Inflated! (BME/News Publisher’s Ring)

Inflated!

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

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

Anon’s deeply damaged genitals prior to surgery

 

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Tell me a bit about yourself.

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

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

What body modifications have you undergone?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How was the healing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

So you literally think it’s genetic I guess —

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

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

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

So how did it all start for you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And what does it feel like?

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her breast implants were for her own reasons I assume?

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

And you actually did inflations in your urethra as well?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you were doing vacuum pumping and inflating as well?

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

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

Ouch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

Wow, that must have been incredibly terrifying…

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

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


Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Martin: Genital Evolution (BME/News Publisher’s Ring)

Martin: Genital Evolution

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

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

Martin’s Subincision… One of Many!

* * *

Tell me a little about yourself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martin’s initial cock skinning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martin’s cock being inflated

Releasing the pressure

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

Martin’s head splitting

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

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

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

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

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

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

Closing his subincision

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

Martin’s closed subincision

But that closure didn’t last, did it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martin’s scrotal release

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

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

How did you perform the scrotal splitting procedure?

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

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

Martin’s split scrotum

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

How did they react to you at the hospital?

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

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

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

Martin’s DIY ligament cutting

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

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

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

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

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

What other things have you tried to increase the size?

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

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

Opening up his “mostly” subincision

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

Martin’s scrotal split reversal

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

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

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

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

You ordered the Hydrogel from China I guess?

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

But now you’ve opened your subincision up again?

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

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

Martin’s top cut

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

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


Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Howie: LunaCobra Interview [BME/News]

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

* * *

How did you first get interested in body modification?

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

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

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

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

Yes, sir, it is.

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

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

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

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

TRUE…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is the range of procedures you do?

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

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

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

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

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

Which are your favorite kinds of body modifications to do?

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

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

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

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

What do you think motivates people to get modifications?

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

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

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

Like what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does traveling internationally complicate your work?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

YES!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Profile: “MAN-JAW”

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

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

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

MINI-PORTFOLIO
(Click to Zoom)


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


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


Silicon outer conch implant.


Ear pointing procedure (featured earlier on ModBlog).


ThEnigma’s “sea monster” ear reshaping project.


Tattooing by Howie.


Howie at work on Manny’s forehead scars.


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


Transdermal “Horns”.


Heart-shaped outer conch cartilage removal.


Masaai-style anti-tragus removal.


Large scale cartilage removal.


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


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


Josh’s injection-style eyeball tattoo.


“Fisting Ribs“.


Swirly Wanx Sinatra’s klingon-esque forehead ridges.

Forehead implant removal procedure.


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


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


Before and after of a nipple removal.


Procedural and healing phots of a nipple removal on Chris.

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


Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Habakuk: Scrotal Suspension Interview [BME/News]

Habakuk:
The Body Must Be Free

My nudist and extreme body play friend “Habakuk” lives in the rural Horn of Africa where he is probably the most famous “mzungu” (white guy) in his area for reasons I can’t discuss here — unfortunately large parts of this interview have had to be redacted to protect his identity. But, as with many upstanding and successful individuals, he has many kinky interests that only those closest to him know about. Near his home where he hikes nude — “real old-fashioned African bush the way Livingstone found it… my paradise” — amid game like bushbuck, blue monkeys, baboons, duikers, hyena, and leopards, all harmless to humans, he can exercise, think, and be himself. Among other things, this includes swinging from the trees, held up by nothing but his scrotum.

The most important thing of all is, I think, to feel your body. I think that many people do not ‘feel’ their body. For most it is just there, and they realize that they have a body when someone touches it for sex, but I experience and feel my body and skin all the time. Clothing messes it up, and that is why I do not want it. Prepare naked for whatever you do. The body must be free.

Habakuk’s experiences with body modification and body play center around the extremes of personal freedom and the extremes of sensation, and the joys that both of those can bring a person. He has a purity of experience in all things that I admire greatly.

* * *

Shannon: Let’s start by talking about where you grew up.

I grew up in Papua New Guinea, between Papuas of the stone age. I was a mission child in an uncontrolled (by government) area that could only be reached by plane, landing against a hilltop. Those people were the most primitive man eaters, and naked except for a tube on their penis. I saw them eating their own chief and I saw tribal wars with poisoned arrows right in front of our house. Excellent body modificators though — but I did not pick up the idea there.

Shannon: Were you at all exposed to indigenous modifications?

