After being turned on to quality piercing by a dedicated body artist after a series of body piercing and tattoo misadventures as a teen, John Joyce decided to set himself on a career as a piercer. With much hard work — and very long hours — he’s now the owner of Scarab Body Arts in Syracuse, NY, where he’s the head piercer as well as an experienced scarification artist. He’s run his shop and his life with the code his parents raised him with — “anything worth doing is worth doing well” — and he works with a focus on quality materials, quality service, and safety.

BME: Tell me a little about yourself?

I’m thirty years old and grew up just outside of Syracuse, New York. I’m the oldest of three, and had a very normal childhood. We grew up in the country, so most of my childhood was spent making forts in the woods, riding ATVs, or playing hide and seek in the corn fields surrounding our house. My father worked hard, and my mother stayed home to take care of myself, my younger brother, and my younger sister. I did very well in school, was on the wrestling team, and like all kids that grow up in the country I worked hard and partied just as hard. After high school, I went to college briefly for Architecture, and joined the Carpenters Union.

BME: What did you do before you got professionally involved in body modification?

I’ve been working for as long as I can remember. My father is a workaholic. He believes if you want something you should work for it, and you should never have your hand out unless you really need it and have done everything you can for it first, and he instilled that in both myself and my younger brother. When I was a kid, I used to spend summers working on farm in Canada. I learned all about hard work there. They had hundreds of acres in Dacre, Ontario. They milked their cows by hand, and did everything the old fashioned way. When I first started going up there they didn’t even have electricity. I would get up every morning and get on a 3-wheeler and go find the cows with a couple herding dogs, we would bring them back to the barn and that was the start of my day, then it was on to working in the hay, or the pigs, or the chickens, or whatever. They were some very long days, but I loved it. Any free time was spent playing on the lake, sitting around a fire, and just enjoying the outdoors.

When I was about fifteen I started working for a commercial flooring company on weekends or whenever there was a break from school. I started as a laborer, and by the time I was seventeen I was installing floors by myself and sometimes had guys working underneath me. This is when I joined the Carpenters Union. I worked at three different flooring companies by the time I was nineteen and did some warehouse work at one of them. I put a lot of hours in and even though I haven’t been doing it for eleven years, my knees are still a mess from it. I would look at the older guys that had been crawling around on concrete for twenty years, and they could barely stand. I knew I needed to figure something else out.

Since I had been reading blueprints for the last few years while doing floors, and I liked to draw and design things, Architecture seemed like a good thing to go to college for. I did very well in school and liked it quite a bit. There was a lot of creative freedom at first and even though it was a lot of work, it was fun. Then, they took that creative freedom away, and it just became tedious, and soooo much work. My hats off to anyone in an Architecture program at any University.

I had a bunch of other little jobs as well. I worked retail at a store that was a lot like Hot Topic, only before Hot Topic was around, as well as a Halloween store. I also served ice cream at a Friendly’s, and when I was very young I mowed lawns at a cemetery with one of my uncles.

BME: But these days you’re the owner of a tattoo and body modification studio.

Yes, I currently own Scarab Body Arts in Syracuse, NY. I do full body piercings, henna design, scarification, and I am also a NY State Licensed Massage Therapist. People can get in touch with me through the studio email, [email protected], the studio phone number is 315-473-9383, the studio myspace page is http://www.myspace.com/scarabbodyarts, and my IAM page is j_scarab.

Scarab’s reception area and piercing room.

BME: When did you first become aware of body piercing?

I’m not sure when I first became aware of piercings. I was always around people with tattoos — my dad had two, my mom had two or three, and their friends had a couple. Other than ear piercings I never really saw anyone with piercings, and this was before you saw people with piercings every time you turn on the TV. I guess my first exposure to piercing in a broad sense was National Geographic Magazine. I grew up next door to my grandfather Ray — he was a man full of knowledge and stories.

Since this was before every house had at least one computer and was hooked up to the Internet, I did all my research for school papers at his house. He had not one, but three computers, can you believe that, haha? He also had two or three full sets of encyclopedias, and in chronological order he had every issue of National Geographic Magazine. Whenever I was doing research on outer space, or underwater sea life, or whatever, I would run across these pictures of people in Africa with stretched lip piercings, and stretched earlobes. I though it was amazing! I started going to see him every time he got a new issue to see the photos in these magazines. I was intrigued and the first time I saw a septum piercing in one of the photos, I couldn’t help but wonder how it was done, and how I could get one. It still to this day is one of my favorite piercings.

BME: Was that your first piercing?

