… Vacuum pumping was temporary, as was saline, and I came back to the oil… It had worked the first time, so I did it.

The same state came over me again where my hands were shaking, my heart was pounding, and I was not in control anymore… the little short circuit in my brain that pushes me do do all these things was more there than I was I think. I injected some oil into my cock and it looked good, so I injected more… I was hard as a rock and I could really see what it looked like — nice and fat and smooth. It looked normal, but really fat, like after a good pumping session. I was in a trance and just kept thinking how I wanted to be bigger and injected a whole lot more into my sac, at the base of my cock. It didn’t hurt at all — none of it. I don’t know if it was the euphoric state I was in, or if mineral oil just goes in that way. I massaged the oil around to make it even and by then was so primed up I had to jerk off. I had no other choice: I had to cum…

In all I think I injected 500cc into my sac and maybe 250cc more into my dick…

Over the next couple of days the euphoria wore off pretty quickly. I was sure I was going to die because of this. Not because it looked bad at first or anything — I just sort of had a premonition… Because of my state of mind at that point I just said “ok, shit happens” and let it go… The appearance deteriorated over the first week, sort of stopped for a while, and then constantly got worse and worse…

The problem is, my dick, like every other guy’s on the planet, isn’t erect 24 hours a day. Because I had filled it up while hard, my skin was stretched out over the length of my erect cock. When I go soft, I am about half the erect length, and the oil and stretched skin had to go somewhere… the best analogy I can think of would be grabbing your cock at the base and pulling the skin towards the knob. It sort of bunches up around the head, right? Imagine this now with 250cc of oil under the skin. The oil wanted to stay long and flat because it was hardening, but my soft cock was trying to pull back into my body like usual.

It took about a month but I finally wound up with a sort of doughnut shaped bulge of skin around the head of my soft cock. The bulge took up the whole length of my dick between the head and the base. It wasn’t lumpy, and it stayed smooth, but it was very firm and not pliable. It was permanent, and when I got hard, the skin didn’t change shape or stretch out. It pulled the skin from the base of my dick outwards. I was the same length hard as before, only half of my dick stayed inside. Think of my previous analogy — when you pull the skin of your dick towards the head, the pad at the base sort of pulls up along your cock, right? Same thing was happening to me. All the time. The skin that had been injected didn’t move, didn’t slide, or bend — it was just stuck to the outer half of my dick. Because the skin didn’t move this caused two complications.

First, because I had also injected into my sac, the joint between dick and sac was no longer very flexible. Erections at night and from masturbation pulled out my dick, but the skin under there couldn’t handle it and eventually split. The split grew wider and deeper until I was scared it would cut into my urethra. It never healed over and no matter how often I washed it, it was constantly seeping puss or lymph… the split never cut into the urethra but it wound up covering a third of the diameter of my dick.

The second complication was caused by the same problem — getting hard was pulling on tissue that had no give but was aggravated by being soft too. The skin just below head of my dick and where the shaft attached started to split as well. The head of my cock was slowly being pulled under the skin, but there was no give there either. The skin split on top of my dick too, just below where the glans ends. This pocket went about half way around and was about 3/4 inch deep, and because it was very hard to keep clean, puss and lymph would build up under there. The pocket broke through eventually and made a second hole in the surface skin. That hole slowly tore out along the whitish scarred lump until it totally separated on that side.

All this took about five years to evolve. It wasn’t painful, but it was gross. I had to put folded up paper towels in my underwear to keep the oozing under control, and it always stank.

What did you tell the doctors when you eventually decided to have it treated?

What did I tell them? The truth. I wanted them to fix it and I wanted everything to work so I had to give the docs all the info they needed to do the job right. I actually had several doctors… In Montreal there are mostly teaching hospitals so I saw just about every intern there — they don’t see stuff like this every day I guess! My actual doctors though consisted of three of the senior urologists and the senior plastic surgeon.

They started by removing most of the mass from my sac as much as they could. I had an epidural and sedative for this part and I actually started to wake up during the operation. All of a sudden I could feel them pulling on my genitals. It was scary for a few seconds until someone gave me another shot of sedative and I fell asleep again. This took a while to heal, and there was a complication because the drains were taken out too early so I had a build up of blood in my sac. They had sent me home to rest and I would go in a couple times a week for follow up. The blood clot finally forced open the sutures, so when I went back in they had to rinse out the holes to break up the clot. I was told to massage out as much of the clot as I could every day in the shower after irrigating the hole with saline from a big syringe. The first time, about 125ml of clotted blood came out. I was resigned to all this so it didn’t affect me too much… well, when the sutures split I freaked out a bit, but afterwards I was sort of detached — clinical about it all.

My wife didn’t look too much because she’s squeamish, but she was always there to support me. Luckily, I had continued doing inflation play after injecting the oil which had stretched the tissue, so there was enough healthy skin to leave me a good sized sac. The scrotal results were encouraging, and it was time to remove the rest of the mass from my dick. The doctors had no idea if I would still be able to function afterwards — at this point I could still get hard and ejaculate — so the wife and I went to a fertility clinic to set up a sperm bank. We found out that I was producing no live sperm… no sperm at all in fact. There just seemed to be some immature sperm but nothing else. That hurt. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted kids but to have the option taken away like that hurt both of us…

The penis operation was sort of like a breast lift. They cut a vertical incision in the skin above my cock to where the base was supposed to be and pulled the shaft back up to that point. They stitched the skin together around the base to close it up. Then they removed all the injected skin on my shaft, which is to say, all of it. There was no original skin left on it at all, so they took a slice of skin from my belly in the crease where your pants button up for the graft — a free tummy tuck. The plastic surgeon had never done anything like this before so this was her best guess. She wrapped the strip around the shaft from the base towards the tip and stapled the sides of the strip together to form a sort of tube. They put it in a cast and sutured the knob to my belly button. The cast was to keep the graft in place, and it was stitched to my navel to keep it stretched out.

I was in the hospital for two weeks I think, but I can’t really remember because I was on morphine. The pain was excruciating. I would get erections at night, and at first I was happy it still worked, but getting hard in the cast pulled at the graft. I can remember waking up writhing in pain from my hard on, and hitting the plunger for more morphine from the automatic drip. I would fall asleep only to wake up later writhing again… I asked for something to keep me from getting hard, but they said that kind of medicine restricts blood flow and wouldn’t be good for the graft. It was a week before I could get by without the morphine, and a week after that they sent me home.

I complained to the nurse that the cast smelled funny before leaving and she told me that it was because I couldn’t wash properly, but the next day I was delirious and running a fever. My wife rushed me back to the hospital where they took lots of blood for tests, and discovered I had a systemic infection. About an hour later the plastic surgeon showed up and took off the cast. She started grumbling under her breath and started to remove bits of skin and staples. The skin was brown and looked like leather. When she was done she said something like “it’s all messed up” and stormed off.

I was scared shitless. I thought my dick was going to fall off! Turns out that 80% of the graft had failed — only a fifth of it was still alive. Apparently they had me under observation in the urology wing, but the nurses didn’t recognize the signs of the graft failing. They kept me for another week to cure the infection, cleaned up my dick, and sent me to the local clinic for daily follow ups. The failed skin had to scar completely and the grafted skin needed a chance to heal. I had to take baths every night in water and use bleach to clean it.

When it was finally healed enough to try again the plastic surgeon used another technique. She took a patch of skin off of my thigh, a rectangle about 4 inches by 6 inches which was only the surface layers of skin though, unlike the first strip which had the complete epidermis. A sort of waxed gauze was used as a bandage that gave support, but was not too rigid. This graft worked much better with about 80% surviving this time, and then back to the baths and cleaning, until the grafted skin spread to fill in the gaps. In all it took about four months.

All this time I had a catheter through my belly, directly into my bladder to urinate. Even that caused problems. Because I was being seen by a plastic surgeon and not a urologist, they forgot to have the catheter changed. After four months, mineral deposits had formed on the tube in my bladder and the doctor couldn’t get it out. This caused more complications, pain, and worry… The funny thing about all this is that I am a hairy guy. Why is that funny? The first graft came from my belly, and since it was the whole thickness of skin it included the hair follicles — I now have a couple of spots on my dick that I have to pluck once in a while. If I don’t, my wife complains they tickle her throat!

After the initial healing was done, we were super happy. I could still get hard, and could still ejaculate and orgasm. My dick was short though — skin grafts shrink while they heal, so I only had about half my original length. But, at least that half could be used for what it should be — SEX!

A friend of mine who had similar graft work after cancer almost totally lost sensation in the shaft. Did you lose much sensation?

I lost a lot, but not all of it — maybe 60%. I am really happy that none of the oil made it into my knob! I strongly suggest pumping for your friend. It engorges the skin with blood, and the swelling helps the tissue expand.

I guess if the oil had gotten into the glans, you’d probably have lost it, and if you’d gone deeper, into the cavernosum, you’d need an implant to get hard?

Yup, that’s what the docs told me, but the implant wouldn’t work. No glans, no skin, and no cavernosum — nothing to put an implant in! It would have come off… ugh… I get chills just thinking about it…

How was the healing?

I had trouble sleeping… The catheter and bag meant that my bladder hadn’t been used to hold piss for four months, and it shrunk. Also, because the skin grafts were tight and inflexible, being basically scars, erections at night were painful if they lasted too long. I’d have to get up to piss every hour or two, making for short nights… When I finally got back to work, bus rides turned into my worst nightmare. Almost every day I would get on the bus only to have to take a piss five minutes later and by the time I got to town, the pain from holding it in was terrible. After a while though things got back to normal.

I started pumping both my cock and balls again, and have done some inflation. The pumping actually had an added benefit too. Pumping my cock actually helped stretch out the grafted skin! When I get hard, I actually have almost all of my original length and the skin is much more supple. I also went back to the fertility clinic for more tests and found out that I am now producing 40% live sperm, 90% of which are “fast”, which means that I could reproduce naturally without too much difficulty!

That’s excellent news. Do you mind telling me about the first time you had sex after your penis was fixed? What was it like?