The upcountry Papuas, and to a lesser extent also coastal Papuas, did modifications. Generally they were not sexually oriented, except for the penis gourd. I do not know the exact meaning, but the men started wearing the tubes at puberty, when they were only allowed a short one. Depending on their performance in life and war, they were progressively allowed to wear longer ones. The biggest were for chiefs, and they were sometimes bent to allow them to be bigger. We were the first missionaries who went there, so we knew very little about their sexuality — during my time the first priority was to learn the language.

The women also had a modification which had a sexual meaning that we didn’t understand either… at regular intervals they had one of their fingers chopped short. Of course the other modifications are well known — big earrings, and especially the tusks of swine through the nose. Scarification in patterns was also very common.

Shannon: Do you think growing up in Papua New Guinea influenced your own interests at all, even if just the nudism?

I have no idea whether New Guinea influenced my desire for nudism or pain. I actually think that it was in my genes from the onset. I cannot eliminate the feeling of clothes, so nudism is all important. I cannot imagine doing a suspension with my clothes on — it just would not work. Of course the sensation concentrates in the play area, but the conditions to enjoy it are set by the whole body.

Shannon: Why did you leave New Guinea?

We left New Guinea because my fathers contract with the [redacted] Baptist Mission ended.

We went to [redacted] and I finished my studies there. Immediately after my studies I looked for a way to escape the draft. I enlisted as a volunteer to work in Tanzania as an engineer, which I did for two years, and then went back to [redacted] where I continued my studies and got married. I was then a member of a Naturist (FKK) society, and made it a condition that my wife would agree to adopt a nudist lifestyle. She agreed, but we eventually divorced three years ago.

Shannon: Is that what made you decide to move back to Africa?

I moved back because I could not stand the over-regulated, “I don’t care about the rest of the world”, [redacted] society. They think that they enjoy freedom, but do not realize that they live in a straight-jacket of rules and over-regulation. I always say: they can say what they want but not do what they want. This applies to general life, and to sexuality in particular. In the time I left, sexuality and nakedness were no topics for discussion. In many ways Africa provides much more freedom.

Shannon: And your split with your wife?

My wife gave up on nudism, and made it difficult for me to practice it. I gave in but eventually of course that created big problems in our marriage.

In the beginning she accepted my kinkier interests — only to keep me happy — but she did not like it. She did not want anything to do with masochistic games and modifications. For her it was absolutely crazy, as it was for most “normal” people. It was a part of the reason for the break up of my marriage, which I delayed for fifteen years because of my children. Her jealousy, nagging, lack of any sexual fantasy, and eventually almost total absence of sex were the other reasons.

Shannon: What does your current wife think about it?

My new wife knows about it, but does not really understand. I have an agreement in the sense that she allows it, but does not want to see it. She says she is mainly scared about permanent damage or other negative effects. I am working on her, but basically my relationship with her is a “normal” one, except that she loves to be naked too. She loves walking in the bush and to shake her little fat backside in front of me, and at home she is usually naked.

We met through friends from [redacted] who had more or less adopted her and paid for her school fees. They asked me to look after her when they went home at the end of their contract. I guess I did it a bit too well! I had known her already for five years before things started to develop. In the beginning, we just talked about life. I guess the thing that really made me think about her romantically was the ease with which she took her clothes off when we went for a walk in the [conservation area near where we now live in Africa] together with our friends from [redacted].

Shannon: Do you mind telling me what you now do in Africa?

[redacted — sorry, because it’s quite fascinating!] … what keeps me busy right now. I have a small manufacturing company, where we make pumps, windmills, and steel window and door frames.

* * *

Shannon: Tell me about what you do to relax…

As far as I am concerned, to be free in nature is the most important thing in life. I am a fanatic nudist. I love body modification and certain kinds of pain — you know what I mean. I do not think that I would relish the pain of dying of cancer, as I saw my father suffering.

Shannon: And your interest in pain is linked to your sexuality?

You know that is a horribly difficult question, because I do not know the right answer. As a young boy of seven or eight I had no idea about sex, but I had all these ideas about being tied up, locked up, whipped, and so on. I remember that I made an automatic tie-up machine out of Meccano in my wardrobe. Why is that? Freud probably would have had some fancy explanations, about some youth syndrome or something like that… but they would not fit. I had a most liberal free upbringing. Sure, in those days adults would not tell you about sex, and you had to find out for yourself, but I do not think that gave me any trauma.

So why do I — we — want this? I simply do not know. I guess I was just born like that, as you are born with certain other abilities and drives. All I know is that I like it, and that I have outgrown all my guilty feelings about enjoying what I want.

Shannon: Did you ever consider as a child what your interests “meant”?

