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BME Newsfeed for Feb 8, 2006

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BME Newsfeed for Oct 31, 2005

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SPIRIT+FLESH: THE ENERGY PULL (PART 1) – Fakir Rants & Raves

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Spirit+Flesh: The Energy Pull:
Part I

   
Special Announcements

NEW WEB SITE AT FAKIR.ORG
Now up after several years of construction, Fakir is very proud of his brand new web site with lots more information and many color pictures of Fakir schools and Spirit+Flesh workshops. For Body Piercing, Branding and Rituals CLICK HERE.

DANCES DVD AVAILABLE AFTER 20 YEARS IN THE DARK
For many years bodymod and piercing fans have asked for copies of this classic film first released in 1986. Now Dances Sacred & Profane is back in circulation as a fantastic DVD REDUX with bonus material. See Fakir and Jim Ward doing the Sun Dance and O-Kee-Pa suspension ritual in Wyoming. For more information, video clips and orders CLICK HERE.

MODIFY: A NEW MOVIE WITH FAKIR & LOTS OF BME FAVORITES

Just off the editing machine, an official selection for screening at the TRIBECA Film Festival in NYC in April 2005, this new full length documentary walks a twisted path. Produced over the last two years by Committed Films LLC, this movie is destined for the mainstream. It’s a “must see” for BME fans. For more information, video clips and national showings CLICK HERE.



Fakir’s Spirit+Flesh group energy pull and ritual
in Minneapolis, June 2004.

So What’s an Energy Pull?

I first experienced the “energy pull” when I was only about twelve years old (way back in 1942). Being the weird kid that I was, I had already discovered I could pierce needles and pins through my body with impunity — that I could get into a head space where I was a mere witness to cold steel passing through my flesh. In this state of mind I was removed from physical sensation, what the rest of the world called “pain”. But after I had pierced myself, there was no further sensation. Only a static needle stuck through me. It did not hurt. I couldn’t feel it. It was just there.

So wanting to expand my emotional experience, I soon learned to tie a small string around the needle and pull on it. I could pull gently and gradually increase the tension. I was in control of how fast and how much sensation I was receiving. Soon I learned to tie the string to a hook in the wall and pull back against it. I loved doing this and it became a regular practice for me. Every time I did this, I experienced a sweet rush of energy. At this time in my early life, I didn’t analyze what I was doing or try to rationalize it. I just enjoyed it.

In my teens, I lived in libraries (there was no internet for another forty years) and I devoured books. I was very curious to know more about the practice of piercing and pulling. I didn’t take long before I found out that what I was experiencing in my secret basement hideaway was not unique. Piercing and pulling was, in fact, a very ancient and honored practice in several cultures. I learned that in Savite Hindu Culture, they had been doing this kind of body ritual for at least 3,000 years. For them it was a technique for trancing, going beyond the body, leaving the body and allowing the body to be temporarily possessed by higher spirits and archetypes (like Murugan, Lord of Piercing). It was not a display of strength or macho or stoicism or an entertainment. It was the seeking of “a state of grace”.

Even closer to home for me (because I grew up on Indian lands in South Dakota only a few miles from Indian ritual grounds) was the Native American pierce-and-pull ritual called the “Sun Dance”. I didn’t need to study books to learn more about that practice! I had some first hand access to the stories and tales of Native American elders in my own community. I listened to them in the flicker of kerosene lamps as they talked in hushed tones about the glories of the “old days” when Sun Dance was the way to the Great White Spirit. Of course when I was a boy, the ritual had long been made illegal for Native Americans and they could be put in prison if caught secretly doing a Sun Dance. My heart ached for them to be denied the practice of one of their most sacred rites! I guess so far we Modern Primitives are very lucky that what we do has not been made, in most cases, a prisionable offense!

“It’s not how hard you pull, but how long…”

That phrase was a mantra used by Ogallala Sioux medicine men when they were instructing young men before doing a Sun Dance. What most contemporary hook pullers do not seem to understand about this practice is the complex interaction between body and spirit. When one does an “energy pull”, one is manipulating and rearranging the connections between body and spirit. Sure there are physical and chemical changes like the release of the body’s natural opiates, the endorphins. But there is more to it than that. At first there is the sweet rush, euphoria. Some of you know how that feels. But if the pull is prolonged, in concert with strong shamanic intent, there can also be intense visions, healing, travels to unseen worlds, going to core and touching the void. A few of you may have even gotten there. It is not about “trucking” or “tugs of war”.

Since the revival of the Sun Dance in modern times (starting in the 1970s), many of the Native American elders who direct the energy pull called the Sun Dance have noticed and bitterly commented on the conflict they see in some young dancers between traditional Native and Western European values. Western culture, with its focus on competition and individuality, clashes with traditional values of surrender, patience, group energy and letting go of ego. In some recent Sun Dances, young dancers were seen to compete with each other about how hard they could pull, how fast they could break free, how quickly they could be done with the dance. In the old days, a Sun Dance was frequently arranged so whatever the dancer was tethered to could only bend and resist the pulling. Breaking free of the piercing(s) was made impossible. The length of time one could pull against piercings was the truest measure of worth and devotion — and a great way to reach unseen worlds.




Left: 1830’s George Catlin drawing: prolonged energy pull by Ogalala Sioux against a springy sapling. Right: Fakir does three-hour energy pull during 1982 Wyoming Sun Dance and O-Kee-Pa ceremonies seen in the Dances DVD.

Any meaningful energy pull is not about pain, macho, testosterone or stoicism. It is rather a way of slowly increasing and prolonging the tension until one enters an altered state. In traditional Native American Sun Dances, pulling on piercings was not minutes or even hours, but often days. I personally know several recent Sun Dance pledgers who were pierced and pulled for four days! In Penang Malaysia I saw devotees who pulled on their multiple back hooks from five in the morning till eight at night — 15 hours! In my own experience (see the Dances Sacred & Profane DVD) Jim Ward and I pulled for some three hours before opting to break free. As the Ogalala medicine man said, “It’s not how hard you pull, but how long”. That is what makes the difference between a momentary thrill and a truly memorable and life transforming experience.




Tamil Hindus do day-long energy pulls from multiple hooks. Photos taken by Fakir during the 1995 Thaipusam Festival in Penang, Malaysia.

Opening Fourth Chakras

This brings me to the chapter in my life that began about 1987. Until that time, it was inconceivable to me that anyone else, except Jim Ward, might want to try what I was doing. My first volunteer was my life partner, Cleo. She had lost many friends and lovers in the AIDS epidemic that had begun in the early 1980s. She was filled with grief and heart-centered pain. So at her request, I made a ritual out of piercing her upper chest and back — then attaching balls to tug and pull with every movement. She danced for hours up and down a dusty path on a hillside in Northern California. On each side of the path we had placed stakes with photos of sick fiends, dying friends and those who had passed beyond the veil. She cried. I cried. And we both felt a release of heart-centered pain and grief at the end of the afternoon. I called that ritual a “Ball Dance”. It was then I began to realize the therapeutic effect of tugging and pulling on piercings, especially in the fourth (heart) chakra.

Over the following years, we repeated our piercing rituals and introduced them to many others in the subculture. In 1990, a group of us “ball dancers” got ridiculed and laughed at during the first gathering of Black Leather Wings. Some of the Leather Daddies present dismissed our ritual as a silly and trivial event. A few years later, we met with greater acceptance in Dallas, Texas where Allen Falkner hosted a large “Ball Dance” event that even got mentioned in the newspapers.

During the 1990s, I started experimenting with hooks in the chest (fourth chakra) instead of lighter piercings with attached balls or limes. I found them far more effective in opening the fourth chakra and releasing “stuck” energy. So beginning in 1996, I introduced the “hook pull” to various groups of seekers in the subculture.




Group energy pulls during day-long BLW rituals in Northern California, 2003/2004

Over the next nine years, the practice of pulling on flesh hooks spread from my first groups of only five or six people to the large number of hook pullers you can now see in the photos posted on BME. However, there is a difference between the hook pullers you see in photos on my Spirit + Flesh web site, and I suspect, most of those in the BME photos. In our shamanically-directed hook pulls we are very conscious of chakras — those important energy centers related to the body that open, close, and change energy flow in both our psychic and physical world. Of all the chakras, the fourth one, the heart chakra, is the most screwed up in our culture. It is the gateway from lower consciousness (survival, self, base emotions) to higher consciousness (love, clear mental activity, inclusiveness, selflessness). If it is blocked and full of crap, we live in world of confusion and misery. We live primarily as victims and make bad decisions. Read some writings of Caroline Myss for more on this. Actually, I wish we could compel our U.S. politicians (especially you-know-who) to participate in a shamanic hook pull and then send them to Caroline Myss.

With this insight, and what I feel was a strong nudge from my Patron Saint Lord Murugan (Hindu Lord of piercing and opening up), we have been doing public Sprit + Flesh Workshops & Rituals for about five years now — with repeat rituals in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Phoenix and Minneapolis. My partner and I consider these workshops and rituals a humane and needed service more than a vocation. Obviously, we still focus on opening the fourth chakra, and sometimes chakras above number four. But I don’t see much point in doing knee or elbow pulls because there are no chakras there to open, close or manipulate.





Trance states and the opening of heart chakras was the intent and purpose of group energy pulls in this 2004 Minneapolis Spirit+Flesh ritual. See my web site at fakir.org for participant feedback.

Cleo, My Partner in Spirit + Flesh Rituals Says:

“I have been doing this ritual many times now. Every time it has been a different journey. The whole exploration for me is about altered states, a heightened state, energy, fire (yes it can be really hot), and visions. Most especially if I am pulling alone against a stationary object with my eyes closed. Any awareness of others or spectators quickly disappears. It is a personal dance of ecstatic fire, bright or soft. I went several times to a place that is not a place. Beautiful!”

“My last hook pull ritual was like wringing my heart from its grief. During the second stage it was a very sexy, a big energy exchange with my puller/lover. The third phase was fun and releasing as I pulled in a big circle with other dancers. You connect intimately with friends, lovers and even strangers pulling on your cords, tuning in to each other, experiencing group energy in a ceremonial tribal ring. At the end I was laughing and very high in this pool of energy and fantastic live drumming.

”

In the second part of SPIRIT+FLESH: THE ENERGY PULL, I would like to take you on a guided tour of some of the more memorable experiences we’ve have had, even in our next ritual which is only one week away in San Francisco. I’ll include some more photos and also feedback comments from energy pull participants. And if hook pulls must be entertainment, at least they can be “art” as my friends Vaughn and Joey Wyman of Body Manipulations did a few years ago. We’ll get into that and more in my next column.

Yours for safe and enlightened journeys,


Fakir Musafar
fakir at bodyplay dot com


Fakir Musafar is the undisputed father of the Modern Primitives movement and through his work over the past 50 years with PFIQ, Gauntlet, Body Play, and more, he has been one of the key figures in bringing body modification out of the closet in an enlightened and aware fashion.

For much more information on Fakir and the subjects discussed in this column, be sure to check out his website at www.bodyplay.com. While you’re there you should consider whipping out your PayPal account and getting yourself a signed copy of his amazing book, SPIRIT AND FLESH (now).

Copyright © 2005 BMEzine.com LLC Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published February 25th, 2005 by BMEzine.com LLC from Los Angeles, CA, USA.

If you want something done right, go to a professional [The Publisher’s Ring]

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If you want it done right,
go to a professional


“I perch on the edge of the bed afterwards, my eyes searching the floor for my purse, my cigarettes, my pager that won’t stop going off. He reaches up and runs his hand down my spine, over the new tattoo that adorns it. He mumbles, ‘This is beautiful. It compliments your curves so well.’”


– “Shannon”, Confessions of a modified call-girl

It’s no secret that a very large number of people find tattoos and piercings sexy. I suspect this site would be much smaller if the sexual overtones didn’t exist — but that doesn’t mean that getting tattooed is some kind of instant elixir of passion or that it’ll magically make you irresistible. It’s like an amplifier — the wrong modifications can emphasize the parts of you that are unattractive, but the right ones can emphasize your best features. If you want something done right, see a professional, right? Someone with extensive hands-on knowledge of the subject?

Escorts aren’t living blow up dolls — their magic and business depends on them really understanding what makes men and women tick sexually. Especially for those working in the intimate companion or GFE (“girlfriend experience”) market, a large part of the job is a head game that depends on them being able to play off people’s fantasies and true desires — the ones that even their partners haven’t figured out. Recently BME had the chance to sit down with a number of tattooed and pierced “adult service providers,” all highly rated by their clients and good at their work.


Azaria		    
Michelle		    
Kayce

We’re joined by Azaria, a single mother and bubbly companion from Springfield, Missouri, Michelle, a heavily tattooed traveling entertainer, Kayce, a 24 year old professional escort and actress from Washington DC, and Shannon, a young escort who got into the industry by accident and now loves the rush, although she’s careful to point out that it’s far from glamorous work. Finally, we’re also joined by Justyne, now working in the corporate sector but willing to talk about her experiences as an escort twelve years ago.


Michelle’s large traditional Japanese tattoo
by Andre Green (tattooasylum.com)

BME:  Thank you for agreeing to talk to me; let’s first go around the table and if you don’t mind, introduce yourself and tell me a little about yourself.
AZARIA:  I’m a single mother of one, and I love body art and piercing, and anything adventurous. I love to travel, and just got back from Australia where I got my latest tattoo, on my back left shoulder. I’ll probably try anything once as long as it doesn’t freak me out!
MICHELLE:  I am a lady, refined, educated, and a master of many of the fine arts of life — I know which fork to use, and how to hold the chopsticks! Whether it’s just the two of us having drinks on the balcony, or meeting colleagues at a cocktail party, you’ll be delighted with my wit, my intelligence and my gentle laugh. I make small talk easily, but get the big picture.

My interests are eclectic and wide ranging. In college, I double majored in science and the liberal arts. While I’ve lived mostly in California, I’ve traveled extensively though the United States and Asia. I am passionate about art and literature, the outdoors, new places and new people. I paint, and my paintings have sold all over the world. In addition, I have more than thirteen years martial arts training, including work with a Navy Seal trainer. I now live near the ocean in Santa Monica and love the sound of the waves crashing against the beach as I go to sleep.
BME:  I know what you mean, I love the ocean…
MICHELLE:  Behind the scenes, there’s more though — this lady can be a tramp, your tramp, your fantasy. I love to dress up, and to dress down… I love to do plain and I love to do fancy. Most of all, I love to please.
KAYCE:  I work in Washington D.C. as a professional escort and I love my job! I love 911 Cabriolet Porsches, alternative music, Medieval dress — and a lot of people don’t know this, but I’m very shy! I have multiple personalities, and when I work my most erotic and decadent persona comes out — and I love her! She allows me to be what I would never be in my plain vanilla life.

       

Kayce’s alternate personality comes out to play
SHANNON:  I’m fairly well known on IAM so I’d like to remain mostly anonymous, but I will say that I grew up in fairly strange sexual circumstances. My mother was married to my father for twenty-six years, and as long as I can remember she had extramarital affairs. I am also pretty convinced that she got “paid” for sexual acts. Later on in my teenage years (after my parents divorced), she worked openly as a massage therapist and was arrested when she was set up by the cops, and an undercover cop offered her money for “more” during a massage. Of course, I didn’t find out about this until years later.

I tell you this because the idea of getting paid for sex never seemed like a “wrong” thing. In fact, many years ago I was vacationing with my now ex-husband in Vegas and he won about $900 on slots. We went to our room and I told him that it would cost him $200 for a blowjob. He obliged. It was not uncomfortable for him, nor did it make me uncomfortable.

When I was married to him I had several affairs, none of which he was aware of, and all of them with wealthy men who bought things for me and gave me cash on a regular basis. I never got caught, but I always thought that I would. It finally occurred to me that I could get the cash and have no strings attached. Don’t get me wrong — I love sex! Actually, I love the rush of sex with a new person. I’m addicted to it. So not only do I get paid to have sex, I get to feed my only addiction at the same time.
JUSTYNE:  It’s been twelve years since I worked as an escort — I’m in the corporate sector now. The escort agency I worked for was what I would consider a mid-range agency as far as “quality” and cost. My level of formal education is quite low (grade ten high school, with some university credits as a mature student), but I have reached where I am in my career through a lot of my own studying and a bit of luck.
BME:  If you don’t mind I’ll get right to the heart of what we’re talking about — how have your piercings and tattoos affected the way your clients treat you? Justyne, when you were working, tattoos and piercings were still very rare…
JUSTYNE: 

And I was far from heavily pierced or tattooed at the time, but I guess it was enough to make me “different” from the rest of the girls that I worked with at the escort agency. I was the only one who had tattoos and piercings outside of standard lobe piercings. Back then most girls didn’t have more than maybe two lobe piercings on each ear. Everyone there was pretty mainstream-looking. I hate to even use the word “mainstream” but I think you know what I am getting at.
BME:  What reaction did you get?
JUSTYNE:  It was always interesting to see — some really seemed to be turned on by what they considered the “bad girl” image. The ones that did like that were usually quite conservative in appearance. First-timers seemed to be slightly intimidated by me… I could never tell if it was because of my appearance or if they were just nervous.