The first time we tried, not long after the operation, sort of flopped. We were both too nervous… but the second time, we both came — it was a very special moment for us. We had loved each other for a long time and had not been able to have sex… sure, we did other things but it was not the same.

All in all it turned out very well. The graft is more supple but doesn’t slide up and down like normal dick skin, and I think this is a good thing… for my wife. She really likes how it feels. I’m sort of like a real, living, textured dildo!

Think you’ll every try a permanent expansion again, this time with something a bit safer like silicone?

No — I will never do anything like that again. Pumping is the only thing I do to it now. I think the fact that I’m with my wife, coupled with all the pain I had to endure have knocked back that uncontrollable urge, so I won’t get carried away… in any case, my wife likes it the way it is!

* * *

You’ve mentioned pumping and inflation — let’s talk about your play activities.

In my case, “play” has always been private and sexual in nature. Everything I ever did to myself was either to make something bigger, or to get off. Simple as that. These things turn me on in one way or another. Don’t ask me why though because I couldn’t tell you — the only guess I can come up with is that it is genetic.

Part of me actually thinks it’s quite normal, and that most people just keep it repressed.

Normal? I don’t think so. Some people may keep these urges repressed and that’s not good, but I tend to think that there is no “norm”. Everybody’s brain is wired differently — simple as that. That’s why we have violent people and passive ones, leaders and followers, mathematicians and poets and race car drivers. It’s rare that one person is really good in more than one situation. I think the same goes for our appetites and urges as well…

So you literally think it’s genetic I guess —

My first cock pump was stolen out of my dad’s drawer — washed before use of course — and he had some other stuff in there too… we are of German descent on his side, and if you think about it, where does most of the hardcore kink on the net or on video come from? Deutschland. 1+1=2, I guess…

I don’t suppose it’s something you really talk to your parents to, but do you know the extent to which he was into these things? I wonder…

No, we didn’t really talk about it but he had needles and elastic bands and tubes, and a dildo too… he knew that something was up. When he gave the “sexuality speech” to my sister and I, he told us about the time he put a hatpin in his dick when he was in puberty and it got stuck. He had to go to the hospital to get it removed. The point of the story was to get us to ask questions instead of doing something stupid… I wasn’t much of a talker I guess…

So how did it all start for you?

The first “weird” thing I can remember doing goes back to just after I hit puberty. I had taken a latex rubber glove from the first aid kit and blown it up in my pants. The sight of my “balls” blowing up, slowly getting bigger and bigger was a real turn on for me. The pressure of the inflated glove pressing on my cock and balls was also really nice.

Around the same time I had seen one of the James Bond movies where Bond kills the bad guy at the end by putting a compressed air pellet in his mouth. The villain blew up like a balloon, floated up to the ceiling where a spike burst him. I don’t remember which episode it was and I’m not sure if I saw the movie before or after the glove but these two things are what kicked off my obsession with erotic play in the inflation-expansion-stretching fetish domain.

Over the years I have “played” by sticking things up my ass, always deeper and bigger, always trying to get in a little bit more — I love being fisted by my wife! I also love things in my mouth… the dildos I used up my ass also went down my throat, after being cleaned. Never real cock though — as strange as it may seem, I have absolutely no homosexual tendencies, repressed or otherwise… I have inserted condoms and balloons into all my different orifices and blown them up. I have pumped my cock and balls. I’ve done saline and air inflation of my cock, balls, and breasts. Deep sounding. Multiple piercings of my nipples, cock, and balls. At one point I even bought several six foot diameter balloons — the same ones you can actually get inside. My current play favorite is body inflation. Using either air or water, I slowly fill myself up until my belly is completely distended.

I’ve never tried that — what does that feel like? It’s basically like an enema but with a lot more volume?

That’s it exactly, a high volume enema with air or water. This one definitely isn’t for everyone… if your intestines can’t take it, you can’t do it even if you want to! This goes back to my main fetish of inflation, getting bigger, and swelling. It’s also the physical sensation that goes along with it — sort of a double whammy… Think of it this way: you have a thirty foot long balloon in your gut called intestines, and the more you fill them up, the bigger you get!

Is it different depending on whether you use air or water?

The process and feeling are unique to each. With air you just stick in a hose and start pumping until you’re full. You have to go slow for a couple reasons though — to allow your intestines to relax and expand (otherwise you get cramps), and if there is a plug of shit in there somewhere it gives time for the air to seep around it… And you go slow to avoid too much pressure — if you burst your intestine you’re probably going to die from it. Also, from my experiments with inflation in other body parts, air can infuse tissues which is probably not a great idea.

Water is different in that it makes a big mess… I usually do it lying down in the tub. Again, low pressure is the key to getting big, but because water is denser than air it won’t seep around any plugs. This means you have to fill up some, let out the water — and anything else — and start again, and usually you get more in every time. I think it is also safer because it won’t permeate the tissues like air does. It won’t compress though, and it also tends to come out right away since it’s harder to hold in.

In both cases the best position for filling is on your back in an almost seated position. Lying flat stretches out the stomach too much and you don’t bulge as much.

And what does it feel like?

The sensation is incredible… you can feel both air or water slowly seeping deeper into you, filling you up, pressing on your bladder, stomach, belly, and diaphragm… slowly pressing your belly outwards, getting tighter and tighter — I have actually had to take shallow breaths because of the pressure. The sight of your belly blowing up combined with the tight, blown up feeling is a real trip! With air it is lighter and gives a rounder, more pronounced belly. Tapping on it when you’re really full sounds almost like a balloon — hollow… Water feels much heavier, and when you’re full, you’re full… because of the weight it tends to spread you out more width-wise than in height. You’re not going to look nine months pregnant — more like you’re pushing out your gut as far as you can. Obviously the more you do it, the bigger you’ll get too. At first it can be a little disappointing because you can’t hold too much. You really have to be able to relax and let it flow.

Getting the air or water out again is also different. When I use water, it all comes out in a few minutes. The whole process, including several inflations, can take an hour or so combined. Air on the other hand takes a lot longer. Since you can’t really move around when you’re full, you had better pick a good spot. The best thing to do is roll over on your left side and just fart until it all gets out. It usually takes me twenty minutes to get the air down to a “normal feeling” pressure, but it can take hours to get it all out. I guess air is better if you want to have sex or masturbate while filled because you keep it in more easily and can do it pretty much anywhere. Water is good for solo sessions.

* * *

After all the problems you’ve had, what do you think keeps you going?

Sometimes I just really get the urge to blow myself up… A raging need to inflate, stretch, or pierce something and get off by doing it. I have toned down my activity now that I’m married, but it always comes back to getting bigger and getting off. My wife isn’t really into this stuff but she tolerates it, and even participates sometimes when I get the urge!

That’s good — I know a few guys who’ve actually gotten divorced because their wives weren’t able to understand their needs in this area.

She doesn’t really like most of the things I do but won’t put her foot down if I feel like scratching an urge, even if she doesn’t understand why… She doesn’t stifle me at all, but having her in my life and knowing that she doesn’t want me to get hurt keeps me grounded and within safe limits… before I met her I was obsessive about my fetish. It was compulsive and dangerous I wound up in the hospital a couple of times…

In any case we love each other enough to be able to let these things slide…

I think it’s quite normal for guys’ masturbatory play to amplify when their partners aren’t around or they don’t have them. I know that’s the case for most of the people I’ve interviewed!

I hear you — If I wasn’t married and I didn’t have to go to work every day I would probably need a football to plug my ass and have a beach ball sized nut sack! I actually still fantasize about that, even after all I’ve been through… injecting saline, or inflating day after day until my scrotum is several feet in diameter… and doing my gut until I’m huge is another fantasy. My biggest fantasy though would be to blow up my wife. Nothing permanent — this is a fantasy — but blowing her tits and belly up like balloons while fucking her… mmmmmmmmm…

My wife is actually a little modded herself… she had breast implants done last year, so she has a little bit of an idea of what’s going on.

Her breast implants were for her own reasons I assume?

I brought up the idea but she had always said she wanted to be bigger — it was 100% for both of us. She actually wants to go bigger now… again for both of us, but this time she was the one who suggested it. Now that I think if it, she really got hot for the idea after I blew up a couple of balloons in her bra under her clothes. We had sex like that and the sight of herself in the mirror with those big tits turned her on.

* * *

When you were young, after doing the inflations in your underwear, what did you try next?

The next thing I can remember is sounding. I would take a 1/4 inch tube and stick it in all my holes. At first I would push it up my cock, using a little spit for lube and working it up. Feeling it go in deeper and deeper was a real turn on. The more I would do it, the further I would go too… all the way into my bladder! A couple of times I would blow air or water into myself this way, filling up my bladder to its limit. It felt really weird, seeing the air bubbles coming out of my dick while expelling the air.

What does it feel like? Is it just like having to pee or is there more to it? Is it a head trip or a physical sensation?

It’s not quite the same as having to pee — I never had to pee that bad! It sort of burns a bit too, but it’s not a super experience physically so I would have to say it’s more of a head trip related to the inflation fetish… It’s probably dangerous too — I don’t think kidneys would react to well having air forced into them.

And you actually did inflations in your urethra as well?

At first I wanted see how much I could blow up a condom in my cock. The pressure would build and I could feel the condom stretching inside my urethra bit by bit… after a couple of tries I could see my cock expanding a little from the pressure. The cool thing about condoms is that they are clean — if not sterile — and very smooth and very stretchy, and also start stretching with little force. A condom blows up easily while you really have to strain to get a balloon going. This means that once the condom is blocked off by the walls of a body cavity, it won’t exert much pressure on anything before stretching off wherever it has room. Being so stretchy and smooth, it can expand like this quite some way. You just have to be careful because they burst more easily.

Once or twice I actually pushed the condom all the way into my bladder. Once the end of the condom was in my bladder — trust me you can feel it — I would blow into it gently. I could feel the condom expanding, stretching out my bladder, until I felt like I had to piss. I could also feel it stretching out the opening of my urethra. While I was doing this I would be so turned on — heart pounding, light-headed, and euphoric. I would only see the excitement of it… after another intense orgasm, the blood in my cum brought me down to earth fast, blood from my urethra being stretched out and torn. Pissing really burned afterwards too, but I have always seemed to heal quickly though and this discomfort only seemed to last a few days. Because of the risk of a condom bursting inside me, I started inflating condoms and balloons in my ass instead.