No, my first piercing was my earlobe. I was probably thirteen or fourteen and had been bugging my mother about getting it done. She finally agreed, but only if I let my uncle do it for me. Since I was the oldest in my family, my uncle was basically my older brother, and I thought he was the coolest dude around. I mean, he introduced me to Pink Floyd The Wall, Led Zeppelin, KISS, Motley Crue, and Mountain Dew — all the good stuff, hahaha! Anyway, how could I turn that offer down? So, to my mother’s surprise, I said yes. My uncle took one of his piercing studs, soaked it in rubbing alcohol, and stuck it through my ear. The whole time my mom was telling me I could back out at anytime. I know it wasn’t the cleanest, safest way to to do it, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. My favorite person in the world was giving me my first piercing, while listening to Led Zeppelin! It was my very own coming of age ritual, and I loved every second of it.

I still hadn’t met anyone with any professional piercings done, and hadn’t seen any, until my parents made the mistake of taking me to get my first tattoo. I started asking for a tattoo on my sixteenth birthday. I didn’t know what I wanted. I just wanted a tattoo — I needed a tattoo. My father had one, my mother had one, and all the adults I looked up to had one, so I thought I should have one too. When I turned seventeen, I got my first tattoo. My parents took me, and my mom got one with me. I had no idea what I wanted, and it was basically a flash shop, so I started looking at the walls. I figured since I was a scorpio, I would get a scorpion. Super original huh? Haha…

Well, I found a flash page that had some scorpions on it and I picked one out. The one I wanted had a rose in its claw, so I told the guy I wanted that scorpion without the rose. He told me “NO.” He said, “that scorpion comes with a rose — if you want one without a rose, pick a different scorpion.”

I was seventeen, maybe 115 pounds, and he was in his forties and probably 250 pounds. I didn’t know any better and man was that guy intimidating. So guess what, I got a scorpion with a rose. Fan-fuckin-tastic!!!! For about six months anyways. Then I hated it. But while I was there, for the first time, I saw a jewelry case full of body jewelry, and I saw a portfolio full of things that I had no idea you could pierce. This got my wheels turning and I couldn’t stop thinking about getting something — anything — pierced. Two weeks later I went back and got my tongue pierced. I asked him about piercing my septum, but he told me I wouldn’t be able to hide it until it was healed so I settled on a tongue. He didn’t ask for ID, he didn’t ask anything actually, just sit down, pierce and done. On the way home, the ball fell off the barbell and I almost lost the piercing. On top of that, it was not pierced straight at all. That was my first professional piercing, and the first of many not so great experiences.

BME: When did you decide you actually wanted to become a piercer?

Once I got my first piercing, I was hooked. I started looking into getting other piercings done. Unfortunately, even though my parents were fine with me getting tattooed, they didn’t understand my desire to get pierced. Out of respect for them, and maybe a little out of fear, I stuck to piercings that were easy to hide. And thus began my journey of bad piercing experience after bad piercing experience. I got my nipple pierced, which turned out to be placed far too deep. I got my tragus pierced, with jewelry that was far too large. On top of that, after the needle was in, the guy left the room to take a phone call before putting the jewelry in. After this I got my nipples repierced, and while one came out perfect, the other side was horribly crooked. I had a Prince Albert piercing done that was far too deep and done with jewelry that was too thin. It ended up tearing and bleeding like crazy. I even had problems when I went to get me lobes pierced at 10 gauge. The guy pierced over the one hole I had and it went well, but the other ear he lost transfer on. He reinserted the 10 gauge needle and lost transfer again! This happened four times before he got the jewelry in. He turned my earlobe into hamburger. There wasn’t a lot of information back then and I went through every studio around. I could go on, but I think you get the point by now. I was always taught that anything worth doing is worth doing well. Obviously the majority of piercers then didn’t grow up with that mentality. It wasn’t like today when you could walk into any number of $20 piercing studios to get that kind of service. I was paying just as much, if not more, than I charge today for piercings, and that is with much lower quality jewelry. I would say I was paying an average of $60 a piercing, sometimes more.

Eventually I was recommended to a new piercer that had just set up a small studio in Syracuse. It took me a while to find, since it was hidden in the very back of a salon with no sign outside. Once I found it, I decided to get my tongue repierced. I was completely amazed at the professionalism of this piercer. his knowledge, his demeanor, and his bedside manner — everything was top notch. I started having him redo all the piercings that I had done from other studios. He showed me a septum retainer and explained that I could start with that to hide it. Finally, I could get my septum pierced — the one piercing I had wanted for sooo long. I became a very loyal client and we became friends. I watched his studio grow into a new location, I watched him bring in a tattoo artist, and I spent as much time as possible in his studio.