Some clients didn’t seem to like the tattoos and piercings and wanted “the girl next door”. But they didn’t really complain or treat it as a negative. Occasionally I would receive the usual questions of, “why would a pretty girl like you do that to yourself?” — the sort of bullshit that I’m sure every modified girl hears so often in her lifetime. There was one client who really (and I stress, really!) did not like tattoos or piercings on girls, and because of that nothing happened. We talked for a few minutes, and then he said he was sorry, but he just couldn’t get past those things and sent me on my way. Fair enough, different strokes for different folks. It really didn’t bother me.

Having said that, the majority of my clients really didn’t care one way or the other.
BME:  And those of you that are currently working — Michelle, you’re very heavily tattooed, am I right in guessing that people seek you for your tattoos?
MICHELLE:  Yes, my clients do seek me out for them — but mainly because I’m such a smart ass! I had no idea I was getting famous until I had this girl do a double take, and then a triple take, and then she introduced herself to me and had that glassy look in her eye. I have to give up my addiction to Taco Bell!

   

Who do you think would win in a fight… Michelle or Barbie?
SHANNON:  Most of my clients have been pleasantly shocked by my mods. I also work full time as a manager of a nationwide company and keep a professional appearance. I don’t warn clients ahead of time about my mods. One of my first clients, after I stripped for him, stood there with a gaping mouth — he touched the CBR in my nipple and my tattoos on my pubic bone. I got on my knees and began giving him what he was paying for, and he flipped me in several positions. I like to think he was taking me in. He wanted every view of me — of my tattoos.

Afterwards, I asked him about my mods. He said they were fascinating for him, as he was an older gentleman and had never been with a modified woman before. I was thrilled that I could be of pleasure to him, and that I could give him a new experience (and I could feed my family for another week).

I have never been turned away when people found out about the mods, although I did get many men who did not like nipple piercings. The client I just mentioned was well connected through business and church (yes, I said church), and as time went by he referred me and my services to many other older, influential men in our area. I would say that ninety percent of the time the clients were fascinated by my tattoos, but not the nipples. Mine were fairly large — 8 gauge — and I am not sure if girls with smaller, more petite piercings would get the same reaction. They complained about the feel in their mouths and so on.

I did end up taking my nipple rings out because I now have a very wealthy older man who is my main client who doesn’t like them, and I wanted to oblige him. As far as the way they perceive me, I think they adore it. I think it adds to the mystery. Most of my clients have never been with a woman with tattoos and piercings. It’s exotic to them.
AZARIA:  I make sure on my site that my tats and piercing are plenty visible so that people who don’t like them don’t contact me. I would hate nothing more than to meet someone and hear them bitch about all my tats, which did happen once. I love my body art; I didn’t get it to please anyone else but me. I’m sure I miss out sometimes by having all these tats, but it doesn’t bother me one bit.

   

Azaria
BME:  And do the mods actually make clients “behave differently” toward you, or make different requests you think?
AZARIA:  Almost everyone comments on them in some way or another. I have one on my lower back that seems to drive men wild. I don’t get much on my piercing; I did have one guy ask me to take it out. But other than that there’s not much affect at all.
KAYCE:  My clients usually don’t say too much, but I can tell they think I’m some kind of goth-girl or a party type, which I’m not. Some are taken aback a little, but that’s normal for vanilla types I guess — usually they really want to be more nasty with me… They feel if I have some tats and a few piercings, then I’m pretty liberal and they want to push my boundaries. I will accommodate their fantasies though, but only because I really enjoy having my alternate personality come out… which I love of course!
JUSTYNE:  I found that the ones that were turned on by it enjoyed themselves immensely… almost as if tattoos and piercings were a bit of a fetish for them. Or like Kayce said, they were excited by being with a “bad girl”. Other than that, it really didn’t affect anyone else’s behavior or mine. Honestly, for me it was just a job for money and not something that I actually enjoyed doing — though there were always “good” clients that I didn’t mind being with because they were extremely nice, funny, considerate, had good hygiene practices, and didn’t treat me like a whore. They were respectful.
MICHELLE:  After I got my nipples pierced it was a wonderful thing. Not only did it bring increased sensitivity to my nipples, but suddenly there was this air of reverence, mystery and greater worship of my breasts. No more tugging or nibbling, just gentle caressing which of course really sends me over the edge. I would recommend every naturally large breasted woman get her nips pierced. It’s like having a boob job. I never wear a bra anymore, and they look so frisky and perky: I love them!
SHANNON:  I’ve had men run their hands over my tattoos. I’ve gotten tons of compliments, and since I have a large back piece I get flipped over doggie-style quite a bit. I think most of these men love it because there is no way to mistake me for their wives!

As far as my behavior, piercings throw you off during sex sometimes, and you have to fight that. You don’t ever want the client to think you are uncomfortable. But I have been hit in a sore conch piercing and had to keep a straight face! I’ve had my horizontal hood sucked too hard I don’t know how many times. I think that my clients automatically think that I am into pain because of my mods, and that is not the case with me at all. I think I get smacked and bitten more often and without warning than an unmodded call girl.
BME:  Do the tattoos help you keep clients as regulars?
SHANNON:  I had one regular client that lived by himself in a huge house in a wealthy neighborhood. He was a large man who always begged me to spend the night. I never did. He loved my tattoos. His eyes would light up when he realized I had new work done. I never knew what he loved more: getting a blowjob from me or lying in his bed until the early hours of the morning drilling me about my tattoos, my piercings and the procedures. Every time I would go see him again I would expect to see him adorned with a tattoo. But he never did. I think he lived vicariously through me.
BME:  Now let me ask a little in reverse — do you get many (or any) clients with piercings and tattoos or even other modifications?
SHANNON:  My clients are mostly older married business men. I honestly don’t think I have been with any clients with modifications. It’s actually kind of funny, but I never saw an uncircumsized man until I started doing this!

I would really enjoy having a few clients with mods, but they have just not been presented to me. My theory on this is that modified men have healthier sexual relationships with their significant others (that’s just a theory).
BME:  Ha ha, well, I hope your theory is correct!
KAYCE:  I think it is — clients with piercings seem a little more laid back and somewhat more open to try new things and see a different view than my “straight” clients. Straight clients come, do their thing, and go, but with my pierced and tat clients we tend to talk about more mystical topics and spiritual emotions, which I love to do. They seem more into everything while the straight clients are more into just themselves.
MICHELLE:  It doesn’t make much difference to me whether a person is modified, but I do find the ones that are tattooed are much more accepting of their bodies and seem more in tune with themselves.
BME:  Azaria — no offense intended to Missouri, but I’m guessing you don’t get a lot of clients with body modifications?
AZARIA:  Most of the people I see are pretty straight laced. No tattoos and no piercings — maybe they come to me because I’m different from what they have at home. I do see someone who has four tattoos, each with their own story and that’s what I like. I haven’t had a client with a piercing yet — I’m waiting for someone to come along that has a PA… I’d really like to be with a guy with a PA and have even asked boyfriends to get it done but can’t find anyone with enough balls to do it.
BME:  That’s funny; I hope you don’t get too flooded with email after this goes up on BME, a lot of our readers have PAs!
KAYCE:  The cock piercings are my favorite because I like playing with them! One guy had his tongue split, and that was freaky, but then he went down on me and it was really erotic. I had a girlfriend who had both nipples pierced, and I led her around all night with a chain through her nipple rings… that was hot, and everyone loved the show!
BME:  Did you get to see much in the way of tattoos or piercings back when you were working, Justyne?
JUSTYNE:  I occasionally saw guys with the odd tattoo, but nothing really memorable. Sometimes talking to them about where they got their work done was a source of conversation to either kill time or help us get more comfortable though… I think if there had been more heavily modified clients I’d have enjoyed the work more because we would have had something in common.
MICHELLE:  I had one client that had half of his body tattooed, on the same side of his body as mine. We has a very hot session and I felt a deep bond with him. I have never had a session with a man that has a pierced penis. Pity. The ones that have ink love my ink and the revealing of the tattoos is an integral aspect of foreplay.

   

Michelle
BME:  Any advice for men or women who want to positively make piercings or tattoos a part of their sexual lives and identities?
KAYCE:  Make sure you really want them! I had my tongue pierced and I didn’t like it that much, but it was easy to remove, as are most piercings. Tattoos are more of a permanent thing and are gonna be there forever, so choose wisely what you put on your skin!

My fiancé gets hard just looking at my tattoos, and when he does me doggie-style or anally from behind, it’s such a turn on for him. A lot of other guys feel that way as well and I feed off of that too! Both sides of my clit hood are pierced and it feels good to be stretched and played with, so I love it as well. Just use your body the way you want it used, and you will love your new piercings and tattoos!



Kayce enjoying her work
BME:  Shannon, you’d said your marriage didn’t survive — did your modifications play a role in that?
SHANNON:  Yes, you have to be with a partner who is also into modifications, and that is why my first marriage failed. As I became more and more involved with being modified and in this community, the farther we grew apart. It was a huge part of my life that he could not share. But besides, that the most important thing is for your partner to remember and take care not to disturb healing mods! I’ve had more piercings flare up from a knock during sex than any other event.
MICHELLE:  Getting tattooed is a very intense and personal experience. For me it was a spiritual act of reclaiming my body as mine after a very horrifying event that traumatized me, and probably will continue to for the rest of my life — a fire in my apartment. I have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Getting tattooed as an artist is an artistic expression, a public or private extension of myself. I feel more like the real true me. I love my body now that I am tattooed. I would recommend that if you get a tattoo, save up and just get one, a really big one. Just don’t get a name! Nooooo!
JUSTYNE:  My advice would be that people have to get their piercings and tattoos for themselves and not for anyone else. I’ve heard too many stories of people getting modified to please their partners only. I think if you are happy with yourself emotionally, physically, and sexually, then modifications will find a way to fit into your life positively. If the modifications are primarily for sexual reasons, then you need to practice and learn what you like and be vocal about it to your partner.
AZARIA:  Get them in sexy places of course… guys seem to really love the lower back tats on women. A tat that I like to see on men are the ones across the top of the back, and I also like sleeves on men. Guys, if you are thinking of a PA, get it — it may hurt at first but it’s just so awesome!
BME:  You really are looking forward to a PA, aren’t you? Justyne, did leaving the escort business make any difference in the modifications you got?
JUSTYNE:  I had actually thought about this while I was still in the business. I hesitated getting more tattoos at that time because I thought it would be a hindrance. While I have no plans to get back into the business, escorting is always in the back of my mind as my financial backup plan. I am much more modified than I was before, and I do wonder if it would affect me negatively if I chose to escort again. It’s easy to hide things and cover up while sitting at a desk in a corporate job, but not so easy when you’re buck naked!
BME:  And those of you who are still working — is it restricting you at all?
SHANNON:  Unfortunately it has. I won’t get any more piercings until I am totally out of the business. Also, I wouldn’t want to be in contact with a client who is healing a tattoo (for safety reasons), and I give that same respect to them. When I am working I only get tattooed right before a vacation.
KAYCE:  It hasn’t affected me at all. I do my own thing, and if people like it, fine, and if not then they can move on! I really want some more tattoos so I’ll get them this year probably, and I’ll still be in the escort business. I’ll keep on getting them!
MICHELLE:  I am definitely getting more! Guess what I spend all my money on? Not clothes and drugs, silly.
BME:  Azaria, you’re working more as a companion — does that make any difference in this question?
AZARIA:  I have become more self conscious about my body… I have learned to like my breasts more, and a lot of men actually tell me they like natural better than fake. I hate to say it, but having a kid was hell on my skin so I do have stretch marks, and have an appointment to get them covered real soon. Tattoos are an addiction for me — I will continue to get more no matter what, and as far as piercings I would like to have my hood done. Right now I just have my lip pierced.
BME:  What about when you were dancing? How did it affect that?
AZARIA:  My boss had tried to get me to cover up all my tats, especially the one on my tit. He said that I would make more money if I covered them up, I guess because guys are not so used to seeing girls with so many tats. Oh course I said “HELL NO!” and danced anyways. Like I said, if people don’t like them, they don’t have to look at me. I know I get stares from people a lot, having five tattoos on my arms. It seems to me that people haven’t quite accepted girls having a lot of tats.
BME:  Have any of you made any modification decisions that you regret?
AZARIA:  I let a non-professional do tats on me twice. Just being young and stupid… I had a professional cover the one on my left breast, but I still don’t like it, and then I have one on my ankle and I’m having a very hard time trying to find someone who can actually say they can cover it up.

So remember: Don’t get homemade tats — stick with the professionals! Other than that, choose what best fits your personality, and don’t be in a rush to pick one either. If you have an imagination that’s even better. Start out small… I like big tats but they are not for me.
KAYCE:  And never do an impulse tattoo!
BME:  What’s the biggest misconception people have regarding piercings and tattoos?
SHANNON:  People on the street (not clients) make the mistake of thinking that just because I have a beautiful back piece that they can touch it. This makes me angrier than anything. Also, I was just told by a coworker today at my day job that people find me “intimidating” when they meet me. I think they think my tattoos make me “tough” or “bitchy,” all of which aren’t true… I’m just not one to open up to everyone immediately.
JUSTYNE:  I think in terms of mine, people have made class-based assumptions, like that I’m low class or uneducated.
MICHELLE:  I don’t think their misconceptions are wrong! We are dangerous, deviant, and defiant! That’s exactly why we are so cool and they can’t get their eyes off us.
BME:  Thank you all so much for being so open and talking to me about this.
SHANNON:  I hope it was helpful — I don’t glamorize what I do. It really isn’t a glamorous thing, at least for me. It is a way to get the things I want and not have to worry about bills or money. And it’s not easy either. I have to keep in great shape for clients. I spend about an hour a day at the gym, and am always on a strict diet. It is tiring working a forty-plus hour week at a day job, and then spend two or three nights per week with clients. But it is a lot less tiring than worrying about how I’m going to pay the rent!

   

Shibari (Japanese Rope Bondage)

Thank you again to all these women for taking the time to talk candidly about their work and their bodies. If you’d like to visit them online (or in real life), Kayce can be found at xxxoticxxxposure.com, Michelle can be found at netmichelle.com, and Azaria is online at azariaforu.com (the others have asked to stay anonymous). If you decide to contact them for any reason, please do so with respect.

To those of you who think that BME shouldn’t be talking to escorts for ethical reasons, well, screw you. These are all intelligent, independent, and capable women perfectly able to make their own decisions about their own lives. They were a lot of fun to engage for this interview and I wish them the best of luck wherever they choose to take themselves.


Shannon Larratt
BMEzine.com

Photos courtesy and copyright the interviewees. Michelle’s cover photo and most others in this article are by Patrick Bastien (pbastien.com), and the Shibari photos are by CharlyB.

Ten Years of Pain [The BME Book Review]

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Ten Years of Pain
by Håvve Fjell – Review by Shannon Larratt
  
LOOK INSIDE

Being a fakir is not just about showmanship, it is a way of life, a philosophy. You can not learn the discipline if you are not born with the urge to explore the limits of the body.

- Håvve Fjell

This may well be the best body play related book I have ever read (wow!). It is the first book in a long time where I’ve been felt an empathic connection with the content and been drawn deeper and deeper as I progressed. Not since I was a child reading science fiction on winter nights have I been so singularly possessed by a work of prose.

title:
 Ten Years of Pain
author:
 Håvve Fjell,
photographs by Helene Fjell
author iam:
 bleeding
author url:
 http://www.painsolution.net/
pages:
 180
publisher:
 Hertervig Forlag, Norway
rating:
 10/10
reviewer:
 Shannon Larratt
isbn:
 82-92023-12-7
purchase:
 BMEshop
summary:
 An intimate ten-year history of a modern fakir.

Håvve Fjell is the core of Pain Solution, a Norwegian performance art group — although it has also been a solo project for much of its existence. He exemplifies the modern fakir, both in the sense of performance, fine art, spirituality, and social consciousness. This book, photographed by Håvve’s sister Helene, is an intimate, unflinching, and deeply personal and engaging documentation of his first ten years — as Helene puts it, “Håvve is honest and he has something to say.” The book is written almost entirely in the first person, and its open style makes you feel like you’re reading Håvve’s thoughts.

Just over two years ago Håvve was asked to speak about self-harm at a Psykopp-organized lecture for psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and doctors — they were so drawn into the dialog that they approached him about producing a book on the subject. He begins this book by describing his childhood,

Each time I would try to aim a bit higher; cut a bit deeper, burn a bit longer or push more needles into my legs. Of course, no one around me would understand why I did these things to myself, and I could not explain. This led me to do my business in private and try to hide the results from family and friends.

Sound familiar?

In 1991 Håvve traveled to Brazil to develop his skills. In Brazil he met other performers, and did his first fakir show — to an audience who was not expecting or desiring his style of show, and jeered him with taunts of “disgusting”, “sick pervert” and “ugly”.

The rest of the night, I hid. I was too ashamed to see the organizers or talk to anyone. However, two good things came out of that particular night. That night, my girlfriend, Monica, conceived our first son, Kai. In addition, I learned an important lesson about performing in public: it is not what you do, but how you present it that matters.