But you started the ass inflation games with earlier dildo play?

All of these fetishes sort of developed along with each other, and as each one got more and more extreme I would incorporate the others in and develop them as well… I first tried anal insertion using the tube in the shower to blow some air up my ass. I had done an enema so I felt clean enough to start playing up there with my fingers — slowly I would try to get more fingers in. It was a bit painful but it didn’t hurt — it felt good! I wanted to see how deep I could go, and what it would feel like, so I grabbed what I could — the toilet brush! I was still young at this point, and didn’t have any money, and not much sense. It went in fairly easily and I worked it in deeper and deeper. I could feel it hit my intestine where it turns over to the side — a weird sensation, but in a good way. I said “what the fuck” and sort of twisted it to the side so I could get in deeper. I manged to push it in the rest of the way — about fourteen inches of plastic handle was up my ass! You can guess how I felt now, so I masturbated there in the shower with the toilet brush handle up my ass. From then on my parents started calling me “Mister Clean” because I was always in the shower!

As time went on I started working, and I bought several dildos in different sizes, from an average sized dick up to a big chunk of hand molded rubber roughly square, 3×4 inches in size… and even that wasn’t big enough…

I always started with a nice long enema to get myself cleaned out — shit is not one of my turn-ons! I would go lie down in bed and stretch myself out. At first the stretching consisted of putting the dildo and as many fingers as I could up my ass, and later it would be two dildos and fingers, then three… Eventually I was able to fist myself and I have big hands! I bought a Long John Silver dildo — about a foot and a half long and three inches thick — and would ride it for hours. I even used my handyman techniques on it — I had cut out a hole in the dildo near my anus and put in a dissected vibrator, sealed the hole up with melted rubber, and went along for the ride. After a while I wanted even more so I went out and bought “the chunk”… the sensation was amazing, being totally stretched out. I would bring myself to “anal orgasm”, and my intestine would spasm pushing out the dildo — it was like cumming but ten times stronger. Even this wasn’t enough though.

At this point I started experimenting with bigger inflations in my ass. I would inflate condoms as big as I could get them, and I used those cylindrical balloons as well. Not the small ones clowns use to make animals, but the bigger ones. I was blowing them up just to the point where it started to hurt, each time filling up more and more. Feeling the balloon push deeper into my belly, I would masturbate that way with the balloon filling me up. The spasming of ejaculation uses some of the same muscles as clenching your ass so the feeling of being stretched and trying to clench while cumming was mind blowing.

When I finished I would push out the balloon to see how big I had gone that day — by now my ass was huge, but for part of me, it wasn’t enough. I wanted to stretch myself out more… Ingenuity to the rescue again! I melted down the Long Dong Silver dildo on the kitchen stove. At night while my parents were sleeping I had made a plaster mold of a Pepsi Super Gulp bottle and filled it with the melted rubber. Long John wasn’t enough, so I melted down another dildo the next night and I wound up with a big bullet shaped hunk of rubber. I was hard as a rock and dripping with the thought of forcing this thing up my ass — “force” being the operative word! After the standard enema and a little warm-up I tried… and tried. It wouldn’t go all the way in to its biggest point. Did I stop? No, I grabbed a chair, put the dildo on it and sat down. I used my weight to force it in slowly. In a bit, out a bit, in a little more… god, that thing was huge! It took me several tries on different days but I finally got it in. I came so hard I almost passed out! That thing was taking all the free space down there and making more, pressing on my prostate and everything else. I kept at it until I was able to use it like a normal dildo, pushing it in by hand.

I still wanted more, so I made another mold. This one was a vase that was about the same size as the Super Gulp but I used some “lifelike dildos” made of softer rubber… softer because I wanted this one this one to be inflatable. Same process — mold, melted rubber, but I put a thick, three foot balloon inside which was about 8 inches and flat when deflated. I hooked it up to a bicycle pump and really stretched my ass out! This one looked a bit like a giant butt plug — pointy, bigger in the middle, and narrower at the base… the balloon was right at the biggest point which was also about as deep as I could get it inside me. I would start with the chunk, then switch to the plug, again forcing it in with my weight, and then I would start pumping. It was painful but the sensation of stretching out and building up the pressure was intense — I can’t really describe it… just orgasmicly intense! I could feel the plug actually pushing on my pelvic bones… it was amazing being stretched this much!

This became an obsession — I always wanted to get bigger and bigger…

And you were doing vacuum pumping and inflating as well?

Yes, standard stuff. I couldn’t make any permanent growth, but I would get really fat, filling up the tube. I always used my mouth do create the suction so I could go harder than with a hand bulb. I used to blister myself all the time but I wouldn’t stop — the pressure was too exciting. I would burst the blisters as they would appear to keep them from getting bigger and keep pumping… Once I had more blisters on the end of my cock than skin. I couldn’t even masturbate afterwards, it was so sore. I am not a masochist though… pain doesn’t turn me on, nor does inflicting pain. It’s just that sometimes I can turn the pain from some areas of my body off, or change it into pleasure when I’m in the right frame of mind. Nipples, cock, and nut sack — that’s it. Anything else doesn’t do it for me…

After pumping my cock I tried to pump my balls but couldn’t really do it well with a standard pump. This is before I started working, so I didn’t have money to buy anything bigger… I tried to make some pumps out of stuff around the house but I couldn’t get anything to work. That’s when I said to myself, what if I blew my nut sack up like a balloon? It’s “empty” like a balloon and stretchy, and pumping takes a long time anyways — so why not? How to do it though? I got out one of my hoses and a needle I used to blow up footballs, and a stainless steel nail. I cleaned everything with alcohol, put the needle on the end of the hose, punched a hole in my sac with the nail, and pushed the needle in.

Ouch?

It doesn’t really hurt to tell the truth. Sort of a prick and pop, and it goes in. I usually poke around for an area that is less sensitive — in general I don’t feel pain like most people do either… I remember in school we did an experiment where the teacher stamped a small grid of twenty-five squares onto our arms. We then used a needle to poke our skin to see how many squares we felt pain in. Most people felt pain in about 80% of the squares. I only actually felt pain in about a tenth.

Anyway, so you’re sitting there with a needle in your nut sack and a football pump.

My hands were shaking I was so wound up, and I can remember thinking “this is probably not a good idea”… but that other part of my brain that seems to take over when I get an “urge” said, “fuck it, blow” and I did.

The sensation was really different. First, because the needle had a relatively large diameter I was able to inflate much quicker than with, say, a syringe. I could feel the air spreading out under my skin while my sac expanded. It sort of tickled. My sac didn’t blow up like a balloon like I thought it would either — I could see the air spreading out under the skin, raising up the surface like Bugs Bunny digging a tunnel. When the air had raised the surface of my sac evenly I really started to swell. The first time I got to about the size of a big orange. I could feel the air pushing into the cavities where my balls dropped down from as a baby… I was hard as a rock and ready to cum. Then I started to feel the air pushing into the pad of skin around the base of my cock, under my pubes, and I came back down to earth. I hadn’t tied anything off so the air was spreading up into the skin of my belly.

Still excited, I pulled out the needle and watched as I deflated… a little. Then it stopped. Now I was a little worried. I had thought the air would all come back out… not! I pressed on my balls, squeezed them to force more air out, and that worked. I inflated again, this time using a bit of string to tie off my sac. Because I was tied off I could go bigger and use more pressure… I was shaking in the grip of a kind of euphoric madness I guess, and I couldn’t stop inflating and deflating myself. At the biggest, I could see the color of the skin changing to a sort of yellowy orange as air bubbles spread between the different layers of skin. I was the size of a big grapefruit and the skin was so full it was shiny. I jerked off to one of the most powerful ejaculations in my life. Then I came back to myself a little and started pushing out as much air as I could.

I only managed to get out about half — the air had permeated my skin and wasn’t coming out the hole! I was a little worried, but my logic was “if they can operate on people and let air in I’ll be alright.” But later that evening I got the shakes and felt sick. As if I had a fever, but I didn’t… after two days the feeling went away but my sac was still huge.

That’s really frightening — have you ever dragged an infection into your scrotum from air or saline play? I know a couple guys that have come very close to death because of how quickly these types of infections can escalate.

I wound up in the hospital twice with an infection. The first time was really bad. I had tried using water to inflate and was poorly prepared, and when the water didn’t work, I used air. The swelling went down, and then came back, red and hot. I wasn’t feeling very good by then and in the shower one morning about a week later I was massaging my balls when the original hole opened up and some purple yellow puss spewed out. That scared the shit out of me and I got my parents to take me to the hospital.

You’re lucky you didn’t die! Seriously!

I had a general infection at that point and could have died had I let it go any longer. I told my parents that I had fallen on the back of a chair while changing a light bulb. This had caused the swelling and a shaving cut on my nuts caused the infection — I told them that I was too shy to tell them about the swelling. The second time I recognized the symptoms sooner and took myself to the hospital…

On that second air inflation, how long did it take the air to eventually dissipate?

Three weeks of wearing loose clothes and tight underwear — loose clothes to hide what I’d done, and tight underwear to press the air into my system a fast as possible. From what I could find out, the sick feeling I experienced was a form of shock. Of course, my logic at this point said, “I lived, I am healthy and healed, so I can do this again!”

I did, many times… too often to count. The sick feeling got less and less every time I did it, but was always enough to make me feel weird for a few days. The biggest I ever got was about the size of a cantaloupe. I have also inflated my cock using a syringe needle — like vacum pumping but instantaneous. I even used so much pressure — with a bicycle pump — that the air was forced under the skin of my knob a couple of times. It was completely inflated, so light tapping on it made a hollow sound like a balloon that’s about to pop. Feeling the skin of your cock being filled to the limit like that is intense! The yellowing was definitely air bubbles, and the sensation was twice as strong in the knob because of its sponge-like nature. I jerked off my now-fat cock and came hard as usual, but it itched like crazy afterwards, especially the knob.