One day he mentioned to me that he was thinking about apprenticing someone. I jumped at the chance. He told me that it was very important to him that whoever he brought in knew about the history of modern piercing, and that the person proved themselves. He gave me all kinds of articles and interviews to read. He gave me a copy of Modern Primitives, which I read cover to cover and was completely in awe of the people and the stories in it. He showed me PFIQ, and Body Play magazines. I loved all of it. He introduced me to BME, where I found even more information — I couldn’t get enough. I read about Fakir, Jim Ward and Gauntlet, Keith Alexander, Jon Cobb, Sailor Sid, Doug Malloy, and more… I figured a good way to prove I was serious was to sign up for either the Fakir Intensives in California, or the Gauntlet courses in NYC. I filled out the information for the Gauntlet courses, I booked a room at the Gramercy Park Hotel and I spent a lot of money getting the trip together. I received my Gauntlet handbook, read it cover to cover and couldn’t wait for start date. I took a bus to NYC, found my hotel and decided to walk around and find where the classes were scheduled to take place so I could get there on time first thing in the morning. I was only about a block and a half away, but when I got there the doors were chained shut and it looked abandoned. Being a Sunday I convinced myself that they were just closed on Sundays and all would be fine in the morning. First thing Monday morning, I show up at the address, and it’s still chained up. I waited around for a while and no one else showed up. This was my first time in NYC and I had no idea what the hell I should do. I went back to the hotel, made calls to every number I could find on the paperwork I had. Most of the numbers had been disconnected, but I eventually got a hold of someone. They told me that they were very sorry, and that I must of somehow fallen through the cracks because everyone was supposed to be notified that Gauntlet was no longer in business and the classes were canceled. I asked about getting my money back, and was told that everything was tied up in legal matters and it was just gone.

So here I was, in New York City for the first time, nothing to do, and stressing about all the money I was out. I found as many piercing and tattoo studios as I could and checked them all out. I went to Venus, I went to NY Adorned, I went to some place called East Side Ink (I’m not completely positive that’s right), but at this place I talked to guy named Brian who said he had just left a position at Gauntlet and was very sorry to hear that I got stuck in the middle. I called Shawn, the guy I was hoping would train me and he was also surprised at what had happened but said as soon as I was home, my apprenticeship would start. I guess I proved I was serious about getting into the industry.

I loved every second of my apprenticeship. I was there six, sometimes seven days a week, and on top of that I was working thirty to forty hours a week to pay my bills. I soaked up everything I could, and couldn’t of been happier.

Two of very, very many happy customers.

BME: What did your family think about your decision?

Starting off, my family was apprehensive. My father especially just didn’t understand piercings. That being said, even though he voiced his concern constantly, he was still very supportive. His main concern was stability. He’s a family man and he worries a lot. Not getting a steady paycheck, not having health benefits, and the lack of job security really made him nervous.

Those concerns really bothered him when I started my own studio. Like I said, he worries a lot, and he knows how hard it can be to start a new business. Not having the stability of a paycheck every week, and probably never having health benefits, really made him nervous. But he supported me through all of it. He helped me with build-out of the new studio, he bought me lunch when I couldn’t afford it, and stood by my side through all the tough spots. I really can’t thank him enough. Now that my studio has been open for a while, he’s very proud. I took a chance, I worked my ass off, and I pulled it off.

BME: Now that you’re on your own, how do you continue improving your skills?

I’m always improving my skills as a piercer. I’ve been doing this for almost eleven years now and I still change how I do things. There is always someone better out there and you can always strive to be better. New techniques, new tools, new products, there is always something new to learn. I remember the first time I talked to Tom Brazda online. I had already been piercing for years at this point, but in one conversation he opened up so much too me. It made me realize how much more there was to piercing. That guy is a piercing nerd — he is so knowledgeable, so open, and so willing to share. There are so many people out there like that. They know so much and are so willing to help other piercers. I think that is why so many of us “old timers” are looked down upon for our view of the new breed of piercers. When I first started peircing I talked to everyone I could to gain information, and there are so many people now who are completely willing to share that info — Tom Brazda, Ron Garza, Brian Decker, Dave Gilstrap, Pat Tidwell, Brain Skelle, myself… The list is endless, but the newer breed of piercer doesn’t seem to care. They don’t look for that information before they try something new — they just jump in. The information is so much easier to get now, and they just don’t seem to care as much. The learning forum on IAM is a great example.

BME: Are you an APP member?

Oh the APP… where to begin…

I am not a member but I love the APP. That being said, I think whether you are an APP member or not, if you are a piercer you should make every effort possible to attend the APP conference. I spent years piercing in an area where I was the only one using implant grade internally threaded jewelry, and practicing proper aseptic technique. It was amazing going to the conference and being surrounded by piercers with the same ethics. I learned a lot, not just in the classes, but in the discussions that happened throughout the week, over food or over a beer. I made some great contacts, and great friends.

Relaxing at the APP convention.

BME: What secondary education do you have on top of your apprenticeship?

I keep my CPR, first aid, and bloodborne pathogens certificates up to date. On top of that, in 2006 I enrolled at the Onondaga School of Therapeutic Massage. I took Anatomy & Physiology, Pathology, Myology, and so on… We talked a lot about how the body heals, and it really went hand in hand with my piercing back ground. I graduated in December 2006 with the Salutatorian award. I would have had valedictorian but they dropped a couple points off my grade point average for missing time to go to the APP conference and for Scar Wars in LA. Going through massage school really got me excited again about learning new things. I also take classes yearly at the Association of Professional Piercers conference.