His confidence returned along with his return to Oslo, where he put on another show with friends (much more successfully) and started thinking about combining the fakir element with performance and stage art. Along with his friends Eirik and Roberto he decided that maybe they could even make a little money if they built a show around fire, juggling, fakirism, and music, and in 1993 PSI (Pain Solution Inc.) was founded.

The first show was a success, but they quickly lost their backing band. The group shuffled members for a while, and Håvve took courses in street theatre, mime, clowning, and acting, and became more and more serious about the professionalism of his show. He returned to Brazil for some time and then back to Norway where he slowly re-tooled his shows for a broader audience — Pain Solution was getting TV gigs, many shows, and media appearances — and also worked with puppet theatre and other art-forms.

We were mostly doing fire stunts and I had padlocks sewn to my torso, this was quite new to me at the time and I was dancing wildly. It came to the point where I felt I was loosing contact with the floor, as if I was dancing without touching the ground. What I felt was pure pleasure. I watched the crowd from above and was about to fly up, and out from the stage. I do not know what really happened, but it was suddenly very quiet. A technical problem with the sound system had put an end to my almost leaving my body experience.

For Y2K Pain Solution was contracted to perform at the largest millennium event in Norway, a huge fire show on New Year’s even in Oslo. After being the pinnacle act in front of 200,000 people Pain Solution started getting larger contracts for custom performances, and Håvve began building a network of actors, contortionists, jugglers, and other performers to work with as shows dictated. Shows got even larger, and in 2001 Pain Solution co-produced Ringen with the Haugesund Theatre, a modern circus group. Large projects always put a lot of stress on a group, and Håvve decided to revert Pain Solution back to being a solo production.

He was then invited to do a series of performances for the Industrial Art Museum in Oslo, and presented them with a plan to do a sculptural or “poetic” suspension. They turned him down, saying that he would scare off their “elderly guests”. Håvve was furious — he’d been promoting the event for three weeks, and his art was being muted.

I saw no reason in arguing, nor did I see any reason to accept being excluded from the programme. I decided to hold a demonstration against censorship, at the museum on that given Saturday. I wrote a new press release explaining the situation. When I sent it out, I made sure they got a copy at the museum.

On the day of the event, I appeared at the Museum with a plaster cast from head to toe, with only holes for my eyes and nose, in a sculpture called Sensurert (Censored). As my assistants carried me out of the van and up the stairs outside the Museum, we were met with hostility; they would not let us set foot on their stairs and stopped us with brute force. Therefore I stood outside on the pavement for nearly two hours, with a supporting crowd, until the cold had made my limbs so numb that I had to give up my demonstration.

The demonstration was a success and the publicity led the House of Artists to contract Håvve to perform Censored, as well as Floating, the project which had been censored. Since it was a six-week installation, Håvve expanded it to Kvintett, five performances of physical restrictions — full body casting, flesh sewing, buried in broken glass, a Chinese-water torture-type event, and a horizontal suspension. The book describes his experiences and encounters in all of these.

However, after this successful series of performances (with a great deal of media and critical attention), Håvve again found himself alone and in debt — for the first time in his life, he had to get a job. Of course, with no education or experience, the best he could do was two part-time jobs — and he feared that a full-time job could interfere with his ability to continue developing Pain Solution. Kvintett had given him a new area to explore as an artist and a fakir — his own personal approaches to pain. His performances became more esoteric, and Håvve became an explorer and researcher as much as an artist.

In the west, our culture brings us up to perceive pain exclusively as a negative experience. No matter how small the injury might be, the most important action taken is to comfort the child. I am not saying that is wrong, but in many cases parents end up teaching their children to fear pain. If a child is bleeding, the hysteria is even worse.

* * *

Sometimes the pain is too strong to ignore, it is just impossible not to pay attention to it. In these cases, I try to put all my focus on the pain itself. I search for the centre of the pain. I try to figure out how it spreads, where the borders of the sensation are, and how it feels right next to where it’s hurting. By going into the sensation and exploring it, I find the focus is in studying the pain, instead of suffering it.

…which brings the specific history of Pain Solution up to date.

Håvve also communicated with Allen Falkner of TSD in Texas, and after doing a number of suspensions in private and in public (as mentioned above), beginning in 2002 he began co-organizing the annual Wings of Desire – Oslo Body Suspension Festival, an event similar to the SusCons hosted by various suspension groups around the world. He also talks about how hard it’s been for him to achieve spiritual experiences, largely due to the attention he must also pay to the stage aspect.

Addressing something too many amateur performers overlook, Håvve warns about some of the accidents that have happened on stage, including one horrific experience where he breathed in a lungful of paraffin, leading him to ten days hospitalization after the performance. Other shows left him with serious burns, and another with cuts in his hand that resulted in permanent nerve damage. Like many of us, he’s had last minute supply and preparation problems, rigging failures, and other mishaps. “Shit happens and the show must go on!”

The conclusion to the book contains commentary from many of the other members of Pain Solution mentioned in the book, both performers and technical staff. It also contains some interview excerpts and fine arts analysis of Håvve’s performances (“In search of a lost pain” by the Bureau of Contemporary Art Praxis, Rijeka, Croatia, and “Toward the aesthetics of pain” by Stahl Stenslie, Academy of Media Arts, Colgne Germany), commentary from Målfrid J. Frahm Jensen and Per Johan Isdahl (Ullevål University Hospital, Oslo) on the self-harm aspects, and from Siv Ellen Kraft (University of Tromsø, Norway) on the religious aspects. The book then finishes with a short FAQ.

This really is a remarkable book. My review does not do it the justice it deserves. I literally believe it is the only book that has been able to take such a snapshot. I do not believe that any body modification book collection can be called complete without this book, and I believe this is essential reading for anyone involved in performance or body art as well as those interested in art history and body-art/modification/play-history.

From a technical point of view the printing in this book is gorgeous. It’s large format (10”x10”) and full color with silver spot color throughout its 180 pages and almost every page has photos. The text is clear and easy to read and the photos are bright, crisp, and vibrant (all the pictures in this review are of course from the book). I have nothing bad to say about the book on a conceptual or artistic level, but I do have two complaints in the technical area:

  1. Binding. Ten Years of Pain is softbound (I made the same mistake with the ModCon book). As a result it damages easily; my copy got banged around a bit in the mail and the corners are dinged — this book is such an obvious collector and display piece that it should have been been printed as a hardcover in my opinion.
  2. Price. Printing a limited edition book is expensive — as a result, Håvve’s book sells in Norway for 400 Kroners (about $60 US), which, once you add distribution costs, gets up to the $70 US mark by the time it’s made it to North America. That’s a lot to pay for a softcover; if it was any other book I wouldn’t be recommending it so strongly.

I believe that this book will touch you. It might get banged up a little easier than it should, and maybe it costs a little more than is normal, but this book will touch you. For me, it’s worth every cent, and I believe that if you’re a regular BME reader and you appreciate what’s being done here in general, this book will reach you as well.

As far as I know BMEshop is the only place this book is available online. Because I believe in it so strongly I have given up all royalties and commission on its sale in order to ensure the best possible price for you. Please note that we only have a few in stock right now, so if you visit the page and it’s sold out, please be sure to add your name to the “tell me when it’s back” list.


Shannon Larratt
BME.COM

PS. Be sure to check out the Pain Solution website at www.painsolution.net!

This page and its contents are © 2004 Shannon Larratt – Reproduced under license by BMEzine.com LLC. All rights reserved. Requests to reprint must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purpose this review was published January 21st, 2004 in Toronto, Canada.

Contemporary Blood Letting

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As part of an ongoing investigation into private rituals and public spaces, this article will consider the growing interest in Live Art in which the artists use their own bodies as the site of inquiry. Social taboos such as bloodletting, self-flagellation and body modification will be considered, alongside the objections to this particular practice.Live Art has its history in the performance art practice of the 1970′s. Informed by the work of such artists as the Viennese Aktionists, Coum Transmissions and Chris Burden, the artists who engage in this particular practice choose to use their own bodies, pushing the boundaries of social taboo. Creating more of an interrogation than a dialogue, the spectator is forced into making choices about questions of identity and difference and the nature of mortality.

In order to negotiate these particular practices has proved problematic, as the performances now only exist in a fragmentary way within photographs and videos. Of course, this documentation is not the performance itself. A photograph or video is a snapshot of time and cannot be totally representative. In an age of mass information overload, where we have become de-conditioned to atrocities committed in the name of politics, global terrorism and famine, the ‘news’ documentation played back on radio and television does not tell the real story. We are conditioned to objectify violations of the body and remove ourselves from immersion in such actions and feelings. The curators (journalists and TV news presenters) of this spectacle manipulate our points of view, numbing us to the reality of events happening in distant countries to ‘the other’.

The use of blood within Live Art forces the viewer into re-considering their own bodily vulnerability and to question issues of gender roles. As Live Artists use their own bodies as a site for inquiry, there is an immediacy of similarity between the viewers and viewed, which does not require any academic training to understand. As such, immediate actions onto the body have generated a discourse that reaches beyond the confines of the Fine Art arena. Press interest has created a reputation for these artists that places them as ‘the other’ onto which we can project our own fears about bodily invasion and destruction, where we can directly experience such violent actions by attending a performance, not constructed and removed from reality in the manner television forces us to.

Artists such as Franko B and Ron Athey provoke such a discourse, but one that is fuelled by reputation rather than experience. A sense of control, which could easily lapse into chaos, is the constant concern of such direct actions onto the body. With the disneyfication of difference so prevalent within Western culture, these artists are seeking to re-address the balance and re-affirm their own identities, using taboos such as blood, nakedness and socially sanctioned ‘self-harm’ to explore their own bodies. Traditional Fine Art notions of ‘the space’ and ‘the body’ become ‘this space’ and ‘this body’.

 

Ron Athey’s practice is informed by his years of heroin addiction, a fundamentalist pentecostal upbringing, his mother being an institutionalised schizophrenic and ultimately his diagnosis of HIV fifteen years ago. His performances seek to negotiate his relationship to these events, creating a theatre of spectacle in which the viewer is implicated. His use of religious tableau to address these issues further enhances notions of social taboo and stigma. Disussing the idea of theatre and performance as cathartic methods of expression, Athey states,

 

"Like the plague, the theatre is the time of evil, the triumph of dark powers that are nourished by a power even more profound until extinction...The theatre like the plague, is in the image of this carnage and this essential separation. It releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities, and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is the fault not of the plague nor of the theatre, but of life".

(Exposures, 2002, pg 6)

In “Four Scenes from a Harsh Life” he inserts 30 hypodermic needles into his arm, referencing his time as an intravenous drug user. He then, with the help of his ‘medical’ staff, inserts a crown of ‘thorns’ (hypodermic needles again), enacting Christ’s death. As he collapses on the floor, his assistants cover him with a white shroud and he is carried to the centre of the stage. After a short while he is cleansed with water and is ‘resurrected’.

During “Nurses’ Penance,” he re-creates the institutional terror of a hospital setting, with a patient brutalized by huge drag-queen nurses with sewn-together lips. In another piece he’s writhing naked, on one end of a double-headed dildo. His richest source for material, though, is the church. Most of his pieces have religious names like ‘Martyrs and Saints’ and ‘Deliverance’, along with characters like St. Sebastian, who’s martyred with a literal crown of thorns that causes blood to rain onto his face and the floor. Much of his work is driven by a sense of martyrdom and, arguably, a self-hate instilled on him from childhood.

Athey attracted international attention in 1994, after a Minneapolis performance in which he sliced into the back of a fellow performance artist, placed strips of paper towel over the wounds and then hoisted the bloodied strips of paper towel, via pulley, over the heads of the audience. Though no blood dripped down onto the audience, and though the performer who was cut was HIV negative, Athey’s own HIV positive status led one audience member to claim that the crowd had been spattered with HIV-positive blood.

Within these performances, the spectator is forced into a position of passive voyeurism. The audience act as conduits for this dialogue that is critical to Athey’s performances. Whilst Athey maintains the power, the audience are left helpless as he metamorphoses himself, through methods of live body modification. Although Athey presents himself to us as an artist, he is also allowing us to observe a process of healing and catharsis. Though Athey does not use documentation in a way that is representative (ie he doesn’t exhibit this work in a gallery), videos of his work provide us with a snapshot of the experience of his performances. His use of theatre to present the ‘real’, adds further signifiers to his work. Referencing notions of catholic ritual and linking this to the idea of Christ as drug taker (although by inference) he opens up a discourse on the nature of religion and its use of ritual.

The use of blood in Franko B’s performances operates as a different signifier. Franko B is not HIV+ and he uses blood as an affirmation of life. His short pieces involve cutting, scarification and other apparent S/M practices. The direct use of his body in these performances removes any notions of ‘representation’. In order to fully experience Franko B, one has to be present as part of a complete visual, physical and emotional immersion in the work.

His performances such as ‘I Miss You’, when he walks down a canvas in a room set up like a fashion show, with photographers situated at one end, to heighten the sense of voyeurism, seek to implicate the viewer further. ‘Oh Lover Boy’ sites Franko as an ‘artists model’. To quote from Gray Watsons interview with Franko B,

 

"Oh Lover Boy is going to be a performance piece where again, the body is presented: it's there on the table. It is there for you to take, in a way, either to draw or to look at...the set-up is going to be almost like a life-drawing class but there is also a clinical side, where it is like you are looking at a body. But it is not passive; it is not a dead body, in a way it's giving life by bleeding. And he's looking at you".

(Gray Watson, 2000)

Franko’s performances reference his childhood being brought up by the Red Cross. Using a diatribe of medical equipment such a syringes, drip stands and wheel chairs, Franko re-enforces notions of healing, but also control, amidst the perceived chaos of his performances. He can only perform three times a year because of the amount of healing that needs to take place after his performances.

Franko’s other work, (which is regularly exhibited, unlike Ron Athey’s documentation) consists of collages and installations. His collage work, references his ‘real’ experiences, and documents his whole life. This again raises issues of vulnerability, as he is leaving nothing to the imagination. Flyers from his performances and pictures of ‘boys I went out with’ (Gray Watson, 2000) mingle with images of religious artefacts and blood stained sheets from his performances.

Issues of power arise here, as the viewer is implicated in the performance by default. Franko appears as helpless and vulnerable, but also has power over his audience. If Franko performed in the street, the context would be different and issues of legality would be raised. This issue of contextualisation also raises issues of safety and notions of control and chaos.

Both Ron Athey and Franko B have ‘medical’ helpers during their performances. They act as signifiers within the performance, to connote to the viewer notions of control and safety. This safety angle is always printed on the flyers, to reassure the viewer. There is a paradox here, as the people that are supposed to ‘help’ during Franko B’s performance, also cut him with a razor during ‘Oh Lover Boy’. The medical helpers are in fact trained body-piercers, with basic anatomy training. As soon as this fact has been established during the performance, these signifiers change.

Both Athey and Franko B as gay men question the nature of masculinity. At their performances, it is the men who recoil against the walls of the venue, normally in foetal positions, returning to maternal signifiers as if about to be castrated. The spilling of blood, whatever the connotation intended by the artist, has the effect of rendering the audience impotent, either to their own bodies or to the performance itself. They cannot help the performers, even though they feel their natural reaction is to do so.

There is also a sense that the performers are acting ‘privately’ and the viewer is intruding into a sacred shamanic ritual. Shamanism is normally associated with women, blood letting during menstruation being an important part of ‘walking with the spirits’. Although, shamans tend to operate outside the confines of accepted social practice, they act as a conduit to ‘other-worldly’ access and are relied upon by the rest of the tribe to maintain a sense of unity. Within the framework of Live Art, the performers provide this access so that the viewers themselves can reach the dark underworld of the shaman. Within Western culture, it appears that men are not supposed to reveal their feelings, let alone share any intimate details about themselves with the outside world. By the direct action onto their bodies and the use of blood, Franko and Athey challenge this notion.

The letting of blood is seen as ‘unclean’. This mythology probably originated in the Old Testament where it is seen that,

 

"She is to be 'put apart for her uncleanness' for seven days".

(Lev. 18:19)

"Any man who lies with her during this time is also unclean for seven days, anyone who touches her is unclean till the evening, and everything that she sitteth upon shall be unclean".

(Lev. 15:19-24)

Throughout the history of art we have encountered images of blood from the earliest cave paintings through centuries of biblical images and through to war films such as Apocalypse Now. It both fascinates us and repulses us. It has come to represent both the sacred and profane. Live Artists use this dichotomy as a way of personal transformation. At the performances there is a sense of sacredness that transcends orthodox religious methods. This could explain why the Christian Church is opposed to such direct actions onto the body. It appals them that something non-religious can actually achieve the same transcendental experience that religion is supposed to offer. In Judaeo-Christian cultures, blood ‘sacrifice’ cannot be culturally sanctioned because of notions of idolatry, where the artist are using their own bodies to ‘redeem’ themselves as opposed to appeals to God.