I know there’s no truth to the “if you get air in your bloodstream you’ll die of an embolism” warning, but did you ever worry that you weren’t just going to have a problem afterwards, but actually drop dead on the spot?

I was in the hospital once and the nurse was giving me an IV and there was a tiny bubble in the line. I asked her if it was dangerous and she said no. Air in your bloodstream can kill you, but you need to inject it directly into an artery going to the heart, and you need enough of a bubble to cause cavitation in the heart’s ventricles — it’s impossible to do this inflating your sac. I also came across a procedure or two on the net where doctors inject air into body cavities to perform endoscopic surgeries, and saw a news article where a woman working in a balloon shop fell on the compressed air canister, punctured her skin, and inflated her ass and one leg! Apparently she felt the same shock reaction I mentioned.

I guess it was that shock sensation that made you try out saline instead?

Yes — by now I had an Internet connection so I did a little research and found BME! Wow, there are others like me? Cool! I found the saline section — Eureka! There were no side-effects mentioned, and it was able to be absorbed quickly by the body naturally. What could be better? The only problem was that I was still at home, couldn’t order it, and in any case, was leery of ordering stuff off the Internet and injecting it into my body… I went to the drugstore to see what I could find. All they had was saline for contact lenses… I figured if I could put it in my eyes I should be able to inject it, right?

I built a drip bag by cleaning out a 2 liter plastic bottle and putting a hole in the bottom. I forced a length of vinyl tubing into the hole and sealed it off on the outside using hot glue. I flushed it out with alcohol, filled it, and started… Nothing happened. The needles I had were all very small and needed pressure to get the liquid through in enough quantities to make a visible difference, so I cut the nozzle off of a bicycle inner tube, leaving a circle of rubber around the base. I drilled a hole in the bottle cap the size of the nozzle, put the nozzle through the hole and screwed the cap on the bottle. The cap pressed the rubber circle enough to create a seal so I was in business. I hooked in the bicycle pump and started building up pressure slowly. I could feel the saline infusing the tissue but it was too slow. I couldn’t see it happening so I increased the pressure. I could now see the saline going down in the bottle and see my sac filling up. It was way different than the air. Air is not at all painful — it sort of tickles going in — but this was more invasive, more like it was forcing its way in and it hurt — real pain, not a “feel good” pain… But I wanted to see myself bigger, so I kept at it.

That day I made it to 500ml. My sack felt really full and heavy when I stood up, and it pulled at my abdominal flesh and muscles. The heavy feeling was extremely erotic, but then it started to ache… and spasm. I don’t know if this was caused by the type of saline I used, the speed I infused at, or if it is normal but fuck it hurt!

It was probably the type of saline… You also get a lot of pain if you use water rather than saline.

I laid down on my side cradling my sac for what seemed like a couple of hours until the pain subsided. It went completely away, leaving me with a huge heavy sac full of saline. I started playing with it, fondling, feeling the weight, swinging it between my legs. This actually forced the saline a little lower into my sac and made it look more natural. Again, I was completely aroused… I guess by now I don’t need to explain what happened next!

I tried this several times, again going bigger and bigger. The druggist where I bought my saline started to look at me funny I was buying so much. The biggest volume I ever reached using saline was over a liter and a half… My sac was completely stretched out… shiny and transparent looking. When the pain subsided and I could enjoy the experience I was ecstatic. I was huge and heavy — really heavy! The skin of my sac was super sensitive and it was stretched out so much. It was actually pulling the abdominal skin above my cock down over it. I couldn’t even walk straight I was so big… I noticed that the weight of so much saline was forcing its way down, stretching my already filled-to-the-limit skin even more. What looked like stretch marks formed under my sac, red lines racing across the underside… I didn’t care though, I was huge!

After a shower, I dried off and waddled back to my room. I took off my bathrobe — the only way to dress if you want to hide something like this by the way — and I noticed some moisture between my legs. The weight of the saline was actually forcing it to seep out through my skin! I lay down to take off some of the weight and I played with myself for hours that day while my body reabsorbed the saline. It was an unforgettable experience. I stopped using saline after that though — it hurt too much to be worth it. I tried using hot water to pump several times and got so-so results, but it took too long to get to a good size. Part of the trip is seeing myself grow, not just the results of eight hours of pumping.

* * *

You mentioned earlier that you did some permanent piercing as well?

I have made pincushions out of my knob and nipples — always for the same reason: bigger, bigger, more, more, more! I had read stories about how piercings in erogenous zones increase sensitivity and I said, this is for me. I sharpened a bicycle spoke with a file and polished it until it could cut paper — if you haven’t guessed by now, one of my jobs back then was at a bicycle store. I numbed my nipple using ice and stuck the needle in, and realized that nipples are really tough! I had to re-freeze my nipple three times before I got all the way through. I then put in a ring, bought at a piercing shop, and discovered why people use tapers to get the jewelry in. This was a learning experience though, and the pain of the piercing wore off in a couple minutes, leaving me with a swollen, hyper-sensitive nipple. Being sensitive anyways, it was really exciting. The feel of it, all tight and pulsing was somehow very erotic for me. In the weeks that followed, I moved on to my other nipple, then a frenum piercing.

I went back to the shop and bought a couple heavier gauge rings, wondering how I was going to get them in. I used my trusty bicycle spokes to make homemade stretcher rings. Each time I stretched it was just as sensitive as the first piercing… each time I was so aroused I had to jerk off. Eventually the skin under my knob couldn’t take it any more and split, leaving two little stumps. I wanted to do my cock again so I pierced myself a Prince Albert and stretched it out one ring at a time, up to 2 gauge. It felt great! Feeling the weight hanging off my cock, pulling at it all the time was another unique, intense sensation in among a multitude of unique, intense sensations! I could force my little finger through the hole to the first knuckle. In the meantime this had inspired to do more piercings… My left nipple got the same treatment as the PA, although I stopped at an 8 gauge. My right nipple had four homemade studs through it, one horizontal, one vertical, and two others making an ‘X’ behind them. My knob also got more metal, eventually working up to several ampallangs. I couldn’t wait to heal them… I had to jerk off… the feel of the metal rings and balls in my hand, and the sensation of them pulling at the holes was so intense… I should have waited to heal though, as I wound up in the hospital with another general infection! All the piercings came out after that, but I recently redid my nipples.

* * *

You said your wife fists you and that she’s generally supportive of you, but how did you first tell her about your fetishes?

Well, she doesn’t really like what I do, but sometimes I get her to participate. The fisting for example — she didn’t want anything to do with it at first, but I convinced her to try… she wound up liking it. She likes the fact that she can bring me to such intense orgasms, and actually, the most intense orgasms I have had were from her fisting me. Usually she is in complete control too. When she’s halfway to her elbow up my ass she can make me cum or not — it’s up to her. If she doesn’t stop when I tell her to, I just keep cumming… it’s very intense. She has even said she’s a bit jealous that she can’t cum like that.

When I met her I was badly scarred from the injections — I hadn’t sought out treatment for the mineral oil until after I met my wife. We met, fell in love, and when we were in bed for the first time I didn’t have any choice but to tell her. I choked up and had trouble saying anything… I was scared she’d dump me… remember, this was my first and only relationship.

Wow, that must have been incredibly terrifying…

Tell me about it! That’s the thing with my wife though. I was totally at ease talking to her as opposed to being totally clammed up… this was tough but it was do or die.

I had manged to keep it hidden from her up to that point and put her hand on it through my shorts. She asked to see it and I showed her. She was freaked out, but nowhere near as much as she could have been. She was coming out of a bad relationship so it turned out to be a mutual healing process for both of us — literally in my case. I helped her get her mind out of the past and she helped me get treatment.

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Martin: Genital Evolution

I first met Martin in the mid-nineties when he began experiments in “cock skinning”, a radical sort of circumcision where large amounts of tissue are removed from the shaft of the penis, leaving tightened and scarred skin. While this was not his first journey into body modification, it began a series of heavy duty DIY changes to his genitals that continue to this day — he’s been subincised, closed that subincision, opened it up again (and repeated that more than once), injected hydrogels, reshaped his scrotum multiple times, cut his own suspensory ligament, and more. Thanks to a bullet-proof immune system and the apparent ability to heal almost anything, his adventures just keep escalating.

Please be warned that this interview is extremely explicit and deals with highly risky activities, both in terms of the pictures and the modifications discussed.

Martin’s Subincision… One of Many!

* * *

Tell me a little about yourself.

I’m thirty-six now. I was born in Austria, but have lived in the UK for most of my life. I am single and probably always will be unless someone comes along who accepts me for who I am — but I’d much rather be in a relationship. My parents have moved abroad and I have one sister that also lives abroad as well, so I am basically alone here in the UK, although I do have some close friends. I am gay and was very late in accepting it and coming out — I was thirty when I finally came out. I live alone at home with two dogs for company.

As for work and everyday life, I am self employed in the electronics trade — repairs to TV and video equipment. It’s a bad career to be involved in, and I would not recommend anyone else starting up in this business since it’s becoming less profitable every year as things become cheaper to replace instead of repair.

So you came out with extreme mods before you came out as gay — I guess it was easier accepting your interest in genital modification than your interest in men? Has it been doubly hard striking up relationships because of the genital modifications?

I have always been shy and have the fear of rejection, so even before any mods, I’ve never had the courage to ask anyone out. In those days it was only women that I was wanting to find, because that was expected of me by my parents and I could not accept the fact that I was gay. I knew that women never turned me on sexually, but men on the other hand did turn me on. Only the really cute ones — the ones where you could see their package in their tight jeans… it was always the genitals that really did it for me.

I have to admit that once I circumcised myself, it did make me even more shy to show my cock, and also, when I first circumcised my cock I did not know about the term ‘circumcision’ and I didn’t even know that other men were circumcised — I thought I made my cock different from everyone else’s! In those days I did not have access to any pictures of cocks and I had never heard about removing foreskin. In school showers all the boys had foreskins. Another thing that bugged me was that my circumcision scar was very defined. You could see the pale inner skin suddenly change to the darker outer skin, with a ring joining the two together. That made me feel embarrassed because I thought that people would know that I’d cut my foreskin off, but since then I’ve found out that that look is very normal in a circumcised penis.