BME: Do you see piercing as an artform or as a craft?

I think piercing is more of a craft, at least on the technical side of it. But to be a good piercer you need to be able to put an artistic spin on it. You need to be able to look at someone’s face and be able to see if that Monroe piercing is going to look good where you have your mark, or maybe a millimeter or two to the side. Anybody can learn the skills to run a needle through someone and put jewelry in, but a good piercer takes placement and angles, and everything else into consideration to make it look as good as it possibly can.

BME: Do you think they’ll ever make a reality TV show about piercing? You could star on “Syracuse Steel” or something?

Oh man, I hope not. Who knows though — I never would of guessed that there would be shows like Miami Ink, or LA Ink, or London Ink, or Wherever else Ink. I don’t know about a show just on piercing, but I think sooner or later instead of just tattoo studios, there will be studios that offer both tattoos and piercing on these shows. Piercers meet some interesting people so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. In fact, one of the artists that work with me, Mike Haines, has been saying for years now that they need to do a show on a whole studio environment. He started saying that back when American Chopper first started and the bike shows were just coming out — this was before Miami Ink and all those.

I’ve had so many great clients over the past decade. I had a woman who had been in the studio with her partner a few times and eventually asked me to pierce her as well. It was a very emotional piercing not only for her, but for me as well. She had been abused as a child, and since then had never had a male touch her or look at her without clothes on. Even her doctors were female. Watching me work with her partner eventually made her comfortable enough to ask me to work on her. We did a Christina piercing — there were many tears shed, but there were also many smiles and hugs when it was all over. It was great to be a part of her self discovery, her growth, and her reclaiming of a part of her.

I once had a 68 year old man come in for a Prince Albert after his wife died. He had always wanted one but his wife just didn’t understand. Out of respect for her, he never got it done. Once she passed away, he decided it was time. First and only piercing he had ever had, and he did fantastic. Smiled through the whole thing.

I also had a woman that was in her seventies. She had never had a piercing before and had always worn clip on earrings. Every year for Christmas and other holidays people would buy her all kinds of nice earrings, because they had no idea her ears weren’t really pierced. She decided it was time to wear some of those, so she came in. Even though it was just a set of 18 gauge earlobes, she was so happy and excited. She came in a couple times after that showing me some of the jewelry she had never been able to wear in the past, now in her ears.

I just recently had a couple come in for their 25th wedding anniversary. For their first piercings ever, she got a vertical hood and he got a scrotum piercing. It was great — they were a lot of fun, happy, and everyone left with smiles.

One of my absolute favorite clients is a guy named Aaron. He originally came to me about his ears. He had two stretched lobe piercings in both ears, and the skin between them was dieing due to poor circulation. I scalpelled the holes into one larger hole. He had a bunch of piercings done at other studios in the past and had problems with most of them. He was surprised at how easily everything healed up after I worked on him and he became a very loyal client. I have since done a number of procedures on him, including a bunch of piercings, dermal punches, and a lip scalpelling. He now wears a 9/16” labret plug in his lip. He was amazed at the difference the higher quality jewelry made and has had no problems with any of his piercings since having them done at my studio.

I really like being apart of people’s lives like that. So many people get piercings to mark an occasion, whether it’s a birthday, an anniversary, a new job, whatever, but it’s always a positive thing and it’s great to share that with people.

Star surface piercing projects.

BME: Do you have a favorite piercing to do?

I’ve been doing this a long time now, and at this point I don’t really have a favorite piercing to do. It’s more about the person now. I like working on people and making people happy. If the client was fun and we had a good time doing the piercing then that is what it’s all about now. It amazes me how many people come in to get a piercing or a tattoo for that matter, and are a complete asshole. I just don’t get it.

That being said, I still love septum piercings. I also really like philtrum piercings [central upper lip piercings], and my new favorite has to be high nostrils. I absolutely love the look of high nostrils.

BME: Do you have a least favorite?

If the person is an ass, then I’m not going to enjoy working on them very much. I really don’t mind doing any piercing but for me the least favorite piercings in general are tongue web piercings and upper lip frenulums — I just don’t like them.

BME: Which do you find the most technically challenging?

It’s hard to say. Everyone is built so differently; a piercing that is very easy on one person can be a complete pain on the next. Every piercing is going to be different, and as soon as you think you’ve seen every possible shape of a navel, a hood, an ear, or whatever, someone will come in with something completely new. I mean, try lining up a pair of nostrils on someone who broke their nose three or four times, or finding the perfect spot for a surface piercing where there is limited movement — it’s great! I like the challenge, it keeps me sharp, and keeps me growing as a piercer.

BME: Is this a career that you’d recommend to others?