In his book ‘Violence and the Sacred’, Rene Girards’ theory of sacrifice states,

"The physical metamorphoses of spilt blood can stand for the double nature of violence...Blood serves to illustrate that the same substance can stain or cleanse, contaminate or purify, drive men to fury and murder or appease their anger and restore them to life"

(Girard, 1972)

The process of purification that the artists are trying to achieve can sometimes fail, not providing the audience with the signifier of life that blood performances seek to inform the viewer about. The aforementioned performance by Ron Athey called ‘Martyrs and Saints’ which used supposed HIV blood being heaved across the heads of the audience on a pulley system created an outcry. This could be because the blood was seen as ‘polluted’, making the ‘artist an unacceptable surrogate sacrificial victim for a healthy community’ (Dawn Perlmutter, 2000). In a sense, the signifier contained within the blood changed its meaning and the ritual which was meant to be a demonstration of transcendence through bodily mutilation failed. The distance between the observer and observed was very wide and the artists role as shaman became disjointed, hence the public outcry. The success of such actions is dependent on the audience feeling close to the Live Artists performance.

 

The antagonism towards Live Art does not detract from the fact that Live Art is a growing method of expression. It could be seen as an attempt to disrupt societal and personal boundaries through methods of physical sacrifice and as a process of purification. Although sometimes the ritual, as in Athey’s case, can fail, it is still a ritual which people observe. With the growth of interest in body piercing and tattooing due largely to information being disseminated via the internet, what was once the reserve of underground S/M clubs has now become an overground method of artistic practice. There is an obvious need for people to get back in touch with their own bodies as the site of inquiry, as is evidenced by the recent series of events at the Tate Modern, running over the course of a weekend at the end of March this year called ‘Live Culture’. This exhibition brought together Live Artists from various schools, to inform, perform and debate. Depending on audience interest, the movement will continue to undermine social convention and will move away from the purely aesthetic and personal transformation on the part of the artists, into the realms of communal transformation.

Jason Oliver
May 2003

References

Bibliography

  • Danto, Arthur C (1986). The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. Columbia University Press: New York.
  • Eliade, M (1987). The Encyclopedia of Religion. Macmillan Publishing Co: New York.
  • Stuart, H (1997). Representation, Cultural Represenations and Signifying Practices. Bath Press Colourbooks: Glasgow.
  • Keidan, L, Morgan, S and Sinclair, S. (1998). Franko B. Black Dog Publishing: London.
  • V, Manuel, Watson, G and Wilson, S. (2001). Franko B – Oh Lover Boy. Black Dog Publishing: London.
  • V,Vale and Juno, A. (1989). Modern Primitives, An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual: Re/Search Publications: San Francisco, CA.
  • Wollheim, R. (1980). Art And Its Objects. University Press: Cambridge.

As part of his thesis on the ‘Body as Transformative Object’ Jason is looking for people involved with the body modification community who class themselves as artists. These can be either people who modify others, or who are modified themselves, surgically or otherwise, performers, suspension crews, or any others who see what they do as an art form. I am particularly interested in people that push boundaries that little bit further.

I am looking for people who are willing to take an email-based interview on their motivations, their experiences and why they see their modifications as an art form.

The thesis will be written over the period September-December of this year. All artists interviewed will be fully credited and a copy of the thesis will be given to all those taking part. Contact coldcell for further details.

coldcell-biopicJason Oliver is currently working on his BA (Hons) Graphic Fine Art course in London, UK. His main areas of concern are ritual, body modification, and performances linking the two. He is researching social taboos and the general public’s response to direct actions onto the body and has a special interest in the use of blood, both in art and in ‘tribal’ rituals and how it acts as different signifiers depending on cultural context.

He is an active opponent to cultural appropriation of body ritual, finding it both undermining and patronising but instead explores the role that modification plays to himself personally, without cultural references, by pushing his body into new areas of experience, with documentation being a pre-requisite.

This article was written as a precursor to his thesis, currently entitled ‘The Body as Transformative Object’. You can find Jason on IAM as coldcell.

Copyright © 2003 Jason Oliver and BMEZINE.COM. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online August 20th, 2003 by BMEZINE.COM in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

Contemporary Blood Letting [Guest Column]

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Contemporary Blood Letting
by Jason Oliver

As part of an ongoing investigation into private rituals and public spaces, this article will consider the growing interest in Live Art in which the artists use their own bodies as the site of inquiry. Social taboos such as bloodletting, self-flagellation and body modification will be considered, alongside the objections to this particular practice.

Live Art has its history in the performance art practice of the 1970′s. Informed by the work of such artists as the Viennese Aktionists, Coum Transmissions and Chris Burden, the artists who engage in this particular practice choose to use their own bodies, pushing the boundaries of social taboo. Creating more of an interrogation than a dialogue, the spectator is forced into making choices about questions of identity and difference and the nature of mortality.

In order to negotiate these particular practices has proved problematic, as the performances now only exist in a fragmentary way within photographs and videos. Of course, this documentation is not the performance itself. A photograph or video is a snapshot of time and cannot be totally representative. In an age of mass information overload, where we have become de-conditioned to atrocities committed in the name of politics, global terrorism and famine, the ‘news’ documentation played back on radio and television does not tell the real story. We are conditioned to objectify violations of the body and remove ourselves from immersion in such actions and feelings. The curators (journalists and TV news presenters) of this spectacle manipulate our points of view, numbing us to the reality of events happening in distant countries to ‘the other’.

The use of blood within Live Art forces the viewer into re-considering their own bodily vulnerability and to question issues of gender roles. As Live Artists use their own bodies as a site for inquiry, there is an immediacy of similarity between the viewers and viewed, which does not require any academic training to understand. As such, immediate actions onto the body have generated a discourse that reaches beyond the confines of the Fine Art arena. Press interest has created a reputation for these artists that places them as ‘the other’ onto which we can project our own fears about bodily invasion and destruction, where we can directly experience such violent actions by attending a performance, not constructed and removed from reality in the manner television forces us to.

Artists such as Franko B and Ron Athey provoke such a discourse, but one that is fuelled by reputation rather than experience. A sense of control, which could easily lapse into chaos, is the constant concern of such direct actions onto the body. With the disneyfication of difference so prevalent within Western culture, these artists are seeking to re-address the balance and re-affirm their own identities, using taboos such as blood, nakedness and socially sanctioned ‘self-harm’ to explore their own bodies. Traditional Fine Art notions of ‘the space’ and ‘the body’ become ‘this space’ and ‘this body’.


Ron Athey’s practice is informed by his years of heroin addiction, a fundamentalist pentecostal upbringing, his mother being an institutionalised schizophrenic and ultimately his diagnosis of HIV fifteen years ago. His performances seek to negotiate his relationship to these events, creating a theatre of spectacle in which the viewer is implicated. His use of religious tableau to address these issues further enhances notions of social taboo and stigma. Disussing the idea of theatre and performance as cathartic methods of expression, Athey states,


"Like the plague, the theatre is the time of evil, the triumph of dark powers that are nourished by a power even more profound until extinction...The theatre like the plague, is in the image of this carnage and this essential separation. It releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities, and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is the fault not of the plague nor of the theatre, but of life".

(Exposures, 2002, pg 6)

In “Four Scenes from a Harsh Life” he inserts 30 hypodermic needles into his arm, referencing his time as an intravenous drug user. He then, with the help of his ‘medical’ staff, inserts a crown of ‘thorns’ (hypodermic needles again), enacting Christ’s death. As he collapses on the floor, his assistants cover him with a white shroud and he is carried to the centre of the stage. After a short while he is cleansed with water and is ‘resurrected’.

During “Nurses’ Penance,” he re-creates the institutional terror of a hospital setting, with a patient brutalized by huge drag-queen nurses with sewn-together lips. In another piece he’s writhing naked, on one end of a double-headed dildo. His richest source for material, though, is the church. Most of his pieces have religious names like ‘Martyrs and Saints’ and ‘Deliverance’, along with characters like St. Sebastian, who’s martyred with a literal crown of thorns that causes blood to rain onto his face and the floor. Much of his work is driven by a sense of martyrdom and, arguably, a self-hate instilled on him from childhood.

Athey attracted international attention in 1994, after a Minneapolis performance in which he sliced into the back of a fellow performance artist, placed strips of paper towel over the wounds and then hoisted the bloodied strips of paper towel, via pulley, over the heads of the audience. Though no blood dripped down onto the audience, and though the performer who was cut was HIV negative, Athey’s own HIV positive status led one audience member to claim that the crowd had been spattered with HIV-positive blood.

Within these performances, the spectator is forced into a position of passive voyeurism. The audience act as conduits for this dialogue that is critical to Athey’s performances. Whilst Athey maintains the power, the audience are left helpless as he metamorphoses himself, through methods of live body modification. Although Athey presents himself to us as an artist, he is also allowing us to observe a process of healing and catharsis. Though Athey does not use documentation in a way that is representative (ie he doesn’t exhibit this work in a gallery), videos of his work provide us with a snapshot of the experience of his performances. His use of theatre to present the ‘real’, adds further signifiers to his work. Referencing notions of catholic ritual and linking this to the idea of Christ as drug taker (although by inference) he opens up a discourse on the nature of religion and its use of ritual.


The use of blood in Franko B’s performances operates as a different signifier. Franko B is not HIV+ and he uses blood as an affirmation of life. His short pieces involve cutting, scarification and other apparent S/M practices. The direct use of his body in these performances removes any notions of ‘representation’. In order to fully experience Franko B, one has to be present as part of a complete visual, physical and emotional immersion in the work.

His performances such as ‘I Miss You’, when he walks down a canvas in a room set up like a fashion show, with photographers situated at one end, to heighten the sense of voyeurism, seek to implicate the viewer further. ‘Oh Lover Boy’ sites Franko as an ‘artists model’. To quote from Gray Watsons interview with Franko B,


"Oh Lover Boy is going to be a performance piece where again, the body is presented: it's there on the table. It is there for you to take, in a way, either to draw or to look at...the set-up is going to be almost like a life-drawing class but there is also a clinical side, where it is like you are looking at a body. But it is not passive; it is not a dead body, in a way it's giving life by bleeding. And he's looking at you".

(Gray Watson, 2000)

Franko’s performances reference his childhood being brought up by the Red Cross. Using a diatribe of medical equipment such a syringes, drip stands and wheel chairs, Franko re-enforces notions of healing, but also control, amidst the perceived chaos of his performances. He can only perform three times a year because of the amount of healing that needs to take place after his performances.

Franko’s other work, (which is regularly exhibited, unlike Ron Athey’s documentation) consists of collages and installations. His collage work, references his ‘real’ experiences, and documents his whole life. This again raises issues of vulnerability, as he is leaving nothing to the imagination. Flyers from his performances and pictures of ‘boys I went out with’ (Gray Watson, 2000) mingle with images of religious artefacts and blood stained sheets from his performances.

Issues of power arise here, as the viewer is implicated in the performance by default. Franko appears as helpless and vulnerable, but also has power over his audience. If Franko performed in the street, the context would be different and issues of legality would be raised. This issue of contextualisation also raises issues of safety and notions of control and chaos.

Both Ron Athey and Franko B have ‘medical’ helpers during their performances. They act as signifiers within the performance, to connote to the viewer notions of control and safety. This safety angle is always printed on the flyers, to reassure the viewer. There is a paradox here, as the people that are supposed to ‘help’ during Franko B’s performance, also cut him with a razor during ‘Oh Lover Boy’. The medical helpers are in fact trained body-piercers, with basic anatomy training. As soon as this fact has been established during the performance, these signifiers change.

Both Athey and Franko B as gay men question the nature of masculinity. At their performances, it is the men who recoil against the walls of the venue, normally in foetal positions, returning to maternal signifiers as if about to be castrated. The spilling of blood, whatever the connotation intended by the artist, has the effect of rendering the audience impotent, either to their own bodies or to the performance itself. They cannot help the performers, even though they feel their natural reaction is to do so.

There is also a sense that the performers are acting ‘privately’ and the viewer is intruding into a sacred shamanic ritual. Shamanism is normally associated with women, blood letting during menstruation being an important part of ‘walking with the spirits’. Although, shamans tend to operate outside the confines of accepted social practice, they act as a conduit to ‘other-worldly’ access and are relied upon by the rest of the tribe to maintain a sense of unity. Within the framework of Live Art, the performers provide this access so that the viewers themselves can reach the dark underworld of the shaman. Within Western culture, it appears that men are not supposed to reveal their feelings, let alone share any intimate details about themselves with the outside world. By the direct action onto their bodies and the use of blood, Franko and Athey challenge this notion.

The letting of blood is seen as ‘unclean’. This mythology probably originated in the Old Testament where it is seen that,


"She is to be 'put apart for her uncleanness' for seven days".

(Lev. 18:19)

“Any man who lies with her during this time is also unclean for seven days, anyone who touches her is unclean till the evening, and everything that she sitteth upon shall be unclean”.

(Lev. 15:19-24)

Throughout the history of art we have encountered images of blood from the earliest cave paintings through centuries of biblical images and through to war films such as Apocalypse Now. It both fascinates us and repulses us. It has come to represent both the sacred and profane. Live Artists use this dichotomy as a way of personal transformation. At the performances there is a sense of sacredness that transcends orthodox religious methods. This could explain why the Christian Church is opposed to such direct actions onto the body. It appals them that something non-religious can actually achieve the same transcendental experience that religion is supposed to offer. In Judaeo-Christian cultures, blood ‘sacrifice’ cannot be culturally sanctioned because of notions of idolatry, where the artist are using their own bodies to ‘redeem’ themselves as opposed to appeals to God.

In his book ‘Violence and the Sacred’, Rene Girards’ theory of sacrifice states,


"The physical metamorphoses of spilt blood can stand for the double nature of violence...Blood serves to illustrate that the same substance can stain or cleanse, contaminate or purify, drive men to fury and murder or appease their anger and restore them to life"

(Girard, 1972)

The process of purification that the artists are trying to achieve can sometimes fail, not providing the audience with the signifier of life that blood performances seek to inform the viewer about. The aforementioned performance by Ron Athey called ‘Martyrs and Saints’ which used supposed HIV blood being heaved across the heads of the audience on a pulley system created an outcry. This could be because the blood was seen as ‘polluted’, making the ‘artist an unacceptable surrogate sacrificial victim for a healthy community’ (Dawn Perlmutter, 2000). In a sense, the signifier contained within the blood changed its meaning and the ritual which was meant to be a demonstration of transcendence through bodily mutilation failed. The distance between the observer and observed was very wide and the artists role as shaman became disjointed, hence the public outcry. The success of such actions is dependent on the audience feeling close to the Live Artists performance.


The antagonism towards Live Art does not detract from the fact that Live Art is a growing method of expression. It could be seen as an attempt to disrupt societal and personal boundaries through methods of physical sacrifice and as a process of purification. Although sometimes the ritual, as in Athey’s case, can fail, it is still a ritual which people observe. With the growth of interest in body piercing and tattooing due largely to information being disseminated via the internet, what was once the reserve of underground S/M clubs has now become an overground method of artistic practice. There is an obvious need for people to get back in touch with their own bodies as the site of inquiry, as is evidenced by the recent series of events at the Tate Modern, running over the course of a weekend at the end of March this year called ‘Live Culture’. This exhibition brought together Live Artists from various schools, to inform, perform and debate. Depending on audience interest, the movement will continue to undermine social convention and will move away from the purely aesthetic and personal transformation on the part of the artists, into the realms of communal transformation.

Jason Oliver
May 2003

References

Bibliography

  • Danto, Arthur C (1986). The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. Columbia University Press: New York.
  • Eliade, M (1987). The Encyclopedia of Religion. Macmillan Publishing Co: New York.
  • Stuart, H (1997). Representation, Cultural Represenations and Signifying Practices. Bath Press Colourbooks: Glasgow.
  • Keidan, L, Morgan, S and Sinclair, S. (1998). Franko B. Black Dog Publishing: London.
  • V, Manuel, Watson, G and Wilson, S. (2001). Franko B – Oh Lover Boy. Black Dog Publishing: London.
  • V,Vale and Juno, A. (1989). Modern Primitives, An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual: Re/Search Publications: San Francisco, CA.
  • Wollheim, R. (1980). Art And Its Objects. University Press: Cambridge.


Jason Oliver is currently working on his BA (Hons) Graphic Fine Art course in London, UK. His main areas of concern are ritual, body modification, and performances linking the two. He is researching social taboos and the general public’s response to direct actions onto the body and has a special interest in the use of blood, both in art and in ‘tribal’ rituals and how it acts as different signifiers depending on cultural context.

He is an active opponent to cultural appropriation of body ritual, finding it both undermining and patronising but instead explores the role that modification plays to himself personally, without cultural references, by pushing his body into new areas of experience, with documentation being a pre-requisite.

This article was written as a precursor to his thesis, currently entitled ‘The Body as Transformative Object’. You can find Jason on IAM as coldcell.

Copyright © 2003 Jason Oliver and BMEzine.com LLC. Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published online August 20th, 2003 by BMEzine.com LLC in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

Who is Jim Ward? [Running The Gauntlet – By Jim Ward]

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1: Who Is Jim Ward?