Do you think your life would have turned out quite differently had you come out at a much younger age?

In a simple answer — yes! If I had the guts to say I was gay before I did any cutting, I might have just gone out and enjoyed myself among other gay friends. I might never have had the thought of that hole in the foreskin, and I might never have made that hole, and then never have had cut the skin, making me not get addicted to cutting in the first place…

If I had left my penis well alone as I was when I was born, I’m sure I would have had more courage back then to go out looking for a female relationship and might have gotten married… my genital mods have definitely changed my life, but I don’t really know for certain how much of a change it’s made because I will never know how differently my life would have evolved had I not cut my cock.

You mentioned that you run an electronics repair business — do you think your interest and talents in fixing electronics are related on some level to your interest and talents in “fixing genitals”? I know it’s a bit of a goofy question, but I was actually asked a series of questions along these lines myself by some TV show because I was customizing cars and had some in my yard when they came over to film.

Funny you should ask that — no, it’s not a daft question at all. There could well be a connection there. Since I was I kid I’ve always been into electronics and anything technical. When I got a transistor radio, the first thing I did was take it apart to see its workings. Everything I’ve had I’ve always pulled apart or tried to modify to make it work better, like modifying coils in TVs and radios to see what effect it had… That could also be why I’m interested in my cock, taking it apart and seeing how I can make it feel and function differently.

Ever since I can remember, I was always fascinated with my genitals. Even as a kid before puberty I used to play with my cock, making it go hard and tying rubber bands around it to make the veins stand out. At that time I could not pull my foreskin back and I didn’t even know what a foreskin was — all I could see was the very tip of my glans through the end of my foreskin. I remember my mother giving me a bath. She tried to pull my foreskin back but because it was causing me pain, I didn’t let her, but as the years went by and I entered puberty I started exploring my cock more by tugging on the foreskin, making the opening get wider and wider. I was always too scared to pull the foreskin right back, just in case it got stuck there, or worse yet my glans would fall out — the stupid thing was that I thought that my glans was a separate ball that was only held in place by my foreskin!

That’s pretty funny… I’m surprised how early your interested started to show. I think most people see it coming out about the time of puberty. Maybe that means it’s really hardwired in your case!

I remember when I was six years old I had a very strange thought… I saw my dad doing a job with concrete around a pipe, sealing it in a floor, and I had thoughts of filling up my pants with concrete so I could no longer access my cock. I thought concrete was so permanent that nothing could break it open after it went hard. I imagined myself wearing concrete pants for the rest of my life — an early thought of chastity I guess!

One day in the bath I decided to play and experiment again, and this time I pulled as hard as I could to got my foreskin right back. I held my hand out under my cock just in case the head fell out so I could catch it, but when the skin went back, I was so amazed at how the glans was attached and how very sensitive it was. This made me start off new experiments and I discovered masturbation a few weeks later — it was totally unexpected, but the first orgasm I had I can still remember today. It was so good that I haven’t stopped ever since that day.

For several years I just masturbated, but I always wondered what else I could do to turn me on. I knew that it was my dick that turned me on the most. I tried to look at girls, but they just did not turn me on sexually, although young men very much did… Not by their faces — I was more turned on by their cocks. I admired the bulge they displayed in their tight jeans. Back in the 1980’s tight jeans were very commonplace and it was fantastic to see guys wearing tight jeans as long as they showed a bulge. In those days I was twelve, and always promised myself that when I grew up and my cock was bigger I too would wear tight jeans to show off my bulge — and yes, that’s exactly what I now do, and always have. Seeing my cock bulge out of my tight jeans is more of a turn on for me than anything else.

Back when I was fifteen I saw a pair of leather punches — I don’t know why, but looking at how they punched a hole in a strip of leather made me want to punch a hole in the top of my foreskin. I never did but the thoughts of having a hole in my foreskin seemed to stay with me. About two years later I was getting bored of masturbating with the same old cock and wanted to make my foreskin pull back further but the frenum was in the way, so one night I got a very sharp pointed kitchen knife and pushed the point through the inside of the frenum and cut it through in an out-and-upwards direction. Because I still had a foreskin I put tissue paper over the cut and closed my foreskin up over it, but it hardly bled at all and it was healed within about a week.

What did it feel like? Was the cutting a part of masturbation, or were the two separate?

The cutting was a “now or never” spur of the moment thing in the bath. I was having a bath and had that thought about making a hole in my foreskin again, so I quickly decided to do it before I changed my mind. If I would have cum, I would have changed my mind — if I masturbate before the cutting, as soon as I cum the cutting thoughts are gone until next time. I actually use it as a way to slow me down and keep me from cutting myself too often.

It’s interesting the role that orgasm plays in it. I know a lot of people who even stop going to orgasm — almost, but not quite there — to avoid losing that feeling, and some even feel bad about the cutting after they cum…

If I manage to cum just after a cutting session, I do sometimes feel bad for having cut myself because the erotic excitement is gone, but my biggest piss off is after a major cut and I have to avoid erections in case of bleeding or popping stitches, and sometimes I have to wait for ten or fifteen days before I can masturbate again! It’s the downtime I hate, but the excitement of a newly modeled cock is so erotic, and that’s another reason why I alter and cut my cock.

I guess that was how I first started to get interested in modding my cock. I never intended to cut it anymore but then I guess I was already becoming addicted. I think as well because I didn’t have any access to touch and see anyone else’s cock back then, I just wanted mine to feel different.

So you did end up eventually making that hole in your foreskin?

The thoughts of having a hole in my foreskin never left me, so one night when I was alone I decided to try making a hole, and I cut a small hole from left to right in the area where I could see the ridge of my glans under the skin. When I made this hole I was so turned on at the sight of seeing my glans through the hole that I pushed the glans out through it… That looked really hot, and my proper foreskin opening was now all wrinkled under my shaft and a problem then started. I got very erect and my glans swelled up, and because the hole was too small, it began to strangle the glans and was becoming very painful. No matter how much I tried I just could not push the glans back out from that hole, so I had no choice but to insert the blade from a pair of scissors between the cut hole and the original hole, and cut through that skin. As soon as the blade cut through it, the tightness went away and a strange kind of looseness came, because suddenly the foreskin no longer had any tightness to it when retracted. It was hanging off under my head, which felt sort of uncomfortable but looked really fantastic, seeing my glans with no foreskin trying to slide over it. That said, it was very untidy looking, so one day I thought of trying to repair the skin by opening up the cut edges and sewing them together again, but when I did try that, it was far too painful and I gave up…

I knew that I could not leave my cock looking this untidy — after all, I was only eighteen back then and was planning to have relationships. I decided to cut off that lose hanging bit of foreskin, which really hurt, but after it was off, I knew that I wasn’t finished because there were still other areas that needed tidying up. From there on I spent several times cutting bits off to neaten my circumcision scar. Then came a day when I wanted to cut more skin off, mainly because I found it such a turn on to remove skin from my penis. The problem I had was that I didn’t have any loose skin left. I was already very tightly circumcised, but the desire was still with me to cut more skin off. I decided to cut all the skin off my penis shaft — the loosely attached skin that slides along the shaft when masturbating. I made a circular cut around the base, and another cut just behind the head, and then a long cut joining the two cuts. I slowly lifted the skin off as I was cutting it free from the shaft.

Did you ever have problems that needed medical attention back then, or ever get caught in any way? I had to go to the emergency room once, and it was a very embarrassing experience!

Luckily no, not back then. I was always ready with a whole roll of toilet paper just in case it bled too much. The circumcision was very manageable. The only problem I had was when I was cutting it off — I was sitting on the edge of the bath for nearly three hours trying to cut the lower part of skin off and my parents were due to come home very soon! That cutting was giving me so much pain I didn’t know how to finish it, but luckily I had the idea of going the the freezer and scraping ice from its internal walls into a cup and adding water. I dunked my cock in the iced water and that made it much more bearable and I managed to cut it off before they came home and clear up the bloody mess in the bath.

Lucky! Getting back to the cock skinning, what did you do after you cut the skin free?

When I was finished I was left with a raw shaft, and it was wet and bloody. I became erect and found that my skinned shaft looked so erotic to me — it was sort of whitish pink in color and it looked hot, but worrying at the same time, seeing my shaft skin start at the base of my cock for only about half an inch, then stop, leaving an opening in my body for my raw skinned cock to protrude from.

Martin’s initial cock skinning

It took a good eight weeks to heal over fully, with a new scar-like replacement tissue. The trouble I had was the fact that during healing it pulls together, and I was left with a much smaller cock than before. I knew I would never be happy with that so I thought that if I reopened the wound where the new skin joined the remaining old skin, I would pull the edges apart and wait for more new skin to grow in between. This did work and I repeated it twice, and was left with a penis that was about the same as the original length but the skin was totally immobile. The new skin is attached directly to the shaft and has no movement at all to it.

How does that feel in comparison? Is it still like that or did it separate and loosen over time?

In the beginning the shaft was extremely tight. It was a bit like an hourglass because of the tight bandaging I did to make the new skin heal tightly, but after a few months it softened up and became more normal in shape. The new skin is still tighter than normal skin, and even today and there is no gliding motion anymore. Before skinning it I could feel the shaft meat under the skin, and I could feel the ripples in the cock meat under the skin as I moved my fingers up and down it. I could see all the veins bulging through the skin, but now all that’s no longer possible. It bothered me to start with, but I’m now so used to it that I don’t even think about it anymore

The photos make it look like you’ve got no worries in the size department — were you aware of that as you were growing up?

It’s only since I’ve been sending pictures on the Internet that I’ve been getting responses saying that I’m quite big. For me I’ve always seen myself as being too small, but that’s only because I wish I was huge. I’ve always imagined myself having a cock that’s so big that I have trouble getting dressed — it’s an obsession for me to wear tight jeans to show a big bulge. It gives me confidence knowing that my dick is big enough to show through my clothes — if I don’t show a bulge, like if I wear baggy jeans, I feel less confident in front of others, especially if I’m among other guys and one or two do show a bulge… it makes me feel even smaller and underdeveloped.