I absolutely would recommend piercing as a career. But, you got to love piercing, and I mean really love it. The cool factor wears off, there isn’t a lot of money in it, the hours are usually long, and it’s not always a glamorous job. A lot of piercers work another job, especially during the slow season. I’ve been working at least six and usually seven days a week for most of the last ten years. I remember a year or two after I opened up, I took what I made, figured out the hours that I worked, and it worked out to $2.68 an hour. It’s really just the last two years that I’ve made even a decent amount of money, and it’s not a lot by any means, especially once you factor in the hours. So yeah, you have got to love it, because you’re not going to get rich being a piercer.

BME: Having gone through an apprenticeship yourself, have you apprenticed anyone?

I get people asking for apprenticeships a couple times a week. For the longest time I had no desire to apprentice anyone. I just didn’t see the work ethic, or the determination in the people asking that I had. I finally decided that I needed to bring someone in. He was someone I had pierced a few times, seemed really interested, and very eager. He reminded me a lot of myself when I first got into the industry. I explained he wouldn’t be making any money at all for about a year, and he wouldn’t be piercing anyone for at least six months. I explained the long hours he would be putting in between being at the studio plus working outside of the studio to pay his bills. Everything went really well, he was right on schedule with everything I had planned out, and we got along very well. He really seemed to fit in with the studio. I brought him to Vegas with me for the APP conference, introduced him to people that I had looked up to for years, we took classes together, it was great .Then about eight months in, he started slacking. After about a week of that, he just didn’t show up. People don’t realize that this isn’t an over night process, and it seems cool at first, but it’s a long road, and it’s not always fun, it’s not always exciting, and people just get impatient. I was very surprised when he stopped coming in — it caught me completely off guard. I guess somewhere in there he decided he wanted to be a tattoo artist instead, and piercing just wasn’t in him. I wish he had just talked to me about it, but he decided to just bail.

I waited a little over a year before I even thought about bringing in another apprentice. I had all kinds of offers, but I was really let down, and just didn’t want to deal with it. I recently brought in a new girl, Shelly. I’ve wanted a female piercer here for a long time. She was someone I had done a bunch of work on, proved that she was serious about piercing, took care of her piercings, and was always respectful and nice when she was in the studio. It always amazes me when people that don’t take care of their piercings, or who come in with an attitude ask me to apprentice them. Shelly just started her training in November, so she has a long ways to go still, but so far things are working out very well.

BME: I assume you’re in this for the long haul?

Man, I hope so! I just recently turned thirty and just had my ten year anniversary in this industry. That means a third of my life has been devoted to being the best piercer I can be. I still love piercing, and have no intention of quitting. I do however want to change my focus a little. I can’t keep working seven days a week — it’s just not healthy. Once Shelly is done with her apprenticeship, I’m hoping I can take some more time and devote it to doing massage therapy. I have a separate space for that now, but most of my time is still taken up by piercing. There are so many different modalities and techniques that it’s opening up a whole new area of research and training that I want to do. So, I’ll probably still be working seven days a week, hahaha…

John getting tattooed.

BME: It seems like a lot of piercers seem to “burn out” after a decade and leave the industry… Why do you think that is?

I’ve noticed the same thing, and it’s something I worried about as I approached the ten year mark. Shawn, who I apprenticed under lasted about ten years in this industry and then basically walked away. For him, I think most of the stresses that pushed him out of piercing were from owning a business, not so much from piercing itself. That is something that I can definitely relate to now that I own my own studio. I love piercing, no matter how stressed I am, or what I’m stressed about — piercing actually calms me. The stresses from owning a business on the other hand just pile up. It’s a very up and down road, and you have to be able to look at the big picture and not focus on things on a daily or even weekly basis. If you can’t, you’ll drive yourself crazy. I think the biggest thing that most piercers end up walking away from is the seeming lack of responsibility from clients and from other piercers. It’s frustrating when you are doing everything you can to ensure the highest quality, safest, experience possible and all the client cares about is saving $5 somewhere else. The majority of piercers out there are clueless — they don’t know what type of metal they are using, or why they should be using something else, and they aren’t up to date with aftercare methods, and they have no idea what aseptic technique is. $20 or $30 piercing shops are popping up all over the place. There is no way you can offer a piercing at that price with high quality jewelry and be doing everything properly. It just isn’t possible. It gets very frustrating at times when you are doing everything you can to do things the right way and to educate the public, working longs hours for little pay, and it goes unappreciated. There have definitely been times when I’ve been at the point where I’ve been ready to just throw in the towel and go back to installing floors, or doing anything. But then I get one of my regulars walking into the studio and I remember why I love doing what I do.

BME: So that’s what keeps you coming back 🙂

I make people happy. People leave smiling and excited, and wanting to give me a hug because I pierced them. It’s a great feeling. Sure there are the asses that just want to save $5 and are rude, and don’t care about their safety, but fortunately, I have some of the most loyal clients around and they make it all worth while.