A recent MTV documentary called me “the granddaddy of thae modern piercing movement”, in case you were wondering who I am. Maybe that gives me sufficient credentials to write a bit every now and then about the history of modern piercing and how it has evolved into what it’s become today. After all I helped create a lot of that history.

Even if you never heard my name before, maybe you’ve heard of the business I started back in 1975 called Gauntlet. That business provided an outlet and a means for me to make the world aware of the wonders of piercing.

In the months to come I’d like to tell you something about your roots. The modern piercing movement didn’t just suddenly happen. It evolved, and part of that evolution started with me. Not that you’re interested in my whole life story, but a little background to put it all in perspective wouldn’t be out of place.

I was born in the bleakness that is Western Oklahoma six months before Pearl Harbor. Looking back on it much of my childhood was just as barren and desolate as the landscape.

I couldn’t wait to escape. In the back yard of one place we lived, there was a beat up old trailer with wooden slat sides and flat tires that had long ceased to be roadworthy. I remember often climbing up to the top and looking out at the distant two-lane highway and longing to follow that road anywhere just so long as it was away from the desolation of small-town life.

My parents were childhood sweethearts who eloped and secretly married shortly after they graduated from high school. The year I was born they both turned 21, perhaps a bit young to undertake the responsibilities of a family. Seldom was the rod — more often the belt — spared. They thought this would build character and assure that I wasn’t spoiled. Instead it resulted in a fearful, timid child indoctrinated with Presbyterian guilt. Years later in therapy I remembered being told, “We punish you because we love you.” Translation: punishment equals love. Not difficult to understand how S/M became rooted in my psyche!

Fifth grade was my last school year in Oklahoma. My teacher was Miss Newman, a horse-faced old maid so uptight she considered “fanny” a dirty word. What I remember most vividly from that year was an incident involving one of my classmates. His name was James and he was an impish kid with a knack for getting into mischief. He and several others were in the boys’ restroom during recess one day. After finishing at the urinal he turned and demonstrated for the rest of us how his penis got bigger and harder when he stroked it. Whether or not he had any clue what that was all about I’ve no idea. I was simultaneously appalled and fascinated. Something told me this was naughty and sinful and that I should pray for him.

My family moved to Colorado just in time for me to hit puberty at age eleven. Growing up in a very religious household where the subject of sex was hardly ever discussed left me totally unprepared for what was happening in my body. My mind kept flashing back to that day in the boys’ room when James had played with himself. Inevitably I had to try it myself. It felt so good I didn’t want to stop. Suddenly and unexpectedly the most incredible sensation swept over me, and, with an uncontrollable spasm, white fluid shot from my penis. Don’t ask me why, but I called that white stuff cultured piss. In retrospect it seems amazing that the whole experience didn’t freak me out. Perhaps the guilt and shame and the fear of discovery were more powerful, so powerful, in fact, that I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone.

Once the intense, guilty pleasure of masturbation had been discovered, nothing, despite my greatest efforts, could stop me from doing it for very long. Prayer didn’t help. Memorizing and reciting bible verses didn’t help. Not quite understanding why, I began to develop crushes on some of my classmates, the young men who worked as church youth counselors, and on the newly appointed youth minister. Before his conversion, one of the counselors apparently had been something of a bad boy and had gotten into trouble. He had a tattoo on one forearm, and I found myself strangely attracted to him. I wanted desperately to be close to all these guys, to please them, to be noticed by them, to…? There was an undefined longing for something for which I had no name. It was agony.

 
Charles Atlas (click the picture to see some of his comic book ads).


Do comic books still contain those ads for Charles Atlas where the cartoon bully kicks sand in the face of the “97-pound weakling” only to get his comeuppance later when said weakling becomes a buff bodybuilder? The ads usually included a large photo of some muscle-bound hunk. In spite of the fact that I lacked any knowledge of the mechanics of sex, I frequently locked myself in the bathroom or the basement and jacked off looking at those photos and fantasizing myself naked and bound and forced in some vague way to please my tormentor.

In time the burden I was carrying became unbearable, and I finally sought counsel from the church youth minister. The moment was painfully awkward, and I don’t remember how I expressed what was troubling me and I don’t recall everything that was said. I do remember Rev. Bill telling me there were three kinds of sexual expression: between a man and woman, between two men (for some reason he didn’t think to include two women), and masturbation. His mention of male/female sex elicited no response. It’s possible mention of the male/male thing made me pale or blush. I don’t know, but it probably wasn’t difficult to see how uncomfortable I was when he got around to masturbation. His counsel was low-key, and frankly I don’t recall much about it. He did take the time at least to enlighten me on the basics of sexual intercourse.

 
Rev. Bill in church (c. 1958). The first man I ever had a sexual encounter with.


Soon after this talk with the youth minister I had one of my first sexual experiences with another person, Rev. Bill. One night we found ourselves sitting in the darkened church talking about something. Rev. Bill put his hand on my leg and slowly moved to unzip my fly, reach inside my pants, and begin to play with me. I was nervous and found it difficult to get erect, but I didn’t want him to stop. I reached over and began to fondle him. This mutual masturbation continued for a little while until he excused himself and said he had to go to the bathroom. A few minutes later he returned and it was clear that the encounter was over. We had one other such experience the following summer at church camp.

I lost contact with Rev. Bill. His proclivities eventually got him into trouble. He ended up marrying a woman some said was old enough to be his mother — I don’t recall if he ever had a child — and moved to a church in the Seattle area. Some years later I learned he had died of AIDS.

As my high school years were drawing to a close, I became increasingly hostile to the religion of my family. My best friend, with whom I had done some sexual experimentation, was an Episcopalian. I began going to church with him and eventually became a member.

The Episcopal Church was in a little tourist town called Manitou Springs. Across the street from it was a very nice little gift shop that didn’t sell the usual tacky souvenirs. Instead it was a place to find beautiful local crafts plus fine china, glassware and the like. John, the owner, was quick to spot a young gay man, and discovering my lack of experience, set about introducing me into the local gay community, such as it was in 1959. I worked for John that summer and was taken under the wing of a kindly older gentleman named Frank who introduced me to the various expressions of gay sex, at least the non-kinky variety. I was beginning to discover myself.

 
Frank in his Knights of Columbus regalia (c. 1959). He brought me out.

For several years after high school graduation I bounced back and forth from one school to another trying to find a vocation, but was so emotionally fucked up I couldn’t stick with anything. The mid-to-late 60s found me in New York working in various design-related jobs. Two things were noteworthy about this period, for they would have a significant bearing upon the establishing of Gauntlet. First, I took a number of classes in jewelry making. Second, I discovered the world of gay S/M and piercing.

From the onset of puberty my masturbatory fantasies always involved S/M. When I jacked off I would frequently experiment with various kinds of bondage. I also discovered that intense nipple work was a big turn on and began experimenting with all kinds of clamps.

The year was 1967, and I was living in Brooklyn Heights in an ancient brownstone apartment building at the foot of Joralemon Street known to the local gays as Vaseline Flats because of the sexual orientation of many residents. From my bathroom window I could look down on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and the East River.

A few blocks away on Montague Street, two gay guys, Steve and Marc, had opened a small bookstore. A friendship developed. As we became better acquainted, they disclosed that they were members of the New York Motor Bike Club, a group of gay men into leather and S/M. Here was my opportunity to explore that side of my personality that I had kept secret for so long. I felt much like I did when I discovered I was gay and that I wasn’t alone. There were others who shared the same drives and longings.

In the mid-60s the gay S/M scene was nothing like it is today. Things were far from codified. No one had ever heard of safe words. It wasn’t even clear whether wearing ones keys on the left meant you were a top or a bottom and vice versa. On the East Coast it was said it meant you were a top, but if you were from the West Coast it meant you were a bottom. The bandana color code was still several years in the future. Just how much actual S/M was going on is hard for me to say. In my own experience what passed for S/M was mostly rough sex with a little role playing and bondage thrown in on occasion.

 
Here I am (c. 1967) at the New York Motorbike Clubhouse in my new outfit.


The “leather boutique” where you could outfit yourself and your toy collection was also some time away. One afternoon I took the subway to Delancy Street, one of New York’s Jewish neighborhoods. This was hardly the place I would have expected to find a motorcycle jacket, but someone from the motorbike club had given me the address of a tiny clothing store where I could find one at an extremely low price. A very orthodox looking merchant waited on me and helped me find a jacket that fit.

My next stop was a Western wear store where I purchased a pair of Levi’s, a pair of Wellington boots, and a black cowboy hat. Having grown up in orthopedic shoes I expected the boots to be uncomfortable, but to my amazement they weren’t. With my purchases in hand I could hardly wait to get back to my apartment. I immediately took off all my clothes, put on the boots and jacket, and jacked off in front of a mirror, the feel and smell of the leather fueling my lust. It felt like a rite of passage. I was finally becoming myself.

About this time I read a magazine article about a man who had made an extensive sea voyage. To mark the occasion he had had his ear pierced. Reading this article triggered something in my psyche. I simply had to have an ear pierced. It didn’t matter that it was 1967, and most men didn’t wear earrings. This was just something I had to do.

 
A fellow NYMBC member, Ron did me the honor of piercing my ear.

The New York Motorbike Clubhouse was a storefront near the foot of Christopher Street, a short distance from the docks and the leather bars. With Steve and Marc’s sponsorship, I joined NYMBC and made friends with a number of the members. One of them was a man named Ron. Ron had been a merchant seaman and had the tattoos to go with the profession. Even his earlobes were tattooed with stars, in the middle of which were piercings. His tattoos and pierced ears turned me on, and led us to share some sexual exploits. We ended up as good buddies. It was natural that when I made the decision to have an ear pierced, I asked Ron to do it. One weekend we got together and Ron pierced my ear with a large sewing needle. With a bit of maneuvering he was finally able to insert a small gold ear stud through the piercing. It was done.

At the time I was working in a decorator showroom that sold tacky pictures and statuary to interior designers. Naturally I was concerned that my pierced ear would not be acceptable to my employer. Still I had to leave something in the piercing for at least six weeks until it was sufficiently healed to be able to leave it out through the work day. Every morning before I left for work I would carefully clean the piercing and put a Band-Aid over it. If anyone asked I could always say I cut myself shaving. No one ever asked. At the end of six weeks I would take the stud out before going to work and insert it again when I got home. The piercing healed and is with me today.

For several years nipple play was something that I found highly erotic. I’ve no idea how it even came about, but at some point I began fantasizing about piercing my nipples and wearing gold rings in them. It was a fantasy that never ceased to turn me on, but I was afraid to actually admit it to anyone. One Saturday afternoon I even attempted to pierce my own nipples.

An ex-lover of mine was a watchmaker. He had a small tool box filled with various materials that he used in his trade. Among them was a small roll of thin gold wire. I snipped a few inches of it and from it fashioned a couple of small gold rings about 3/8″ in diameter. Although I filed the ends so there would be no burrs or rough edges, they still had no closure and were way too thin for the job. At the time I had no way of knowing this was important.

That fateful Saturday afternoon I took the gold rings, the cork from a bottle of wine, and a push pin and soaked them in a small dish of alcohol. After cleaning my nipples with some of the alcohol, I pressed the cork against one side, the point of the push pin on the other, and taking a deep breath forced the pin through and into the cork. It hurt, but not that badly. By this time I was sweating and feeling a bit light-headed. After lying down for a few minutes, I recovered enough to proceed. It would be necessary to remove the pin to insert the ring. When I did, the wound began to bleed a little, but fortunately not enough to be a problem. The difficult part was trying to maneuver the round ring through the straight hole. This took several harrowing minutes, but I finally succeeded. All that remained was to do the other nipple. Somehow I managed. It was a testimony to my determination that I finished. But soon afterward I freaked out a bit at what I had done and removed the rings. By the following morning, were it not for the pleasurable tenderness, I would not have known what had happened the previous day.

 
Fernando, a legend in the NY leather scene, was the first man I ever saw with pierced nipples.


But the fantasy of pierced nipples would not go away. Finally after a few weeks I gathered up my determination and my trusty makeshift tools and repeated the ordeal. This time I left the rings in place, though I was very closeted about having them and carefully removed them before going to bed with anyone. After sex I would get dressed, go to the bathroom, and reinsert the rings.

At this point in my life I had never seen or heard of anyone with pierced nipples even in the pages of National Geographic. That was soon to change. One weekend night I went to the Village to hang out at the NYMBC. Standing shirtless by the bar was a hunk of a man. Even in the subdued light there was no missing the glint of gold on his muscular chest. His nipples were pierced. I learned that his name was Fernando and that he was something of a local legend. Though I was never fortunate enough to enjoy the intimate pleasure of his company, he at least let me know that once again I was not alone.

Next: From New York to Hollywood

Jim Ward is is one of the cofounders of body piercing as a public phenomena in his role both as owner of the original piercing studio Gauntlet and the original body modification magazine PFIQ, both long before BME staff had even entered highschool. He currently works as a designer in Calfornia where he lives with his partner.

Copyright © 2003 BMEzine.com LLC. Requests to publish full, edited, or shortened versions must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published August 17th, 2003 by BMEzine.com LLC in Tweed, Ontario, Canada

Beauty: Eye of the Beholder? – Fakir Rants & Raves

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Beauty: Eye of the Beholder?

“The body belongs to the spirit that lives inside. And to no one else.”

Greetings

Welcome to my new column. It’s a genuine pleasure to be a contributor to BME online news for “we the alternative people”. After fifty years of research, my own personal explorations and the mentoring of hundreds of others, I feel obligated to share with all those special persons “who hear the sound of a different drummer.” So every month now, look for this column where I will bring you a mix of news, views and hopefully information that will empower and help you further your own passions. I welcome challenges and questions to answer in the column. So feel free to write me about whatever moves you. As an “old dad” in the body modification movement, I hope to offer this column as a clearing house for new ideas/adventures and hopefully a place to moderate some of the conflicting views that often plague us.

The subject of this first column is inspired by my recent experience with a new television show now in production. The show is a series being called Eye of the Beholder in which the host, Serena Yang, is traveling all over the world to film and interview people who are different — from the moko mark revival devotees of New Zealand to gothic corset wearers in San Francisco to body piercing and tattoo fans in the U.S., Canada and Europe. The series, which will air on Discovery Channel in 2004, has an interesting and intelligent slant. Its theme is exploration of the question: What is Beauty?

Serena interviewed me in depth in May 2003. She will continue interviewing folks of our ilk at the coming APP conference in Las Vegas. She is a sharp and perceptive interviewer who honed her skills interviewing such celebrities as B.B King, Carlos Santana, Ravi Shankar, Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford and Sean Penn among others. She has a passion to ask why one does what they do. She has said of herself, “the value of listening to these people is a continuing education for me … the reward is coming away from each person with a wider vision of the times we live in, the issues we need to explore and the choices we can make.”

So with that introduction, I spoke at length to Serena about Modern Primitives, body modification, body rituals, spirituality and similar topics during my May piercing school. She asked good questions and many of them started my mental processes whirling. I began to ask myself questions like: “what really differentiates the visual impact of one body alteration from another”, or “is there a universal, cross-cultural way to gauge the significance of a beauty ideal”? After the interview, Serena came very close to surrendering to our persistent Intensive instructors about having her nipples pierced. We’ll get her next time!


Intensives instructor Tod Almighty meets Serena Yang of Discovery Channel
Tod tries to convince Serena to get her nipples pierced.

For my next shoot with Discovery Channel, at Dark Garden Corsets, Serena did allow herself to get involved in a bodymod. Fakir laced her rapidly into a tiny corset with a twenty-inch waist. She reeled about, spun on high heels, panted and was totally delighted with the sensation and look. She emailed me today:

"Good to see you again last week and experience your corsets first hand! I am a corset convert now, thanks to you! I've always liked them from a fashion standpoint, but now I can appreciate them on all their myriad levels."

The Price of Beauty

Getting down to brass tacks (which are sometimes lovely to sit on), many of us are obsessed with being different, looking different, expressing our differences. Yes? Why are we doing this? What is the payoff? These are the kinds of questions Serena asked me in our interviews. They made me think. What is the Essence of Beauty anyway? What’s the payoff? What are we, or anyone in any other culture, after by making a body alteration?

First it seems obvious we wish to satisfy our own vision of ourselves, how we look and feel to ourselves. And second, and probably more important, we wish to look “beautiful” to others. Of course we must realize some “others” may have different ideas of what is beautiful and claim ownership of what is not rightfully theirs. For example, take the proposed legislative ban on tongue splitting in Illinois. And we know that most of the “others” in our culture are programmed and conditioned to certain fixed notions that may conflict with our own. And that they often try to take our bodies from us — act like they have the right to claim possession of what is ours for “God” and his emissaries, or parents and spouses, or governmental and correctional agencies, or educational and medical institutions. But we know better. The body belongs to the spirit that lives inside. And to no one else.