After the skinning, how did you get into the subincision and other mods?

The skinning took place in 1992 and I didn’t do much after that anymore until 1997, when I got my first computer. The first thing I looked for on the Internet was for information about self-circumcision, mainly to see if other people also did it, and I stumbled across BME and I immediately bought myself an extreme subscription. That was where I first saw subincisions and bisections, and since then it’s been the green light and the inspiration I’ve been looking for to continue with my genital mods.

Before that, were you at all aware that other people were doing it as well?

In those days I was not aware that others did any kind of self cutting. I thought I was totally alone with it and felt like a freak because of that… I was very relived to find out that I was not alone anymore, and better yet, because the Internet is two way interactive, I’ve managed to chat and contact several others. It’s just a shame that they are all so far away.

Did you ever try “lighter” stuff along the lines of pumping or saline? Or was it always cutting that was the turn-on?

When it comes to non-cutting mods, yes, I’ve done several, but because they don’t last, they are not as exciting. I have pumped with an electric pump — it was a paint sprayer compressor I modified to suck in air through a tube. The vacuum was so strong that I filled my tube in two sessions, but after only a few sessions it was hurting too much in an aching sort of way, so I gave up.

I also used the compressor as an inflater — I attached a needle on the end of the tube and inserted it under my shaft skin and inflated my cock. The base was tied off tight, and I left the pump on until my cock was about to explode — it was so hard including the head. The thing that made me quickly turn the pump off was the fact that I could hear cracking noises in the head! The skin was about to rip open! I could not feel anything because I had injected anesthetic first.

Martin’s cock being inflated

Releasing the pressure

I got a large needle and stabbed my cock from all directions. The air hissed out of my cock, along with bubbles of blood. While I was tied off, after I had squeezed all the air out, I got a pair of scissors and inserted one blade in my piss hole and the other along the top center of my glans and I split it through — there was no blood and no pain, so I suddenly had a split head! I inserted a tube down my urethra and wedged tissue between the split, and then tightly bandaged the head up and released the band at the base of my cock to allow the blood to flow in again. Amazingly, it didn’t bleed at all… It went red, and soaked in blood, but it never ran or dripped with blood, so that was good.

Martin’s head splitting

I know it was a stupid thing to do — I knew it when I did it — but I thought I’d take the chance because I wanted to see how big I could inflate my cock. Yes, I was stupid to have done that, so don’t tell me I was because I know anyway!

I’d love to hear the stories of of your subincision and how you came to close it up.

Back in 1987 I was in the airport in Austria waiting for my flight, and that was the very first time I had ever thought about subincision. I didn’t know even that it was possible, yet alone knew that others did it — it was a thought totally out of the blue and I even remember where I was when that thought came to mind. I didn’t call it a subincision, I called it a gutter! I never did it for may years after, but I did decide to experiment with that thought, and one night in the bath I decided to lengthen the piss slit. I did this by tyeing off my cock, putting ice on it to deaden the pain, and got a blade and cut myself a meatotomy all the way to the rim of the glans. I was amazed at how easy it was, and the fact that it was even possible to do. It healed quite quickly but I found that peeing standing up was bad — it sprayed everywhere and I hated that, so after one year I decided that it must be possible to close it up.

I opened the healed sides — back then I didn’t have access to anesthetic so I used freezer spray, a spray can that’s used for cooling electronic components when tracing thermal faults. I sprayed it on my meatotomy edges and my glans became white, hard, and frozen on the two sides of the meatotomy. I quickly got scissors and sliced a chunk off the glans from either side. By then it was thawing out and becoming soft again, so I brought the two sides together and taped it up with surgical sticky tape. When the feeling came back it hurt so much I nearly cried… After that, peeing was done very slowly so as not to put too much pressure on the wound, and after a few days it had knitted together and it was totally healed in about two weeks.

It wasn’t until 2000 that I decided that I wanted a meatotomy again, mainly because I then knew that others also did it, so I decided to reopen my meatotomy again, but this time I stopped about a centimeter into the shaft. It was amazing to see the inside of my cock again, and because I knew others also cut themselves I knew I wasn’t a freak to cut myself, so I just continued to cut.

Returning to the first thoughts of a subincision back in that airport, when I stumbled across pictures of my first subincision all my memories came back to me. I just could not believe that someone had actually done that to their cock… Back then I had promised myself not to cut my cock anymore, but every time I looked at subincision pictures, particularly the full subincisions, I knew I wanted one on my cock one day too. After I redid the meatotomy, I left it to heal, always knowing that I wanted to extend it further. A few months later I cut it further using a clamp-and-cut method. I did this twice more and I loved the feeling of how my urethra fell open wider each time — the feel of air hitting the sensitive tissue gave me a real hard on, and I came after only a few strokes!

Closing his subincision

By the end of the year I had a full subincision and I loved it, but one night I was having a bath and I had the thoughts of extending my sub further, and as I got the blade near it, I wondered if it was possible to repair it again. I opted for the latter, and in an attempt to be “normal” again, I used injectable anesthetic and removed a strip of skin from each side of my sub and then sutured it all together. During the next few days peeing was rather painful and I had to control how hard I let the pee flow — it’s really difficult to trickle out pee when you’re bursting to go! But, after a week it was knitted together enough to not rip apart anymore. I left my entire shaft tightly bandaged so that erections didn’t put too much strain on the rejoined area.

Martin’s closed subincision

But that closure didn’t last, did it?

No — I have reopened it again, and this time it’s all the way to the scrotum. I plan on splitting the scrotum again as well and taking the subincision between the balls.

I assume everything you’re doing is cock-related? No changes to any other body parts at all?

I am only interested in modifying my cock. Other body parts don’t turn me on in any way, although some look cool on others… but for me it’s only my cock.

Let’s keep talking about your modifications… What came after the subincision?

A year after that I did my next extreme modification. I was not happy with the way that after my tight circumcision and skinning that my scrotum was pulled up covering more than half the length of the under side of my cock shaft. I had this idea to cut the scrotum away from the shaft to try and make it hang lower down.

I’m going to guess this story begins with “I was in the bath”…

Yes — I was in the bath and my scrotum was loose and floppy from the heat of the warm water. I injected anesthetic into the area that I was going to cut, and I then got a long blunt object (the handle of a screw driver), and I pushed this handle on the left side of my scrotum as far back as possible and felt for it bulging through the scrotal skin on the right side. Once I was happy with the position, I got a blade and cut from the right side through to the left, using the handle as a base to cut against. I cut until the handle pushed through to the other side. I suppose it could be classed as an extremely deep scrotal or lorum piercing.

Martin’s scrotal release

I then got a pair of scissors and inserted one blade through this hole and out the other side, and then slowly began to cut in an outward direction along my shaft. This was totally painless, and once I cut through, my scrotum fell downwards, exposing the tops of my balls and the raw underside of my penis. It did bleed quite a lot, but with compression, it stopped after about thirty minutes — I think I must have cut a big vein!

I then sutured the scrotum together joining the left side to the right, but left my penis raw above it. It took about two months to fully heal, and I did regrow about half way up the shaft again, but it was definitely lower down than before. I wanted it to be as low down as possible, so I decided to repeat this cutting procedure a second time around. Once it healed the second time, my scrotum was hanging very low and virtually between my legs. I liked it that way a lot but I wanted more and decided that I wanted to split my scrotum so I’d have two independent balls hanging.

How did you perform the scrotal splitting procedure?

I used the same technique of using the handle of a screw driver as a cutting guide behind the scrotum and I cut to it from the front. My goal was for maximum separation, so I made sure that I cut as high up the scrotum as possible. This time however I did not cut the scrotum in half — I decided to wait until the hole I just made healed, and I inserted a thick tube through that hole and formed a ring out of it, holding it together with a cable tie. After about three weeks it was time for me split the scrotum in two, so I removed that tube and had a nearly healed hole at the base to cut out from. I injected anesthetic again, and used scissors to cut from the hole downwards. After the final snip my two balls fell apart — I could suddenly hold them, one in each hand, about six inches apart!

I loved that new look and feel, but there was one problem after it had healed — because my scrotums were so small, they tended to shrivel up when cold and my balls would disappear up next to my cock leaving two empty scrotums that looked like two bits of loose skin. I wanted to keep my balls down in the sacks so I decided to do more cutting.

Martin’s split scrotum

The next cut was an attempt to make the neck of my left scrotum only thick enough for the cord of the testicle. This was a bad idea, but I did it anyway, not thinking about the consequences. I felt for my testes cord and pushed it to the outside edge of the sack. Then I made a hole in the neck of the sack right next to the cord. I left that hole to heal, using the tube as I did when I split the sack. After it had healed I cut the scrotum through the hole towards the center horizontally, leaving just the part that had my cord running through it. There was blood everywhere and I had to call for an ambulance as I could not stop the bleeding — that was the most embarrassing day of my life! But it healed quite well and my left testicle was now hanging in a scrotum from a thin neck, sort of like a pendulum between my legs… But after a few months, due to cold weather, it managed to squeeze past the narrow neck and up next to my cock, so it didn’t work as planned.

How did they react to you at the hospital?

An Indian doctor came to check me over, and saw what I had done. He said that if I cut too close to the cord of the testes, that the thin scrotal neck could swell and strangle the cord and I could loose that ball. I already had it in my mind that I was going to loose my left ball, but the doc then said that there was no point in suturing the wound together, because I’d already done a good job of that. I was surprised, and he looked at my then partial subincision and asked if I did it. I told him I did and he said that I would have problems with it later in life — I don’t know what he meant by that. He wanted to keep me in on an IV drip, but I refused and dismissed myself. They gave me a packet full of pills and I went home and was at work the next day.

How did the ligament cutting happen? DIY is certainly a better deal than paying $3000 or so to have a plastic surgeon do it…

I injected the area with anesthetic and pulled hard on my penis in a downward direction. When I felt the pubic area I could feel ligaments through the skin tensioning up and it was these ligaments that I planned to cut. I got a blade and made a hole just over the area that I could feel the ligaments through, and I cut that hole about half an inch across and dug the blade in on one side of the tensioned ligament and cut towards it. I could hear the tearing sound, and once I cut through it my cock suddenly felt longer and I could actually see it drop lower down!