BME: Do you get many “weird” clients?

You know, I don’t meet nearly as many “weird clients” now as I did when I first got into this industry. But, I’m just going to change that from “weird”, to “interesting” — that sounds much better. When I first started piercing, there was still a huge percentage of slave-and-master and leather daddy clientèle coming into the studio. I still get some now, but not nearly as much. It opened my eyes very early on to how diverse people were and I loved it. I met so many different types of people. I’m not gonna lie — I kind of miss those days. It made the job a lot more interesting when I was doing a couple scrotum ladders a week, or large gauge PAs, or whatever, compared to now, when it’s just nostril after nostril.

One story comes to mind right away though, and I don’t know how many people can ever say they experienced this, so I feel pretty special, hahaha…

This was years ago, but we had a regular that was full of stories. He had been castrated, had a urethral reroute, had male breast implants, two inch earlobes (which were very very uncommon at the time), and so on… He still had a fully functional penis, and right below that where his scrotum used to be, he had an opening for a urethral reroute, and just below that he had a vagina made. He had a conversation with the owner of the shop about his procedures and offered to show him. They called me into the room, where I watched this man jerk off with one hand, insert a metal sound into his vagina with the other hand, and ejaculate out of his urethra relocation. Now that is Amazing Stuff!

BME: Oh — yes — he’s great! I know exactly who you mean (this individual is also featured in the ModCon book). We’ve already talked about this a little, but what do you think is it that makes you — or anyone — a good piercer?

I think a good piercer is someone who knows their limits. Knows when they need to do more research and knows when to say no. So often I see piercings done on people whose anatomy just doesn’t allow for that particular piercing. A good piercer needs to know more than just how to push a needle through the skin — anyone can do that. They need to practice and understand aseptic technique. I’ve seen piercers change gloves at the weirdest points during a procedure. The don’t understand when or why they should be changing gloves — they just know they are supposed to change their gloves at some point. A good piercer needs to know what they are putting in people. So many piercers have no idea what type of steel they are using. They don’t know the difference between “316L”, “316LVM”, or why they should be using “316LVM F-138”. A good piercer understands how the body heals and understands the aftercare they recommend, and knows how to troubleshoot if there is a problem. A good piercer is confident, but not arrogant. Most importantly, a good piercer is always learning.

BME: We talked about some of your oldest clients, but what have your youngest been? What’s your policy and feeling on age requirements?

The youngest person I have pierced was five — it was a set of earlobes. My insurance company has since changed their policy and I am now no longer allowed to pierce anyone under the age of fifteen.

It’s really hard to say, “at such and such an age, you are responsible enough to care for a body piercing.”

Everyone is so different that it just doesn’t work that way. I’ve had thirty year olds come in and act like complete asses. They don’t listen to me when I go over after care, they act very immature, and I can’t get them to stop text messaging long enough for me to go over anything with them. All they want to know is, is it gonna hurt, is it , is it, is it?? A couple weeks later they call back or stop in complaining that it’s not healing, and when I ask them a few questions, I find out they are doing everything the exact opposite of what I told them. Then I’ve had fourteen year olds come in, ask what the jewelry options were, ask me about sea salt soaks before I even mention it, ask about retainer options, and other jewelry once it’s healed, and a bunch of other good questions. Questions that show that they have done some research and are completely ready for the piercing and they heal with no problem at all.

Large scale skin removal: grasshoppers mating, done in two sessions.

BME: On a technical level, what range of tools do you use to penetrate the skin?

I use needles, scalpels, and dermal punches — it really depends on the situation. In my opinion, it’s a matter of the right tool for the job. A 5mm dermal punched cartilage piercing is going to heal a lot easier than a 4 gauge needled piercing. I know this from experience because my conches were pierced with 4 gauge needles and immediately stretched to 2 gauge about eight years ago. Not only did this completely suck balls, but the healing took forever and was very problematic. I also have been using punches for all my surface work for a couple years now. I have found the punch and taper method to work far better for me. I know a few piercers who have great results with a needle, but for me the punch and taper technique has drastically improved the success rate of surface piercings that I have done. Anatometal’s new flat surface bars don’t hurt either [hey, Barry, maybe I can get some free ones for the plug, hahaha?].

I’m not a fan of using dermal punches on soft tissue like earlobes. I think in that instance, you want to leave as much tissue as possible for future stretching, so a scalpel is better off. Like I said, it’s the all about the right tool for the job, and a proper understanding of how to use that tool.

BME: What do you think of ear scalpelling?

I do quite a bit of ear scalpelling. Most of the time it’s to redirect the piercing. An example that comes to mind is on one the tattoo artists that work with me, Rick. He had his ears stretched to 1/2” from regular gunned piercings. They were drastically uneven — one was very far forward and one was very far back. I scalpelled them up to 3/4”, cutting one side only in the front and one side only in the back. It evened them out very nicely and he is now at 1 3/8”.