So in context of any immediate or intimate group that accepts the truth that the body belongs to the one living inside it, the payoff often seems to be to “Stand Out in the Crowd”, to be unique, to be special, to be noticed in that group. This part of the “beauty ideal” seems to be universal in all cultures. In many tribal cultures I have studied, certain members of the tribe either volunteered or were selected by elders to be modified. Example: the young males of New Guinea known as Ibitoe whose septums were pierced for large spikes and whose waists were systematically reduced to wasp-like proportions with tight belts. They were special in their communities, honored, revered. Same goes for women in Africa whose lips were pierced and enlarged to hold huge plates. The larger the plate, the more beautiful. And the Padung women of Burma/Thailand with their giraffe necks stretched to ten inches or more.

So now in the mixed contemporary culture in which we live, there are conflicting standards about beauty and the way it is achieved. On the one hand there is a passion to conform to certain popular beauty ideals by “quick fixes”: injections of botox or collagen, plastic surgery like liposuction or breast implants that make a rapid physical alteration. Or the taking of pills to do this or that with the body without external effort. On the other hand, a different kind of logic rules in those who modify their body in more difficult, more time consuming and more deliberate ways via tattooing, body building, piercing enlargement, corseting and similar practices. I guess that’s most of us. Yes?

So on a universal scale, what are some of the standards by which mankind has cross-culturally gauged the relative value of beauty? How do we rate beauty’s significance on a scale of 1 to 10? After collecting information on hundreds of examples of body mods in different cultures, including our own subculture, this is what I discovered:

  • In general, the more effort, time, discipline, persistence, patience and physical hardship that was endured to make the alteration, the more precious it is rated, the more it is honored, the more beautiful it is.
  • The more the alteration sets one apart from those surrounding him or her,
    even if others also have the alteration, the higher it is rated in the group which generally prizes rarity.
  • Beauty is perceived more as difference than conformity; when too many members of a group have the same alteration, it drops in value.
  • To illustrate the reality of these principles in contemporary circumstances, here are a few examples. A woman with a sixteen-inch corseted waist is more apt to “stand out” in a crowd than a woman with silicon breast implants (unless they are as big as watermelons). Point is you can’t have that small a waist by taking a pill or a quick slice of the knife. It takes time. Or you have the buff male body builder on the beach. He is always going to draw more admiration than the guy with a fake tan, snappy clothes and plastic surgery. And in our own world of body mods, we often get more and more radical piercings and tattoos so we stand out from others — keep pressing limits to achieve or maintain beauty status within our group.

    • How would you rate these body modifiers on a universal Scale of 1 to 10?

    Erica
    Sheryl
    Fakir

    Value Added

    So far in this column, I have been examining only one aspect of what’s involved with alterations of the body (what I call “Body Play”): a specific aspect labeled BEAUTY. But “beauty” only deals with the aesthetic side of life, the part of us that dwells in the five-sense world, only relevant with other people. How about the deeper side of us that operates in the “invisible world”? How about the inner emotions, feelings, spirit and energy that animates the body? Or going one step further, how about unseen forces and beings that may dwell outside the body and influence or be influenced by what is happening within body? What if body rituals dealing with the unseen world somehow play a bigger role in our life journey than those so obvious to the five senses? Body rituals like cutting, ball dances, suspensions or hook pulling? Or what if our energy added to such a “gift” delivered under hardship to an unseen deity or archetype adds value to the gift in such a way that we receive a very special blessing in return? That’s what they practice in Hindu Culture in body rites and festivals like Thaipusam.

    The aspects of body alteration dealing with unseen forces and energies will be the subject of my next column. It will be called Body Play: State of Grace or Sickness. Again I will focus on the cultural conflicts we are all facing when we give in to our passions.

    Yours for more beauty in the world and less struggle,


    Fakir Musafar
    fakir at bodyplay dot com


    Fakir Musafar is the undisputed father of the Modern Primitives movement and through his work over the past 50 years with PFIQ, Gauntlet, Body Play, and more, he has been one of the key figures in bringing body modification out of the closet in an enlightened and aware fashion.

    For much more information on Fakir and the subjects discussed in this column, be sure to check out his website at www.bodyplay.com. While you’re there you should consider whipping out your PayPal account and getting yourself a signed copy of his amazing book, SPIRIT AND FLESH (now).

    Copyright © 2003 BMEzine.com LLC Requests to republish must be confirmed in writing. For bibliographical purposes this article was first published May 18th, 2003 by BMEzine.com LLC in Tweed, Ontario, Canada.

    Should Todd Bertrang Go To Jail? [The Publisher’s Ring]

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    Should Todd Bertrang Go To Jail?


    "The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or to impede their efforts to obtain it."


    – John Stuart Mill

    As many of you know, body modification artist Todd Bertrang was arrested under charges of practising medicine without a license via “Operation Safe Medicine” in December for performing female genital cutting and other unusual procedures. Even though the procedures were all consensual, and Todd Bertrang has one of the highest customer satisfaction levels in this community, the state medical board investigators referred to the people getting the procedures as “victims” and called the procedures “illegal and disfiguring”*.

    Let’s be honest for a minute about the world of underground extreme body modification: it’s a dangerous and unregulated industry which contains many shady characters, as well as many gems who are genuinely improving the lives of thousands of people. I’m not writing this column to tell you that I think Todd Bertrang is one of those gems, nor am I writing this to tell you the opposite. Todd is very up front about who he is and what he does, so there’s no deception going on, and readers can make up their mind for themselves.

    But there’s a larger issue at stake: Do we as free individuals have the right to dictate what happens to our bodies? Do we as free individuals have the right to choose who will alter our bodies, or may we only do so with the approval of state-licensed “experts”?

    People seek out Todd Bertrang over other practitioners (including doctors) because he is one of the few people experienced in and willing to perform radical female cutting including clitorodectomies (removal of part or all of the clitoris – and before you freak out, yes, sex is still a lot of fun afterwards) – these are not procedures generally offered by the “official” medical community in America. So not only are they telling Todd that he can’t do the procedure, but they are also telling us, as “free” individuals, that we may not have the procedure done by anyone!

    Todd Bertrang’s first court date is January 21st in downtown Los Angeles at 8:30AM. Anyone wishing to go and show their support should go to the courthouses at 210 W. Temple Street Div #30 at that time.

    To quote Shawn Porter’s comments on the subject,


    Regardless of your feelings about Todd personally (I'm quite fond of the old pervert) his arrest brings with it a wakeup call that people ARE paying attention to what we're doing "underground" these days. Mark my words: this will not be the last arrest of a modification artist (Ask Alva and Steve T.).... so if you want to show up and lend Todd some support, I'm sure he'll welcome you.

    And he’s right – they know perfectly well Todd isn’t practising medicine, and if they win this they will systematically eliminate any private practitioner not willing to pay their dues. Was Todd offering body modification services? Definitely. Advanced sexual services and counselling? Definitely. But he was not offering medical treatment in any AMA-traditional definition of the word.

    I know a lot of people have issues with Todd. He comes from a different background than many of the younger generation of cutters and piercers, and I think they have difficulty understanding why he sees the world the way he does. On that note, I’d like to let Todd speak for himself. Several years ago I interviewed him for BMEradio. A transcript of that interview follows this column.

    Todd can be reached via his website at www.toddbertrang.com or on IAM as (obviously) “Todd Bertrang“.

    Thank you, and good luck,

    Shannon Larratt

    BMEzine.com

    * You have to love how it’s “disfigurement” when we do it, but if the person doing it has paid their fees to the government to get a doctor’s certificate, it then becomes “cosmetic surgery”.


    Shannon Larratt: Welcome back everyone, I’m Shannon Larratt and you’re listening to the 16th broadcast of BMEradio. Today’s show may be a little bit more discoordinated than usual cause we’re doing this interview across time zones, so it’s real late here and I’ve got coffee in one hand and a beer in the other hand. So, probably not a healthy thing. Anyway, the person we’re speaking with today is probably generated more online hate mail than any other body modification artist but at the same time almost everyone that’s had work done by him swears by him and never goes to a mainstream piercer again. His techniques involve almost exclusively large gauges and the majority of his procedures use a scalpel far more than a needle. His aftercare is radically different than what you’d be told by either your piercer or your doctor and to top it all off, his opinions are exclusionary and if you don’t do it his way you’re probably not doing it right. Todd Bertrang, thanks for talking to us today.

    Todd Bertrang: That was quite an intro Shannon.

    SL: It was.

    TB: I was trying not to giggle on the other end. [laugh]

    SL: [laugh]

    TB: Oh boy, I hadn’t quite the idea I had that kind of reputation there [laugh].

    SL: Well if you have anything it’s a reputation. Todd, the first thing I want to ask you about is piercing technique. Why go big?

    TB: Well, the right size is not necessarily big. It’s the right size for the right body part. When you’re dealing in below the neck areas you’re generally dealing in an area that moves more such as the navel, in an area that swells and expands and contracts considerably with heat, cold, and sexual arousals such as your nipples and your genital region. When you’re dealing in a thin gauge such as a 14 gauge (ga), you put it in your earlobe or your eyebrow well hey, that’s just fine. But these areas do not do that. When you have a thin gauge in these areas it tends to be like a dull knife in the skin and continually cuts the skin area building up massive scar tissue which becomes hardened and then continually cuts over time and causes loss of sensation, migration, rejection, all kinds of serious problems such as a permanent pathway for all types of infectious diseases to get into the body. It’s really bad for you to start with the wrong thing in the wrong area. The difference here of opinion is if you have a thin gauge and you heal in a inappropriate manner, most people consider that if they have a ring in their thing it would be a good piercing. And that is not my opinion. A ring in your thing means that you have a ring in your thing and that’s it. It doesn’t make it good, it doesn’t make it bad.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: But it can be done generally better than putting, shall we say a 14 ga in your nipple for example, much better, with much better results. Doesn’t mean that the 14 ga is wrong it means that you, why go buy a Model T when you can go buy a Ferrari? You know? Why do that?

    SL: Well, I think that some people would say that they like the look of the 14 ga.

    TB: Sure. But some people do it just for looks.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: I agree most of these people who do it for looks have absolutely no concept of how good it can feel with the proper gauge and healing techniques. That is saying, “Well, gee I really want to make love to my boyfriend but um, is this supposed to feel good?”

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: “What’s an orgasm?” [laugh] And there’s people out there like that. I mean really really bad. I went to the Ink Slingers Ball here recently last year and these girls wanted to show me what kind of genital piercings could be done and this girl was thirty some years old, had kids, and had no concept what a hood was or what inner labia was. And Ellen Thompson [AVN magazine] was with me and she saw, “Wait a minute here. You’re like thirty something years old and you’ve got children and you don’t even know what labia is? You’ve never heard this word?” She was just aghast at this girl. And she had no concept.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Okay? And you’re dealing in the same thing if someone has education, takes the time to educate someone about heir body and what can be done and why and what the differences are, they won’t get a 14 ga in their nipple. The problem is, it’s going to take two or three hours to sit there and educate the person what and why and what’s going on and you’re dealing in a profit ratio of thirty plus percent for a 14 ga ring in your nipple as opposed to maybe doubling or tripling your money on a 6 ga ring, if you invest thousands of dollars to have them done properly, which most manufacturers don’t make 6 ga correctly.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: When Silver Anchor was in business literally I’d spend three to ten thousand dollars an order. Okay, and I don’t have the volume that most of these people do. That’s a lot of money. Okay, and I invest that to have my stuff done right and I would still only get my price down to six, 6 ga to twelve dollars a ring, whereas you can buy a 14 ga for a buck.

    SL: Yeah. [affirmative noise] I think part of the other thing is, and this is even more the case in Europe that there’s this sort of denial that even genital piercing is a sexual thing.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: I think there are a lot of piercers who don’t want to admit, you know they want you to believe that it’s a, that it’s just decoration.

    TB: Last I heard I heard in England it’s illegal to get pierced for a sexual reason. You can pierce anything, until you say it’s illegal or something.

    SL: It certainly was. It may not be now but it certainly was at one point.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: And that point where you know those were the rules, that’s when piercing sort of defined itself.

    TB: Right.

    SL: Anyway, I was going to ask you more about this later, but since we’ve moved into it now.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: I want to talk a bit about the overlap between piercing and sexuality. That’s actually how you learned how to pierce.

    TB: Yes, it, when I saw my first piercing, which, if anybody’s read my interview from Gauntlet years ago it was a tremendous emotional, mental, sexual response. And this was, I mean I was 18 years old, and 18 years old and anything new and wild and wow, I mean your hormones are in full swing but at the time you just didn’t see this and this girl was very beautiful and she had her nose pierced of all things and it didn’t even, hadn’t even occurred to me that you could pierce anything besides your ear which was common, if you were a girl, at the time but I mean you didn’t see anything else. It was right here in LA, and I was just like, ‘Oh my god, this is just incredible.’ I must have followed her around the store with my mouth hanging open it was just, it struck me that, that tremendous. And when I finally went out and got pierced which took me, there was several things, it took me so long, one, the relationship I was in six years ago was just, couldn’t deal with it, but society at the time, if you were male and you had a piercing you were considered gay and there’s historical reason for this. Jim Ward, the owner of The Gauntlet was gay, a leather gay, and he was very very heterophobic and literally kept piercings in the closet for many years because of that. Because he didn’t want the straight people to get pierced. He didn’t like them at all. And when he did his first clit piercing, the girl literally had to sit there and show him what a clitoris was, he had no concept at all of what a clitoris was. And the, an interesting aside to Gauntlet, and I want to bring this up right now, my techniques which would make me so controversial are anything but gauntlet techniques. And everybody that is following literally what Gauntlet has developed. Jim Ward was a good businessman. He was the biggest and the best, he was backed by a millionaire, Doug Malloy, which is why he succeeded when everybody else at the time failed, because there were other small people around, but they didn’t have the money, they didn’t have the backing…

    SL: Well I think I want to interject that too…

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: And I think that a lot of people forget that, that you know Gauntlet was the first business and you know there’s this mythology that at the time there were you know seven people in North America involved in piercing but that’s a load of crap right. There were…

    TB: Gauntlet was the only store exclusively devoted to piercing, so I mean there’s the odd ear gun mall or tattooist doing the ear gun piercing in the store.

    SL: What I’m saying is back then even though there weren’t you know piercing studios on every corner like there are now, there were still tens of thousands of people practicing piercing in their homes.

    TB: Yeah there was people piercing in their homes.

    SL: And I think that it was, it didn’t have you know the tribal sort of overtures that a lot of that it has now or any of that it was all in the sexual arena.

    TB: It was entirely, piercing, even Gauntlet came from a sexual arena.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: It was all leather gay. It was all wild intense sex.

    SL: [affirmative noise] But it wasn’t…

    TB: Piercing came from an entirely sexual arena it hasn’t gone to what’s not sexual until recently when people consider you know all the young teeny-boppers who are afraid to admit that, “Gee I get my tongue pierced because I might give my boyfriend head tonight.”

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: You know, they’re too afraid to admit that, “Gee I wanna get fucked.”

    SL: And it’s not just…

    TB: I mean, they’re young kids, they’re immature young kids that do it, because they saw their buddy do it.

    SL: And it’s not just, it’s not even just weird sex too, I mean I think piercing adds to even just vanilla sex.

    TB: [affirmative noise] Oh yeah, it has nothing to do with any type of specific sex but it did come from a very heavy SM environment. Which was Gauntlet’s roots.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: And Gauntlet was created to cater to the leather gay SM environment this was the entire purpose of Gauntlet in its conception.

    SL: Yeah, anyway I want to talk a bit more about this, but we’re going to take a quick music break, this is, my doctor just told me I’m not allowed to eat any more chocolate so…

    TB: [laugh]

    SL: This is some live Shonen Knife who does like chocolate.

         (song plays)

    SL: Todd we were talking on the break about how even, even just facial piercing is a kind of sexual behavior.

    TB: It is. Totally.

    SL: How’s that?

    TB: Whenever you change your body whatsoever, or lack of change, having dreadlocks for example, I don’t wash my hair and I twist it around and round and round and it’s dirty and smelly, whatever you do, whatever you do, I don’t care what it is, you wear a suit, you wear nothing, you paint your body, you cut your hair, you shave your head, anything you do to it to change it’s look will cause your self and your personality to be perceived differently by those around you.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Which is causing a sexual attraction with those around you within a certain parameter based upon your perception of your self of those who you want to attract.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Piercing does this even more so than anything else you can do because it’s a statement, it’s a poke in the eye, “Look at me, look at my shiny thing in my body!” And draws attention to that. And how anybody can say that piercing is a non-sexual thing is literally wearing blinders about what sexuality is all about and what people do. Why does a girl wear a miniskirt, why does she wear makeup, why does she wear perfume, why does she spend thousands of dollars on nice clothes? Because she thinks she’s ugly? Cause she doesn’t want somebody to come up and ask her out? Cause she doesn’t want to feel good about herself? Or because she’s doing it because she feels good about her sexuality and wants to be sexual? You have two choices here.

    SL: No, I…

    TB: A or B.