Martin’s DIY ligament cutting

It was one of the easiest mods I’ve ever done. I sutured the hole shut and I was even able to masturbate the same night! I had bruising for about one week but I gained just over one inch when soft. But it still wasn’t enough.

Wow, I didn’t realize that it was that “easy” to do… Did you gain any hard length as well, or just when soft?

Yes, I found it the easiest mod ever, but I didn’t notice any more length when hard. I did notice however that my cock hangs lower down… I never did any stretching, although I should have, but having said that, I didn’t loose any length that I gained and I now can no longer feel the ligament under the skin anymore.

Has it changed things like angle of erection and so on as well?

My angle of erection was pointing down long before the ligament cutting because of a lot of manual pulling downwards on my cock by hand at every available moment. Every time I had to go to the toilet, I always ended with a real hard pull on my cock in an attempt to stretch it — there was a time I could put the head in my mouth, but I stopped pulling on it because the results were too minimal. That’s why I opted for the ligament cut. Maybe I might try pulling on it again soon, as I might get more length now that the ligament is cut.

What other things have you tried to increase the size?

I had heard of Hydrogel and was given a contact address to obtain some. First I wanted my cock to look normal again before I injected it so I decided to close up the full subincision.

This was my second-time-round subincision, as I had already closed it up before and then cut it open again. I removed a slice of skin from along each side and sutured the two sides together, but this time I left a hole right at the base in order to pee through so my pee pressure would not disturb healing on the rest of the sub. After it was healed I had to close that hole in the base so that I could pee from the end again, and I removed a ring of skin from around that hole and sutured that open ring closed. For the first few days I was very careful not to pee too hard, and within a week I was able to pee standing up again. I managed to close my subincision down to a 5mm pee hole in the glans!

Opening up his “mostly” subincision

After my sub was closed again, I decided that I wanted my scrotum back as a whole so that I could inject the hydrogel into it and get a big round bulge, but I had problems with my left sack when trying to join it to the right one. I cut open the right sack until it was fully open in the area that was originally split, and then I tried doing the same with the left one but the narrow neck where the cord was running through was so close to the testicle that when I cut it open, my testicle popped out and fell in my hand, hanging from its cord. It was out of its internal sack too, and started to give me stomach cramp pains. I started to panic because I could not push it back in, and I fumbled about for several minutes in pain and finally I pulled my stomach in while breathing — that tends to pull the balls up. Luckily my testicle pulled up into the mutilated scrotum, and I quickly sutured the two sacks back together again.

Martin’s scrotal split reversal

It has healed surprisingly well. You wouldn’t think that my sack was ever split if it wasn’t for the scar along the center.

Then it was time for the hydrogel. I ordered 250ml and have used most of it. I’ve injected it into my shaft under the skin and it’s made my cock very thick, but I’ve also tried injecting it into the scrotum, but it seems to make lumps instead of evening out. It feels like I have three balls… I wasn’t happy with that, so I removed it from the scrotum again.

Were there problems due to the way your skin is attached so tightly?

No big problems — although it was not possible to inject along the bottom of my shaft because it was my closed subincision, so there were no skin pockets under there at all. Along the sides and on the top was loose enough for injecting the gel.

You ordered the Hydrogel from China I guess?

Yes, I did, but recently I have heard of something even better, apparently it’s a filler that’s made up of small spheres, like micro beads. The Hydrogel is good, but I can squeeze it back out if I wanted to — I’d like something that can’t be removed! I find the permanence of a mod so erotic. To get the Hydrogel out all I needed to do was make a hole in the area with a needle and squeeze it out like a tube of tooth paste.

But now you’ve opened your subincision up again?

I’ve always loved the look of subincisions and after repairing mine I was missing having it, so after nearly two years of having it fully repaired I decided to reopen it again. I have since cut it right up to the scrotum, and it’s longer than the original full sub I had by about an inch.

I like the feel of the exposed urethra so much so that I wanted to feel it all the time, rubbing in my pants, but because my sub is more of a deep groove I needed to find a way to open it out flat. I decided to remove a length of shaft skin from along the top of my cock. I cut off a sheet of skin that was about an inch and a half wide by three inches long, and I brought the edges together and sutured it, making my sub underneath open out really tight and flat when soft. I then wrapped my cock tightly in tape and dressings so that erections wouldn’t pull the sutures apart. After about two weeks it was time to test the results. I removed the dressings for the final time and let myself get fully erect — wow, that was rather painful to start with. The sub was so stretched wide open, it was shiny and very tight, and when soft my sub is now totally flat and fully exposed permanently. It feels great in my pants when walking about, but the skin has loosened up a bit since, and now there is no way that I could ever re-repair my sub. It’s now permanently open.

Martin’s top cut

It’s not going to end here. I plan on doing lots more in the future, and my next plan is to re-split my scrotum, because as with my sub after repairing it, I now miss the feel and look of having two balls. Next time I plan on first making a transscrotal big enough to push my cock through. I’m also very seriously thinking about a fully split penis — I would want it split so far back that when hard I’ve got the split starting right at the pubic area.

I can’t wait to hear what happens next. Thanks for sharing your story, and I look forward to talking to you again!

Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Howie (iam:Howie, LunaCobra.net) is one of a handful of controversial cutting edge body modification practitioners both pushing the limits of and defining this subculture’s procedural options as he travels around the word reshaping people with pseudo-surgical sculpture in the name of Art… and Love.

* * *

How did you first get interested in body modification?

I always loved tattoos as a young child, but as far as non-tattoo mods, maybe it started when I went to an all boys boarding school in the snow belt of the USA. We had to wear a tie every day, our hair had to be cut in a certain way, and no ear rings or anything like that were allowed — that is when I started to put holes in my body and did a few cuttings. A lot of the other guys wanted cuttings so I began doing scars in the dorms on the down low… It was not easy as we were always under watch and could not have blades or anything, so I used to make my own cutting tools. It was so jail-style — I think I liked that about it back then — to make art and say a big fuck you to the oppressors.

What name do you like for what you do — “cutter”, “body modification artist”, “practitioner”, or something else?

How about “SUPERARTMAN”… yes, that would be best.

But seriously then — it’s primarily about “art”?

Yes, sir, it is.

I think when I first met you (in 2000?) you were just getting started as an artist… How did you learn your skills, and how have you honed them?

I lived with a family member while he was finishing med school and became friends with a few of his classmates. Before I started to do heavy mods I used to show them photos of things and talk about it with them, and they started to teach me. We used to stitch meat in our kitchen all the time — during many of my first procedures one of them would be in the room with me helping. I would video tape lots of my work and go over it with them or even call them right in the middle of what I was doing to ask advice.

And let’s be honest here — what we as body modification artists do is surgery.

Surgery in a way, yes… but at the same time the motivations and so on are quite different so I can see why people find the term difficult, especially since surgery comes with so many connotations and legal hangups.

TRUE…

I’m still honing my skills all the time, and I have changed how I do some mods even in the past two years — take nipple removals for example. At first I would make normal sutures, but every guy has a different chest — some have tighter skin and some are overweight which can put a lot of pressure on the wound — so now I use a long lasting heavy internal suture for that procedure. I never stop trying to make my artwork better, and continue to review my work with surgeons and learn as much as I can.

For those that don’t know what internal sutures are, do you mind describing them?

There are many different kinds of sutures and they are used in all kinds of ways for different parts of the body. Internal stitches provide a longer hold and are always done only on the inside of the body.

What have you found the general attitude of people in the medical profession is toward heavy mods, and to those who perform those modifications? Would they like to do those procedures, or are they happy to see this gray market that they exist in?

The fact that people not in the medical profession do this sort of work worries most doctors.

As far as if they would want to do these kinds of mods, they don’t think much of it — most if not all would not do it because its not worth much money. Why would they set up a clean room for $200 to $800? It’s just not worth it to them.

If that weren’t an issue, would the world be a better place if the medical industry embraced the legality and legitimacy of atypical procedures?

Hell, I think it would be great if it any of that happened — amazing things could be done if they would — but I’m about 99.9% sure it will never happen.

With a family that includes doctors, do you think there’s a similar internal drive in both you and them, just expressed in different ways, that took you to your respective careers?

Yes. Anyone that has seen me and and them together knows we are almost the same people. We look a bit different but are very close and very alike.

What is the range of procedures you do?

I do all kinds of implants — even some that people have not seen yet *wink* — most anything cut-and-stitch, dermal punches, scalpel piercing, and tongue splits. I do a lot of reconstruction like ear lobes, and removals of things like transdermals and put the skin back to normal. I do a lot of cartilage removal, elf ears — pointing — and lots more!

How does extreme modification — moving into “the unhuman” — change a person, versus tattooing or piercing which tends to be make more of a “decorated human”?

I see heavy mods in a lot of cases as looking more like decoration. Sometimes it can be more, and I love it when it goes farther… It’s like I’m living in a fantasy land.

Your tattoo style seems reminiscent of some of the modern tattoo styles I see coming out of France, but without being “French” if that makes sense… What are you trying to express?

I understand what your saying, but I don’t think it’s like the work out of France… as the work I see like mine from those guys is just so clean… It looks like it has laws. I see my work as letting go — freedom, heart, and mind, smashing together to make something more than art. Just PURE LOVE — that is why I put a heart in most every tattoo I do.

Which are your favorite kinds of body modifications to do?

I’m not sure. It’s all rather the same to me, but my favorite is when I work on someone that is happy both before and after the work.

I do almost anything above the belt, but I only do a few things (like transscrotals) below the belt. The only thing that I can say I dislike about mods is that some people make a connection to sex — I never liked that and try to stay away from mods that could relate to that.

I find that a interesting comment, because I think I’m probably one of the people who sees it as being strongly linked to sex, both in obvious ways (genital mods), and in the larger sense that I believe that most modification is motivated by “mating dance” type behavior (like how male animals seeking out a mate will go out of their way to be very flamboyant or do outrageous dances and so on). I think that the shift from heavy mods out of the sexual arena is definitely something new though, and something that artists such as yourself have been very influential in causing.