BME: How do you draw the line of what you will and won’t do?

If I think it has a good chance of healing, and not cause any problems, I’ll do it. I’m not into shock value and doing piercings just to get the photo, knowing they’ll probably be taking the piercing out in a couple days or weeks. Under the collar bone piercings completely freak me out. They go so deep into the body cavity and in some people there is a chance of hitting lung tissue. Most people don’t realize how far up your lungs actually go! Eyelid piercings just seem like a bad idea — I mean, come on!

It’s not that I don’t think people should be able to get these things done. I absolutely think they should be able to, but I’m not comfortable doing it. There is too much liability involved and if something goes wrong, even if it’s months later, that person could very easily come back after me. I love seeing people push the boundaries when it’s done safely, and the research has been done first, and the parties involved take full responsibility for their actions. I’m not just talking about whoever does the work, but also the person who gets the work. I’m reminded of two recent ModBlog posts. One was the 1/2” or whatever it was Achilles piercing, and the other is the implant gone wrong on the girls leg. That Achilles piercing was very impressive, and I absolutely loved it. I know a lot of piercers gave you a lot of shit for posting it, but I’m very happy you posted it. I love seeing what the human body can pull off, what can be done to it, and how far it can be pushed. That being said, I’m not going to pierce anybody’s Achilles, I can promise you that! The girl with leg implant is a great example of the client taking responsibility for her actions. Things can and do go wrong, and everybody was ready to jump on the practitioner and wanted him called out. She wanted an implant in her leg, she took the time to seek out a practitioner, she knew the risks, and unfortunately it didn’t work. She understood all of that before hand, and when it didn’t work, she didn’t get all pissed off and want this practitioner’s head on a stick. Even though it got pretty bad for her, she took responsibility for her choices. If the practitioner did something wrong, and was negligent in any way, and she could prove it, then sure, go after him. What people need to understand is sometimes things just go wrong, it’s not anybody’s fault — they just do. When that happens, you need to do exactly what this girl did, and just call it a loss, deal with the consequences, and move on.

Sometimes shit happens, and it doesn’t mean you get to sue somebody or are entitled to anything. We’re pushing limits here, and there are risks with those limits, know them beforehand and be willing to take them, for better or for worse.

Fresh and well-healed scarification by John Joyce.

BME: Over the ten years you’ve been in this industry, how has the public attitude toward piercing changed?

Piercings are definitely becoming more common and more acceptable. Sure it can still be a hard to get a job with a lot of facial piercings or 1 inch earlobes, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than it was ten or even five years ago. I’m getting a lot more people in their thirties and forties who work in office settings getting nostril piercings. I still hear people complain all the time about how they don’t get treated with respect because of their piercings. While I’m sure there are times when that is true, I think a lot of it is also in how you carry yourself and how you present yourself. Ten years ago I had a lot of visible piercings, far more than I do now. This was definitely not the norm back then, and I never felt like I was being treated poorly. I treated people with respect, and they gave it back to me. If you act like a punk kid, then you’ll be treated like one, whether you have piercings or not.

BME: Are you still getting piercings yourself?

I have settled down a lot with my piercings. Many have been retired, but I still have quite a few. There are a few things I still want to do, my high nostrils being one of them. Unfortunately, I do not have a lot of faith in the majority of piercers around here. This means I either travel the four and a half hours to a piercer I trust, like did for my 4 gauge nostrils, or I wait until I’m done training Shelly. What could be a better test for an apprentice than to pierce the one who trained her?

BME: Finally, is piercing a trend?

Well, when I started my apprentice just under eleven years ago, my grandmother told me that piercing was just a trend, a fad, and then what was I going to do? When I opened my studio, just over six years ago, she told me the same thing — she still loaned me money to get started though. So, is piercing a trend? Sure, just like tattoos is a trend — a couple thousand year old trend!

John cutting at the ScarWars convention.

BME: A lot of piercers seem to move into scarification and implants in their later careers, yourself included.

I’ve been performing scarification, both cutting and branding for about six and a half years. It’s just within the last three years that I’ve really become comfortable with my cutting skills, especially removal. I really love doing scarification pieces, and while I don’t get to do it as often as I would like, I’ve been fortunate enough to do some great pieces on some great people. Shawn, the guy that apprenticed me for piercing had taken the Branding Intensives offered by Fakir. He actually did quite a few brandings and I learned a lot from him. Implants are something that I was very interested in for a while. I got into them a little, got a lot of info, and performed a couple on close friends. The few that I did healed up very well, and are still in to this day, but doing them stressed me out tremendously. I still perform genital beading, but for now I’m not really interested in doing transdermal or subdermal implants.

BME: Tell me about how you became proficient in doing scarification?