    SL: Anyway we, you were, we were talking about how you actually learned how to pierce and a lot of it was, it was a period in your life where you were I guess promiscuous and you know you experimented with piercing with your girlfriends and…


    Sanctuary
    by Todd Bertrang


    Looking at the door
    She did not know what was in store
    Trembling with fear
    She felt that HE was near
    Locked in bracelets
    Her neck in a collar

    She knew she could be sold for a dollar
    Timidly knocking
    Kneeling down, she felt the floor against her stockings
    Butterflies in her stomach
    With her labia so incredibly swollen
    She knew it was time for her virginity to be stolen
    A fresh brand on her thigh
    Combined, her slavery, her innermost thoughts,
    Newly healed piercings

    All those things made her so incredibly high
    Abruptly she started
    When she heard the name she had been given called
    The doorway parted
    She tried so hard not to be appalled
    By the looks of the furs
    At the base of the bed
    In the dungeon of her Master
    Knowing what he was after

    A pan was prepared
    That later she may be fed
    From his hand if she was found pleasing
    Now she knew, there would be no teasing
    But she must fulfill every wish, every desire
    Commanded of her
    Brought forth gently by her hair
    Made to kneel
    The collar on her neck chained to the floor

    The foot of the bed
    Next to her the pan
    Where, perhaps, later she may be fed
    Swiftly put upon her back
    Legs spread
    Her engorged labia weighted down
    By her newly healed piercings
    Creating even more wetness
    Then she had dared dream

    She felt her body steam
    As he spread her lips
    She moaned
    As his tongue and the stud he wore
    Gently massaged her swollen vulva
    Moaning then screaming in ecstasy
    She knew herself owned
    And what she truly was
    A slave

    Thank you Master she said

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: And through that, through that you learned what piercings worked sexually, how they worked…

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: And all of that…

    TB: Through that I learned size, gauge, placement, diameter, I came up with a lot of the theories that I use today. I took a lot of time to develop those theories because of lack of tools, because of lack of proper jewellery and so forth. I literally had to front the money for a company to start so that I could get the jewellery in 8 ga made in half-inch diameter. It didn’t exist at the time unless you wanted to spend a hundred dollars a ring.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Like, which obviously I couldn’t afford that, it was too much.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: [cough] Back, the, it’s a, for a younger person in their twenties or their teens it’s really a myth of the sexual revolution and free love of the hippie days and all this sort of thing but the reality is until roughly 1990 if you were in the heterosexual crowd in a big city and you went out to a club and you wanted to go home and sleep with someone you literally went home and you met someone and you fucked them. It was that simple. It was that easy. You met someone on the street corner, they stuck their thumb out and within an hour you were in bed. And this was normal. This is what everybody did. No condom, no protection, no worry about AIDS, no worry about disease, and they did it for years, I never got anything. And at the time I was going out to clubs in Hollywood and if I wanted a girl to have a piercing, well guess who got to pierce her? They didn’t have them.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: You didn’t see people a lot in Hollywood with pierced anything. I mean, I was in the thick of the club scene in Hollywood and I had little 14 ga nipple rings and I had crowds around me because I had my nipples pierced. You didn’t see it. They were like, “Oh my god look at that guy.” And today this is common but it wasn’t then. But today, the other side of the coin is you don’t go out and just meet someone and hop in bed in an hour, that’s uncommon, it’s really rare.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Things have changed, society has changed. But that’s literally what I’d do, I’d go out and I’d go to clubs and I’d meet a girl and I’d bring her home and shave her pussy and pierce her nipples and if I liked her and she hung out and we went out again I’d pierce her pussy and if I liked her and hung out again and I’d pierce a few other things.

    SL: [laugh]

    TB: But, the I kept in touch with the vast majority of these girls and so it taught me a lot. It taught me a lot, a lot. Because when you, when you’re dealing in, let’s say I was in a massive volume store and I was doing twenty-thirty thousand piercings a year, well first off I wouldn’t have a chance to talk to these people, I’d just poke a hole and send them on their way and here’s your little paragraph of instructions.

    SL: And more importantly you wouldn’t have a chance to fuck them afterwards.

    TB: Well, regardless of whether you fuck them or not you don’t have the opportunity to actually sit down, and in a intimate environment see what’s really happening with their body and what’s working.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Regardless of whether you actually stuck something inside them you got to see…

    SL: Well obviously that’s what I mean, you got to see how it works.

    TB: Exactly. Exactly. I got to see what is working and why. What is working on my body getting them off, why is it working, what’s working on their body and all their different shapes and sizes and why?

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: In this very very intense sexual arena.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: And that gives me an insight that I don’t know that anybody else has. At all.

    SL: You know, I think you’re probably right. The few promiscuous piercers I can think of are gay.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: And that’s a whole different set of issues I’m sure.

    TB: Yes, it’s a whole different set of issues, and while I’m not gay, I’ve still had plenty of anal sex which works very similar so I have, I have insights into all types of sexuality from the straight to the bisexual to the gay set because of the amount of women I’ve been with and the amount of different types of sex I’ve had so…

    SL: [affirmative noise] Well let me ask, is it, I mean now that you’re doing this as a business a bit is it sometimes difficult, do the lines blur between client and girlfriend? Or…is it…

    TB: When you have enough sexual experience.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: You can tell if someone wants to be approached or not, okay, when you’re a young male and you’re 18 or 20 years old you don’t know whether this girl wants you to ask her out. What you do is ask them all out or you don’t get laid okay?

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: I get a lot of flack for this because I go into BME chat and I try to explain to people, it’s like this is like going to a bar, I’m off here, I’m not working, and I might flirt with every girl in there but I’m flirting, this isn’t real, this is cyber here, one. This is what we’re doing, we’re in here to chat, flirt, have a good time. It’s not like they’re in front of me and their clothes are off.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: One and two, in a real live situation, you can look at someone if you have enough sexual experience and you can tell right away whether they want to fuck you or not and you have the option to pick up on that and decide whether you want them or not. But if you approach someone with the sexual experience I have you already whether they want you to.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: So I don’t…

    SL: Yeah.

    TB: Of ‘Gee should I ask this girl out and what’s she gonna say?’

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Ever.

    SL: I mean, I think you know that one of the things that people accuse you of is sort of you know being on the prowl for young girls to, you know to modify in the chat rooms and things like that. How would you respond to people saying that?

    TB: Well, it’s exactly what I was saying, it’s not, I’m off, they’re not walking into my house, they’re not walking into my studio okay?

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: I’m off, this is my off time. I’m out having fun. What, just because I’m a piercer, if I go to a club, okay regardless of the fact whether I’m a piercer or not, if I’m going out to a club to meet girls and get laid what am I gonna do? I’m going to flirt with them, I’m hopefully going to talk about my piercings, whether they want some, because if they don’t want any, why do I want to take them home?

    SL: Yeah.

    TB: Okay, if they’re not into piercing, I don’t even want to know their name.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: I just crossed them out. If they can’t talk about my piercings and I can’t ask them about theirs, they’re done, off to the next one. That’s in a club social environment where you’re going to go out and trying to get laid.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: But these people that are accusing me of that, they’ve never met me, they haven’t walked into my studio, they haven’t been pierced by me, okay? You don’t do that in a commercial environment.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Okay. And like I said, if, when the average person is accusing me of this, is in their mid twenties or younger, they didn’t live through the sexual revolution, they haven’t had hundreds and hundreds of sexual partners, which from their standpoint that’s just like, “Oh my god you’re kidding me you’re lying.” It didn’t happen. Where I’m standing from it’s like, that’s all I had, most of my friends had thousands. [laugh]

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: It was just a different lifestyle. Hell, I’m 37, I’m at the bottom rung of these. Most of my friends are 45-50 years old and they did it for a whole decade prior to me getting old enough to do it and they had thousands of partners. It was nothing.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: It was just really common, but if you have enough sexual experience you could look at someone and you could read their body language and you know, literally, you know if you could walk up to them stick your tongue down their throat and your hands down their pants and have them like it. Right then and there.

    SL: But like you said, this is a different generation, these are, you know like you said 16-25 year old kids that just don’t have that experience and don’t know how to deal with this sort of thing.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: So, you know who knows maybe it’s not, I mean, if it, may be appropriate in one environment but not necessarily in this one. Either way, this is, I didn’t want to really get into this in the interview.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: It doesn’t really, who cares right?

    TB: [laugh]

    SL: Anyway, what I do want to talk to you a bit about after this song is a bit about your aftercare cause you use, I don’t know what the best word for it is, certainly a more organic aftercare than most sort of chemical ridden people are…

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: Recommending…anyway we’re going to continue on that Japanese pop trend, this is Robo Shop Mania — Smile and Shine.

         (song plays)

    SL: Alright Todd tell me, someone gets a say someone gets a PA [Prince Albert] from you what’s the aftercare you recommend?

    TB: Depends on the gauge, what people don’t realize, they hear about this large gauge stuff and this and that the thicker you go the more intense it is. Cause you are causing more tissue damage so you really have to get your aftercare together. You can’t just go, “Oh do salt soaks.” “Oh use saline.” You know, you really have to know what you’re doing. And the more tissue damage you cause the more intensity it is and you really have to have the next level of intense aftercare just right to make it heal or you’re going to have a problem, a really big problem. So depending upon the person’s maturity level, what type of sexual response they want to achieve, what type of aftercare that I think they’re willing to do, and I sit there and explain the differences between an 8 and a 6 and a 4 and a 2 ga and what they’re really going to have to do to heal it and so forth, and literally, a 2 ga PA I can heal those on someone who’s healthy who doesn’t drink who actually eats red meat and doesn’t do drugs in 2 weeks. Done. But it’s a very intense 2 weeks. And somebody has got to be willing to deal with the intensity. They can’t just get this and go back to work and pretend nothing has happened.

    SL: So what do they do?

    TB: They’ve had very intense minor surgery. That they did.

    SL: So what do they do?

    TB: Say if we’re doing a 2 ga this is a scalpel procedure. It’s going to bleed.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: And I use three herbs for healing, which are antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, one’s a very good anti-bruising agent and I also use another herb that will slow and finally stop the blood loss. It’s not an instant, you put it on you have to soak it, soak it and finally it will stop the blood loss, so they’re going to be sticking their dick in a cup of these herbs for a good hour or two if it finally stops the blood. Depending upon how healthy they are, how much stress they’re under, how much sleep they’ve got, all this contributes when you’re dealing with a large gauge piercing, what you’re going to be able to experience or not they can expect to be sitting in the bathroom with this cup, with their dick in this cup for at least an hour and up to 3 or 4 hours, and then it will seep for about 24 hours which I’d rather sit with my dick in a cup than having a big baggie of blood the next day. It’s much better. It’ll seep for the next day or two and if their dick gets really large upon erection which some really swell, is then they’re going to have that nice big baggie of blood around their dick the next day if they get an evening erection.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: In the middle of the night. But…

    SL: So what…

    TB: Well they have, they have showers, they have a special herb that they put on…

    SL: Todd, let me interrupt here.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: The special herbs, can you say what they are or is this Todd’s magic formula that you don’t want to give out?

    TB: Well, the main herbs are on the site, they’re lavender, red clover and arnica, arnica is the anti-bruising agent they’re all anti-inflammatory antibiotics.

    SL: All fairly well known ones, yeah people can look them up on any number of sites, if they want to learn more about them.

    TB: Right. The other herb is an Aztec herb called Quatrolatte and this herb if overused is extremely dangerous, but it’s extremely potent which is why I don’t have it on my site because you can overuse it very easily you can over dry yourself.

    SL: What happens?

    TB: Right.

    SL: It dries out the tissue if you use too much.

    TB: It can dry out the tissue and cause a major problem.

    SL: Same as alcohol or…

    TB: Well…

    SL: I mean, same drying effect.

    TB: It has a drying effect. It doesn’t have the crystallization effect alcohol will for lack of a better term. It, to give you an idea, let’s say someone has a bleeding ulcer, well contemporary medical science says, “Well we have to cut this out. And re-sew your stomach lining it’s the only way we can heal it.” Well, literally Quatrolatte will dry it up and cure it and heal it.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Quatrolatte is strong enough to where, let’s say you have a 3rd degree burn and just doing soaks with just this herb and peeling off the dead tissue as it dries daily, I’d say a third degree burn on your hand all you’re going to have by the time you’re done healing it is a slight discoloration.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: It’s that potent, but you have to know how to use the herb. You can really injure someone if you don’t know what you’re doing. And most people, they don’t know. So that’s why I didn’t put it up on the site.

    SL: Where did you figure out how to use it?

    TB: My girl Ophie who I’ve been with for 8 years her uncle was renowned Mexican herbalist who people fly in from all over the world and specifically mention I gave you of the hand burning, her aunt used that on her cousin and that was the result when she was a little girl.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: From just that herb.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: And when I met her I had a little bit of a subincision, and the next time I did a cutting, and she mentioned that herb and we brought it out and we tried it and I tend to experiment around on my own body before I use it on other people so I get the whole feeling of what exactly I’m doing. And that’s exactly how I learned to use the herb is on my penis.

    SL: It’s definitely the best way to learn doing stuff on yourself.

    TB: Right, yeah. I’m absolutely in amazement when people go, “Oh I’m a piercer” and they’ve got two or three piercings. Like, well no, you’re someone who pretends to be a piercer who pokes holes in people and takes money. That they have no comprehension of what they’re doing.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: That’s my opinion of those people.

    SL: Well I know a lot of my understanding of the way piercing works is just by having had tons of piercings and you know, knowing how they’ve all healed differently and having treated them differently and you know seeing the different results.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: Anyway, the next thing I want to ask you Todd is this is probably something you’ve gotten an awful lot of online flack about and you know when I’ve mentioned to people, you know I’m interviewing Todd Bertrang is there anything you want to ask him everyone said, ask him about his autoclave. Um, so tell me Todd what’s up with your autoclave?

    TB: Well, I actually happen to have one. [laugh]

    SL: But you don’t always use it?

    TB: No. Piercers have this thing thinking that they have medical training. They don’t. Usually. Anybody that truly has medical training knows that there are chemical sterilization processes. Anybody who has medical training has heard of what they call an endoscope, what an endoscope is, is a camera that they can use to put down your arteries to see whether they’re clogged or not an endoscope is not autoclavable. There is nothing more infectious, or capable of being infected easier with more damaging results than your arteries or your heart. Period end of story. But if they can put an endoscopes in Wavocide and use it just fine but, ‘Oh my god we can’t put a piercing needle in it.’ They have no concept of what they’re doing at all.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: They scare me that they’re so ignorant of true medical terminology, medical science to say this is a must. Okay. The reason why they said it was a must is because the APP said it’s a must and the APP said it’s a must because an autoclave at the time cost forty-five hundred bucks. And Gauntlet didn’t want all these little piercing stores popping up doing piercings and they thought they could control it like that.

    SL: Cause you buy a jug of Wavocide for forty bucks.

    TB: Bingo. And be sterile.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Okay? Wavocide is perfectly sterile when used properly.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: This stuff is wonderful, when it doesn’t work anymore it turns colour you can see it’s not going to work.

    SL: Yeah, no it’s true I’ve used Wavocide as well, I agree with you. You know and I think that brings up the point that is interesting that a lot of piercers they don’t really, they never really concentrate on understanding what they’re doing they, piercing for them is sort of a rules based system you know. And that’s why…

    TB: [affirmative noise] Yeah, well you know the same with doctors, they go to medical school…

    SL: Yeah.

    TB: They get their PhD and all they know about is what they read. And piercers do the same thing, which is absolutely pathetic. There’s no concept for any room of improvement and any experimentation any true understanding of the process of what they’re actually doing to someone. And here they’re altering someone’s life.

    SL: Well I think it would be alright if you’re a carpenter or something that’s a very established field you know where we’ve done ten thousand years of research but…

    TB: Right.

    SL: You know piercing in the west is a new field you know. I think people who are piercing need to be on their toes and need to really know what they’re doing and need to, need to always be learning and I think a lot of them aren’t.

    TB: I’d say that 99.999% of them are not, or learn to a degree and they’re done.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: And the other side to the coin is there’s two ways to make money in this business. Okay? Put up with the fact you’re not, or you get to a point where all you do is production piercing. You’re in and out, you’re gone and it’s good enough to create a hole and a ring and see ya.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Because if you can’t do it that way you’re not going to make any money. There are people who make a hundred grand a year or better in this pierce, in this business but that’s the only way they’re doing it. They’re in and out the smallest as possible, okay, we can’t give them the next size up if we can get them the smallest one because then we don’t get that next size stretch.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Okay? And if their happy with your work they’re going to come back to you and get your jewellery, you get 70% back of everything you do and it takes this $30 piercing and by the time they come back and they stretch and every time they come back and they get something else or their buddy does and over the course of a year it turns this $30 piercing into two-thousand bucks.

    SL: Sure, you’re selling them subscriptions instead of a single magazine.

    TB: Exactly. And that’s what makes money. But unfortunately, as far as what the piercee is considered what it could be it’s absolutely detrimental to the piercee.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: I mean it’s fine if they want a 14 ga eyebrow but if they want a really good sexual piercing or if they want something really good otherwise, I mean a lot of the people don’t want a 14 ga labret they want an 8 ga labret. But they go in and, “Oh no no we have to start like this and stretch it up” because it makes them money. That’s all it’s about.

    SL: Let me ask you Todd, what’s the difference, say someone gets a 12 ga PA…

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: And over the period of a year stretches it up to 2 ga, how is that, how is the end result different from a…

    TB: It’s quite a bit different.