I can see and agree with the “mating dance” idea — but any other link to sex is something I don’t want to have anything to do with or even know about.

What do you think motivates people to get modifications?

I cant speak for others, so I will just answer for myself: ART and LOVE.

You are often seen as the “he’ll do anything” guy in terms of pushing the limits of procedures… And I think when people say that, they don’t mean it in an entirely flattering way. How would you respond to accusations that you are not “cautious” enough or don’t have the right “limits”?

Honestly, unless they are a surgeon they don’t know what they are talking about. Who are they to say what the limit is? They just like to talk on the Internet because they like to bitch and be part of gossip. Of course I have limits and there are lots of things I turn down.

Like what?

I get asked for some odd things — many are below the belt and I don’t even want to mention them. I was asked to remove an eyeball, and I would never even think of doing something like that.

I’ve heard people say that artists should play it “safe” and not do procedures that are too “shocking” or high risk because it attracts undue attention from legislators — that is, your actions could cause laws to be put in place that restrict others. Do you think there’s truth to that, or that it’s dishonest and makes concessions that shouldn’t be made?

I don’t think anyone should tell a person what they can or can not do to themselves… that’s fucking crazy. Go hard if that is what you want to do. In relation to the law, every country is different but it’s already illegal to do a lot of this in many parts of the USA… There’s not much we can do about that. It’s never going to be truly legal, so whatever.

I guess the official stance is that part of being a government and a doctor is “protecting people from themselves” which is, for example, why anti-drug laws exist, and why a cosmetic surgeon is often legally and ethically obliged to deny the person an atypical procedure.

Well hey, I’m not going to tell an adult what they can and can not do. If they ask me to do something and they understand what they are getting into, and I can see the ART of it, then I will work with them.

There are a number of firsts that I’d credit you with as a practitioner — the eyeball tattooing, the antitragus removal, and I’m sure others…

Oh, there have been more, *wink, wink*

How does the process of coming up with new procedures work and what does it feel like?

Sometimes I’ll be talking with doctors in my family, or another surgeon about something they did or learned that was new, and it gives me an idea, or starts a spark that ends up as this new modification idea. I might look at a face, or be watching a movie, and see something and apply that visual in my work… but any time I do something new I talk to a surgeon about it.

When I’m doing something new I would not say it’s fun, because I want to see it heal before I can jump for joy and be prideful about it. Then it’s fun, but when I’m in doing something for the first time it’s just scary.

For example, when I removed that big strip of transdermals from Jake’s head that you posted photos of, after I made the peel and did some elevation, pulling it together and knowing I only had forty minutes until we had to drive him to the airport so he could fly home… With the time pressure and a much bigger wound then I have ever had to stitch shut and it was on his head — that was a lot of scary! When I got to see his head again in Las Vegas a few months ago, I was proud and excited to see how well it worked out. People went crazy on me for doing that but it worked very well — he now is even growing hair through most of his scar tissue!

As someone that’s worked all over the world, what are some of your favorite places to work?

I have been to many places all over the world and lived in many of them as well, and from that I can tell you — IT IS ALL THE SAME! Sure, you may have some different food or weather, but all in all, people are people, and it’s all planet Earth.

That being said, I love all islands, and for sure the Pacific islands.

Does traveling internationally complicate your work?

Yes, at first it was a big pain in the ass, but after a while I had tools in most areas of the world I was working or was able to make them in tool shops I knew of in the other areas. It helps that I know a lot of people that have been very kind with me — I could not have done the travel and work I did without them. Sometimes I knew a bit of the country’s language, but other times I needed someone who could translate and help with aftercare.

Is a lot of what you do through a strong word-of-mouth network? How do most people find out about you?

Yes, for sure. In the past few years it’s all word-of-mouth — over 50% of the people I work on are not even on the web in any way, or have not been on any bodymod sites before.

Do you think the extreme mainstreaming of heavy modification is a good thing or a bad thing?

I don’t think about to be honest… it will be what it will be.

With anesthetics being sort of “gray area” in many regions both in terms of applying them and acquiring them, what is your attitude on anesthetic use?

Yes, that is a spicy tomato! Bottom line is that if you do this work and you don’t use anesthetics, you’re doing it half ass. Without something to slow the flow of blood, you can not see the tissue layers properly, so if you want to do it right you use it — I use it at all times.

Ideally, what laws and regulations — if any — would you like to see governing artists such as yourself, both for the protection of the clients and practitioner?

In my view Johnny Law has no place in my ART.

We should talk a little about complications — you’ve had a few procedures go wrong, most notably a pair of very pointy horn implants that rejected, and a set of nipple removals where the client was unhappy with the scarring.

The pointy implants were on Jim, a friend of mine. I wish I’d only done two — going for five was not a good idea… But I think you’re asking why we did it at all, seeing as they were so pointy?

He had been wearing regular domes in his head for some time and didn’t like how they looked and loved the idea of having horns that were pointy — and I agreed. I think it looks amazing to have something pointy in that area. I had the silicone pointy horns and we talked it over for a day or two when I traveled to see him. I think we both loved the idea of how the pointy horns would look so much that we got carried away with it all and went for putting five of them in. In hindsight, if I had only put in two it would have been a great story.

So… we went with five, and after a week or two it went very bad. Two of the five broke the skin — three worked, but since it would have been off-balance to have two on one side and one on the other, three were removed. We pushed the limits of what kind of shape can be done, and that I feel was a success as he still wears two of them. Putting in too many at once was a very bad idea that I wish I could take back. I also wish I could have stayed around longer to monitor it — it’s very hard to travel and do this sort of work. Ideally I would have stayed for at least ten days, but I only stayed for around three days. This all went down a bit over two years ago I think, and I’ve kept in touch with him since. Jim still loves how the two worked out and doesn’t want to take them out.

On the nipple removal, yes, I also blame myself for not taking into account that he had a heavy chest — this puts a lot of pressure on it. Back then I didn’t do internal stitches, but because of that I’ve switched to using both internal and two kinds of external stitches, even with skinny people.

I think maybe people have unrealistic expectations about what nipple removal will do — it’s rare to be left without a scar or to completely eliminate nipple response since it’s not a mastectomy.

Yes, one will always have a scar when this is done. I told this client it would scar, but I did not expect his to scar as badly as it did, and his scarred much more than the previous four pairs I’d done.

I think the main thing about nipple removal is the size of the person — if you carry a lot of weight and have a large chest, or your skin is tight, your scar will be much bigger than a skinny person. His chest was the largest I had worked on, and this was before I started to use internal stitches on them — I wish I would have used them on him. I know if I had we would both be more happy with his scar.

On another nipple removal I did where the person was unhappy with the scar, I later removed the scar in a second procedure and I used two kinds of external stitches and also internal stitches to repair it and they now have a much smaller mark.

I suppose we’re both getting criticized for the eyeball tattooing — I believe a recent quote from a prominent member of this community was “idiotic and disturbing”…?

We all knew what we were getting into that day so they can’t say shit — fuck em! Why do folks gotta be dicks and talk trash stuff they don’t know anything about?

I’m going to start a solid black eye tomorrow!

I do think that people do like to call you out for some reason, whereas it seems like there are other practitioners who can do no wrong…

YES!!!

Because I’ve been traveling internationally for a many years, it’s a numbers game — the more work you do, the more people you meet in other countries, the more people that might not like you… or even hate you. Not only that, but I’m loud, outspoken, and a shit-stirrer, so it all adds up the current mess… but at least it’s only online and not in person.

Do you mind talking about what procedures tend to cost, like ear pointing and implants for example? How do you determine pricing?

The price does change — ear pointing can be anywhere from $200 to $700 US. It all depends on that person’s body and what country I am in at the time, and how much it costs me to be there — and even how I think it will look on them. I often do work for little to no money if that person is short on funds and I think it will look nice on them.

If someone wants work from you, how do they do that, and how do you determine your touring schedule?

They can go to my website — www.lunacobra.net — and contact me through there or just email me [email protected].

Often I just wait till I have a few people in a country till I come over. Now I’d like to have someone in each country that wants to learn to do what I do so I can make each trip about spreading knowledge — it almost seems like a waste to not do it that way at this point in the mod world.

Thanks for talking to us Howie, and good luck on future adventures and art!

Profile: “MAN-JAW”

“I began my surgical facial modifications over a year ago now. It started when I approached Howie on IAM to try some anti-eyebrow domes after being refused by a variety of different international artists.”

“Howie agreed to do the experimental work after a few phone discussions, and we caught up on one of his tours in Australia. From there we have throughly planned out and executed the entire project from start to finish. Now, with over ten facial implants and various other surgical mods I can finally see my conception taking shape.”

“We are living in a new age of mods where we can explore past limitations and into an entirely new level of expression.”

MINI-PORTFOLIO
(Click to Zoom)

Bipedical flap procedure (sort of like a “handle”).

Cheza Marie’s heart-nozed kitten cutting, fresh and about a month into healing.

Silicon outer conch implant.

Ear pointing procedure (featured earlier on ModBlog).

ThEnigma’s “sea monster” ear reshaping project.

Tattooing by Howie.

Howie at work on Manny’s forehead scars.

Triple transdermal forehead implant. This transdermal, like many, later experienced complications and was removed. Note however, that transdermals still experience a much lower complication rate than mainstream procedures such as breast implants!

Transdermal “Horns”.

Heart-shaped outer conch cartilage removal.

Masaai-style anti-tragus removal.

Large scale cartilage removal.

Chris’s “Schlampe” (German for “slut”) skin removal.

The healed results of Jake’s large transdermal strip removal (discussed in the interview and featured on ModBlog here).

Josh’s injection-style eyeball tattoo.

“Fisting Ribs“.

Swirly Wanx Sinatra’s klingon-esque forehead ridges.

Forehead implant removal procedure.

Jim’s pointy horns (see the interview for the story about the problems with these — there were initially five).

Scar reduction on Luka’s nipple removal (which had been done previously).

Before and after of a nipple removal.

Procedural and healing phots of a nipple removal on Chris.

As well as on BME, Howie’s work has been regularly featured on ModBlog.