Shawn taught me quite a bit and I eventually started doing some brandings under his supervision. He eventually started doing cuttings on some of his clients. This, he didn’t master quite as well as branding, and even though he wasn’t what I would call a good cutting practitioner, I still learned a lot from watching him. Eventually, one of the girls he had worked on asked me to redo a piece he had done on her.

I ended up doing a few pieces on her, simple line work and geometric stuff. For a long time that was all I did. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to try new techniques on. She was very open and took the process like a champ. I tried different blades on her, found what worked best, and slowly started doing more intricate pieces. For the first couple years, all I did was single line work — no removal, and mostly geometric shapes. I constantly checked portfolios of artists I respected, and I still do. People like Ron Garza, Blair, Steve Haworth, and Lukas Zpira. Later I learned about Ryan Ouellete, Brian Decker, Wayde Dunn, Jessie Villemaire, Dave Gillstrap, and so on. These guys were doing amazing work, and some of us were learning around the same time so we were all growing together. I asked questions about blade types, about aftercare; I asked anything I could think of. Shawn Porter started the Scarification Forum and I asked if I could participate. This was a great place to get info and share photos, and get critiqued. I was invited to work at Scar Wars I [scarwars.net] in Philly, and unfortunately I had to back out because I had just started massage school, but I didn’t pass up the opportunity to go to Scar Wars II in LA. I did a few pieces there, including a collaboration with Brian Decker. It was great watching everyone work, and I learned a lot. I did quite a few pieces at this years Scar Wars III in Philly, including another collaboration with Brian, and I got to work alongside Wayde.

Collaborating with Brian Decker on a cutting.

Something I was really surprised about at this past Scar Wars III in Philly was the lack of learning artists in attendance. There are so many people in the Scarification Learning forum, and there are even more people offering scarification that have a long way to go. I can’t stress enough how much knowledge there is to be gained at an event like that. It’s an opportunity to watch the best of the best of the best work, and pick their brains. It’s an unbelievable opportunity, and I think it is really foolish to miss it. It goes back to what I was saying about some of the new piercers. It seems like the easier the information is get get, the less people want to take advantage of it!

BME: What types of scarification do you do?

I do strike and cautery branding, as well as single line cutting, removal, and just started with some of the cross hatch shading technique. That is something I’m still experimenting with. I do far more scarification by cutting than I do by branding though.

BME: I know you have Architecture experience, but what’s your artistic background and what is your design process?

I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. In high school I spent a lot of time in the art room, even though I wasn’t enrolled in art classes. One of the instructors was even convinced I was one of his students. I started taking design classes my junior year in high school, and then enrolled in Architecture courses in college, so most of my formal training has been more in design than art. I’ve always been surrounded by artists though. Growing up, my uncle who was an amazing artist. He did a lot of pen and ink, and some three dimentional sculptures. I spent a lot of time with him and tried to emulate his work. Once in high school, most of my friends were art majors, which is why I spent so much time in the art room. And of course for the last ten years, I’ve been working side by side with different tattoo artists.

My process for coming up with design for scarification is very similar to a tattoo artist. I do a consultation with the client, take some notes, and talk size and placement. Then I use all sorts of reference material and do some sketches. I always try to keep placement and body movement in mind, so I can place the piece so that it works and flows with the body. Sometimes, I’ll have one of the tattoo artists give me a hand with a design, and we all kind of work together.

Cutting with skin removal, fresh and healed.

BME: Is your scarification clientèle at all different from your piercing clientèle? Is it something you offer commercially?

The clientèle really isn’t any different. Most of the people I have done scarification on were originally my piercing clients. I do far more scarification on woman than I do on men, but that’s true of piercing as well. For a long time I just offered it to people I knew, but now I offer it commercially. It’s not a huge percentage of my income, and in fact, If I stopped doing scarification all together it wouldn’t really affect my yearly income. More and more people are asking about it, so hopefully that will change.

BME: What does the future hold for scarification in your opinion?

I don’t think it’ll ever be common enough for me to do it exclusively, at least not during my career, but I do think it’ll become more common. In the past it was mainly just people who worked in the industry, or who were pretty close to someone in the industry that got scarification done. At this point I’ve worked on a very wide range of clients. I did a branding on a guy’s shoulder who was in his mid thirties and who drove from Connecticut to get it done. He was very conservative looking guy, and his only real concern was if it would affect his golf swing. I’ve worked on a girl who had some existing scars she wasn’t happy with, and wanted to make it a more positive thing. I’ve worked on people who weren’t comfortable getting tattoos because the thought of a foreign substance being put in their skin made them uncomfortable. Scarification has come a long way since I started doing it. The work being done now has so much more detail in it than it did back then. Especially now with the new shading technique pioneered by Dave Gilstrap, which Wayde Dunn has really ran with as well. It’s making scarification more appealing to a wider range of people.

BME: Thanks for taking to us about all this!

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