    SL: Alright.

    TB: Depending on how they healed it. Having had a 12 ga PA and stretched it out myself, assuming they even get good placement which most people who start at 12 ga won’t place them properly. Let’s assume they get good placement what happens is, because it’s thinner, you’re creating a much denser area of scar tissue. It’s much harder to stretch. The denser area of scar tissue is much less sensitive. So they just desensitized their dick. Why had they, did you use, get desensitized, a piercing for sensation and do it in such a way that it desensitizes the area that you put it in. That’s pretty stupid.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Okay, that’s what it does. You, you will lose anywhere from 30-100% of your sensation from starting from small in that given area.

    SL: Well I don’t think that’s true for everyone though.

    TB: For 80% of the people.

    SL: Well I don’t know if I’d agree with that number but…

    TB: That’s going, based upon statistical average based upon my 12 years of experience from what I’ve seen. Who’ve I pierced and who I’ve come in contact with.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: To give you an example, I, now I didn’t have sex with these two people, I took them at their word. I’ve talked to two girls who swear up and down that prior to getting their nipples pierced at 14 ga they became breast orgasmic. Prior to getting their nipples pierced they weren’t.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Okay? At 6 or 4 ga, you’re dealing in 80% or better are going to be able to have breast orgasms from those piercings done and healed properly at that time. But you’re not going to get that when you pierce at a 14 ga and stretch it out.

    SL: [affirmative noise] Well I will tell you I’ve got a few e-mails in the last month of girls writing me you know asking whether it was normal for you know their nipple piercings to eliminate feeling in their nipples. These are regular 14 ga nipples.

    TB: It’s very very common.

    SL: So I…

    TB: Especially over time, especially over a couple of years.

    SL: You know we can…

    TB: Because the scar tissue continually builds up because it’s continually expanding and contracting and cutting that and I would say somewhere between 30-50% lose partial to complete sensation in a piercing done thinner than 8 ga in the nipples.

    SL: Yeah, I think we could…

    TB: Conservatively.

    SL: Yeah I think we could argue about those percentages but I’ll say even if it’s one in fifty there’s, it’s a, even that one in fifty is a solid argument for why not do it bigger.

    TB: In my opinion even if it’s one in a thousand, it’s too much.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Too many.

    SL: [affirmative noise] Because…yeah, you know you’re right, even you know obviously a whole different set of play is available in an 8 ga or larger piercing than in a, you know…

    TB: Yeah, I mean why…

    SL: Even if you’re into light, you know just light play, it’s really easy to accidentally give that piercing a solid tug you know and you can do damage.

    TB: Yeah, real easily. Look at it this way. If the girl doesn’t like to have, or the guy like to have a dull knife stuck inside them and get off that way, then why are they putting a dull knife in their nipple why are they putting a dull knife inside of their penis or labia. Because that’s what it is.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: It’s the same thickness.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Don’t you want something that feels good like a finger? You gotta go thicker then.

    SL: That’s a good point. That’s a good point. Do you want a dull knife or do you want a finger.

    TB: [affirmative noise] Yeah, what feels good to your body?

    SL: [affirmative noise] Anyway I want to take another break…

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: When we come back Todd I want to talk about some of the heavier procedures that you’re, that you advocate being female circumcision, sub, and a number of other things. Anyway, this is Creature of Habit by Swearing at Motorist.

         (song plays)

    SL: Alright we’re back. Todd, one of the, let’s start with female circumcision, let me ask you first, what is that?

    TB: Female circumcision is one of several things. The circumcise literally means to remove around, but it doesn’t say around what. That’s the actual meaning of the word. In the female it could be remove around the vulva, anything in the vulva area you can remove partial or complete the hood, the inner labia, the outer labia if you wanted to, generally it means anything to do with the hood or the inner labia in most contexts. Some people will include the removal of the clitoris itself in that context, but that’s incorrect, that’s a clitorodectomy.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: The anti-female circumcision groups try to persuade the gullible that female circumcision is truly labial occlusion which is actually really rare but what labial occlusion is they remove the inner labia, the hood, the external clitoris and almost all of the outer labia and sew up the remainder leaving a very small menstrual and urinary opening.

    SL: Essentially it’s a total genital amputation.

    TB: Essentially yeah, external genital amputation. And they try to call it female circumcision and that’s not true at all. Female circumcision in it’s true sense like I said is partial or complete removal of the hood and or the inner labia or any portion thereof.

    SL: And I think that you know people especially in this scene don’t realize how incredibly common it is. Last week, Mc, not last week about a month ago, McLean’s which is Canada’s equivalent to Time magazine had a cover article on female circumcision as done by plastic surgeons here on women in the west and spoke very positively about it.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: I think Cosmo has done the same as have any number of other magazines I mean this isn’t, you know this isn’t a far out thing, I mean a lot of people, even a lot of real legitimate doctors have stood behind this.

    TB: There are very legitimate reasons to have it done. First off you’re, why does a girl get a boob job or a breast reduction? Enhancement or reduction, because they’re not comfortable with how their body’s are shaped, they want to be shaped like this. They like it. Why shouldn’t someone have power over how their genitals look or respond. We’re under the illusion that because it’s down there on a woman’s body it automatically feels good. Well this is simply not true. Inner labia or hood can actually feel better than the clitoris but they can also feel very bad to touch. Or they could actually feel nothing at all. So if something is feeling bad to touch down there or doesn’t feel a thing why do you want it on your body, you don’t. And you’re better off to remove it or if you don’t like the way it looks, it grosses you out, everyone has a different shape of what they want to look like, and we as adults should have the right to choose that and in the United States there are some places that do offer it as labiaplasty, most of them are not very good even plastic surgeons they absolutely suck, they’re horrible. They’re very expensive and most of them won’t touch you for fear of medical malpractice lawsuits. They are afraid they’ll lose their medical license. It’s a very very touchy subject here in the US, it’s really really scary because some, then I’ve known girls who’ve actually taken matters into their own hands and cut it off with scissors and stuff like this and have tremendous problems from it. But done right it can be a very very enhancing procedure, and can actually cause tremendous increase in sexual sensation.

    SL: [affirmative noise] Now the footage that I’ve seen it’s a very bloody procedure when you’re talking about the deeper removals that are fairly complete.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: Is it a dangerous procedure?

    TB: Anytime you’re dealing with a loss of blood you’re dealing with a potential shock. And when you’re dealing with potential shock you’re dealing with potential death. What most people don’t understand I, while we’re speaking of this it boggles my mind I do not know of, personally, any place I’ve ever been that does piercings, that does tattoos that has a refrigerator with some orange juice and some cookies and some bananas on hand for when people have a blood sugar reaction. They didn’t even ask them if they’ve eaten. They don’t. It goes right over their head. And then people pass out on the floor and think, “Oh gee it was so painful.” It had nothing to do with the pain, they didn’t eat and they didn’t take care of their self and they think it’s like when they get their haircut and have a blood sugar reaction and pass out. It has nothing to do with pain, it has to do with blood sugar reaction and if you I mean you could go into epileptic shock and seizure and death from this and people just don’t, don’t take care of business, and it’s really really sad. But shock is very very easy to prevent it’s a matter of having enough blood sugar in your systems when the brain reacts to this injury it reaches for its food which is blood sugar. So it can assimilate the new reactions that it’s having, “Oh my god somebody’s’ cutting my pussy. Oh my god somebody’s cutting my dick. Oh my god this is happening to me.” And you don’t go into shock. It’s quite simple.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: You have enough blankets on hand, if you’re doing something major you really want to have an IV drip on hand, depending on what you’re doing but anybody that does any type of body mod that doesn’t have something as simple as orange juice and bananas on hand shouldn’t be in the business.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: And that’s almost everybody out there.

    SL: [affirmative noise] Like we mentioned before, most piercers work in a pretty clinical and impersonal environment if I remember the, some of the photos of the procedures that we’re talking about here, you know there’s a couple naked girls, there’s a bed, there’s some ropes, um what sort of situation are these procedures done in?

    TB: They’re done in a home studio. Right in a bed.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: What’s the difference in a hospital bed or the bed in your house? It’s a bed…

    SL: Yeah.

    TB: A bed’s a bed’s a bed.

    SL: What I’m asking too is it, is it a scene? Is it, what, you know what relationship is there? I mean is it?

    TB: Most people come here because they don’t want to be in a clinical environment where they’re seeking, they have enough intelligence to realize, see there’s more to piercing than what the average piercing store is offering and they travel from all over the world for this different type of feature.

    SL: Yeah, it’s true.

    TB: They spend thousands of dollars to get here for a hundred dollar piercing.

    SL: [affirmative noise] No, it’s true as much as…

    TB: Which has a lot to do with what everybody else is doing, if I’m getting all these people from all over the world spending thousands of dollars to come here to get a hundred dollar piercing…

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: I mean that’s pretty pathetic on everybody else’s end. Cause they’re so primitive. But good for me bad for them I guess. But…

    SL: Yeah, no its…

    TB: Piercings as mentioned to me are sexual. Do I want to have sex in a doctor’s office? Well probably not unless you’re really into the medical aspect and that turns you on. You’re probably not going to get turned on by this real clinical thing. Most people want to have their piercings, in my experience, be a very intimate memorable and sexual experience to them. It has nothing to do with whether they’re having sex with me, I’m just the mode of how they achieve this inner sexual experience.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: Okay? I’m just the, the doctor of the moment that allows it to happen for them. And they’d much rather be in that type of environment. I’ve been requested to do many types of SM scenes with piercings and that sort of thing with ropes and flogging and all that and it’s really not that uncommon. As we mentioned earlier, this is where piercings came from. The leather gay SM movement. It’s where it came from, what it’s all about.

    SL: Let me ask you, do you think it’s healthier to do a piercing in that type of environment. Healthier on a psychological level?

    TB: Absolutely, tremendously, it’s tremendously freeing. It means you appreciate what you’re doing.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: It means that you are doing it for yourself for your innermost gain, not because my buddy got it and I thought it was cool.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: It’s, it’s important to you.

    SL: Right.

    TB: It’s real.

    SL: Right. Alright, I’ll ask you next about subincision. Subincision I guess is sort of a, certainly a male…

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: Anlagen to circumcision, or splitting of the hood.

    TB: In some aspects yeah.

    SL: Now, first you did that on yourself and we’ve all read the various experiences on BME and in the PFIQ article.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: Now, when I’ve seen the footage that you, of yours that you’ve done, it doesn’t look like they’re marked it’s just a quick cut it and they seem to turn out perfectly, is, what’s the procedure like? Is it simple? Is it you know, or is there more to it that I’m not seeing?

    TB: Well, it’s simple for me but it’s, if you have an 8 year old who’s a musical prodigy, she or he will sit down and go, “Well it’s really easy why can’t you do it?” It’s simple for me but that doesn’t mean it’s simple for someone else.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: As you mentioned on the answer page of BME, there’s a line that go down the body, that separates everything, all you’ve got to do is follow the line. It’s either on center or off center, but it gives you a line.

    SL: So you don’t have to draw a line cause it’s already there.

    TB: Bingo.

    SL: [laugh] Good enough.

    TB: [laugh]

    SL: Yeah, I guess that’s true. I want to ask you, you’ve had a couple funny procedures come to you. One of them is this strip circumcision.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: Tell me about, what was that and why did the guy want it done?

    TB: Well, he was very erotisized, it took me forever to get this guy to tell me this, but he was very erotisized about the concept of having a scar on his penis from his first sexual experience, cause the girl was licking his newly circumcised penis as a teenager and orgasming from it. And that was, he was almost 70 years old and evidently this had stuck in his mind as the best or one of the best sexual experiences he’d had and he wanted to recreate this by having the scar on his penis. And that was his whole concept, literally scarification of the penis.

    SL: And…

    TB: It was quite interesting I thought.

    SL: [affirmative noise] And he was an older guy.

    TB: He was almost 70 years old, he was like 67 years old when he came here.

    SL: [affirmative noise] And you’ve had, well I don’t even know how much I want to talk about her cause it will just result in this slew of e-mails to both me and you but some of your, you know this I think that 70 year old guy was you know real solid and sane, but not all your clients have been quite so easy to deal with.

    TB: No. I’ve had a few people be rather on the very definite end of insane, to where you wonder how they were even let out of the funny farm. And that particular person you’re alluding to actually hasn’t been the only one. That one just got very deep under my skin shall we say. But there’s, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a very significant amount of people which the medical professionals have only seen the very worse end of this that are into modification of the body that aren’t quite all there in their head. Which is really scary, to me, or really sad. And yeah, I certainly got a loo loo for one of those.

    SL: [affirmative noise] Now you had, you were fairly deeply involved with at least this one.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: Do you think that sort of your eagerness to do these procedures, and maybe, maybe because of your own sexual excitement attached to them sort of sometimes makes you miss some of the other person’s problems and maybe blinds you to a reason why maybe you shouldn’t be working on them?

    TB: That hits very close to the truth. Let me give an analogy in your own life. Let’s go back to where you got your first computer and were first getting into mods and now today you’ve got zillions of subscriptions you’re it as far as on the Internet if anybody wants to do anything with piercings your it. You are it Shannon.

    SL: [affirmative noise] Yeah.

    TB: And have been it for a long time. But let’s just say back then when you had this inkling of an idea, okay someone spelled out, “Gee if you do this for me I can do that for you and make you do that tomorrow.”

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: You’d want that to happen.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: And you’d believe their story. If it sounded reasonable. And that’s exactly what happened with this girl.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: She gave me a story that I wanted to believe in, that sounded reasonable to me and because I’m open to other types of cultural things and other types of sexuality I gave her the benefit of the, of the doubt.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: And it didn’t occur to me that someone would invent literally their entire life story, their friends, their family everything in detail.

    SL: Yeah, I’m hoping that at least a few of the people who are listening to this know who we are talking about or else this is just a big in joke, so we won’t get, I don’t think we’ll go into it anymore.

    TB: Right.

    SL: Anyway I’m going to play one more song, and when we come back I want to talk to Todd about some of his new plans which are for some of you, will hopefully be very exciting and maybe you can do some fun stuff with Todd. Anyway this is Fred Lane, this just got re-released on CD, this is absolute insanity, this is The Man with The Fold Back Ears.

         (song plays)

    SL: Alright that was some crazy stuff we just listened to. Anyway, you know there are porn stars with nipple piercings there are porn stars with a hood piercing, but there’s not really, there’s not really much of a pierced porn market. There’s O-Pearl and that whole Creative Art Collective or something like that.

    TB: In Germany, near Frankfurt.

    SL: Somewhere in Europe you know but that’s a very specific type of fetishy pornography.

    TB: [affirmative noise]

    SL: Now Todd you’ve invested a lot of money in a new sort of both business and personal venture. You want to tell us a bit about that and maybe how some of the people listening if they’re so inclined can get involved in it?

    TB: [affirmative noise] Well I have had the idea for quite a few years now to start doing pierced pornos. Which the pornography market first off they don’t want their girls pierced that much. They’ll put up with a couple of little things and it takes under normal techniques, years to obtain any type of amount of and gauge and thousands and thousands of dollars, because most people don’t have it, and in fact I was trying to do this earlier and it finally dawned on me that the only way I’m going to be able to do this is to literally do the modifications free and bring girls out and let them live in my estate that I just bought, I just bought a 3 acre estate with a very very large house and pool and whatnot and we’ll be remodeling it making it extremely large but so I’m going to be bringing girls from all over the world at my expense to stay for three months at my estate with free mods, but they have to have sex with me and other girls and other guys on film.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: And we’ll be videoing this and hopefully marketing this which it will take some time to get out but I think that’s the only way to get really intense mods, I don’t know of anybody else who can literally sit and do 20-30-40 pussy rings or dick rings at one sitting and heal them in fuckable in three weeks besides myself.

    SL: [affirmative noise]

    TB: They don’t have the techniques, and people I tell them that and they can’t even believe I’m doing one 6 ga ring in three weeks and healing it. But that’s what I can do. And so if you’re cute and you’re female, or if you’re a guy let me know.

    SL: They can contact you through www.toddbertrang.com there’ll be a link obviously with this as well so they can just click over onto it. And I guess what they should, what should e-mail you a picture of themselves.

    TB: Yup e-mail me tell me their interests, it’s going to be extreme, I don’t want one or two piercings, you want a hood piercing that’s not enough.

    SL: This is a lifestyle change you better be into it and…

    TB: Yeah you better be into it you’re going to walk away with 20-50 piercings or a circumcision some radical stuff.

    SL: [affirmative noise] And if you’re into it it’d be a lot of fun.

    TB: And if you’re female, you’ll be living on my estate for three months and you better be ready to prove to me that you’re not a nut like the one I got [laugh].

    SL: [laugh]

    TB: Before, I don’t need that again.

    SL: Alright well Todd, I want to thank you for talking to us today, I want to thank you for sort of bravely standing forward and saying what you know piercing is really about to you and I think to an awful lot of other people and I hope the movie project goes well and I wish you the best of luck on Todd and thanks for talking to us.

    TB: Thanks I hope to be back again one day.

    SL: Excellent

         (song plays)

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