When I was a kid playing with myself, I did not have any idea why or what it meant. I did it mostly privately, but not completely. My brother was sometimes involved, and my parents were asking what the hell I was doing in the wardrobe — I did not really hide it at that time. Guilt came later when I discovered sexuality and masturbating. My parents never said anything, but gave me that little church book… You know, about hell and damnation if you touch yourselves. I did not even dare to talk or ask about my desire for sexual pain. I knew that everyone would say it was bad and that I was crazy.

* * *

Shannon: You don’t have any permanent modifications, correct?

I have pierced myself for years, but I cannot have permanent ones yet. My new wife may allow me some in due course but she is scared of these things. I have made a special ring design around the root of the penis going through the skin just above the scrotum and I also have designs for permanent 4mm stainless steel pins — not rings — through the nipples to be connected with a string of beads to the penis rings. Maybe one day…

Shannon: But temporary piercings you do perform…

I used to pierce my skin with needles. At first I was scared to do more, but when I learned that no harm was done, I grew bolder. I did not use surgical needles because they are too sharp and cut the skin and cause bleeding, and at the same time they do not really hurt. I push homemade needles, up to 4mm in thickness, pointed like a normal pin through the skin slowly. It is much more effective than surgical needles because they do not cut the skin, but open it and spread it. I started using surgical needles when I started not just piercing the skin but going right through the body of the penis, nipples, and scrotum, mainly because I wanted to be sure about sterility.

Shannon: How do you make the needles?

I make needles out of stainless steel piano wire. It’s very simple — just sharpen the end and bend the other end in a loop. I made the thick needles out of 1/8” brazing rod, as well as hairpins.

Shannon: Is your bed of nails part of the same sort of play?

My nail bed fits in the general pattern. The relation between pain and sex is interesting, but not clear to me. If I am very blue, I long for pain, but sometimes after a long session of self-torture I just do not need sex any more. It seems that the pain session has replaced the need for sex. On the other hand, if I do masturbate after a pain session it comes with a vengeance. It also depends on whether you are really relaxed — and whether you used some Dutch courage or not.

What is clear is that I prefer the slow build-up of pain. The needles fit this pattern, the suspension does, and the nail bed fits in as well. I can lay on it and feel the pain, fierce in the beginning, then beginning to settle and burn, and eventually it replaces everything else.

Shannon: Let’s get to the main thing and talk about your scrotal stretching and play.

The scrotal stretching came about a long time ago. I was a boy of maybe seventeen when I tied my balls to a rope and a water pipe in my room and bent over backwards to pull. It was just the need for pain. I had no idea of stretching and scrotal suspension, although it was probably in the back of my mind.

After seeing pictures of stretching and suspension on the web, I started experimenting. I started with ropes, then with a wooden block, and finally I made metal rings. I wear this ring permanently. My wife knows and has accepted it, but unfortunately this is a very conservative country, and not much is openly possible. I would love to meet like-minded people and show off!

The actual stretching is caused by regular exercise, not by the wearing of the ring — the tendons holding the testicles have developed much more strength. My stretching is now subjected to the law of diminishing profits: At first my balls would stretch 1cm per month. Now it is reduced to 1cm per half year, but they still stretch.

In the beginning I used the wooden block with a hole of 32mm (1 ¼”) and it worked well at first but gradually I had swelling problems with it. When I made my first metal ring I had to increase the size slightly since it looks like with exercise the internal tissue thickens when strengthening. Also interesting is that the skin of the sack feels thicker, especially the part that covers the balls outside the ring. When I take the ring off, that skin pulls together and feels leathery, showing that the contracting muscles of the skin of the scrotum have strengthened. I think that this shows the need for exercise, gradually increasing the strain, to build strength.

Shannon: When you actually suspend, how do you prepare?

I do a warm-up before any pain session. The main issue is to relax, to concentrate on what is going to come. I usually arouse myself sexually, but not always. I may have a gin and tonic, mainly to forget everything else. I may play with my balls and tell them to get ready for suffering. Physically I lubricate the skin with some talcum powder or Vaseline.

  

I usually suspend for as long as I can bear it. At the moment that’s about three minutes, which I repeat two or three times afterwards. I hope however to extend how long I can suspend to fifteen minutes — the problem at this moment is not the balls as such, but my body. The limitation is set by my stomach muscles. It slowly improves, because I am learning to let the body bend over backwards more freely. I can hang straight upside down, which is more relaxing, but the limitation is the blood pressure building up in the head.

Shannon: What does it feel like to do a scrotal suspension?

When I hang there my mind concentrates totally on controlling the body and the pain. On achievement. Afterwards you feel totally satisfied, relaxed, and tired.

Shannon: Have you had any complications?

I read with interest about the little incident you had when someone almost lost a testicle [Editor’s note: this is in reference to Roy from “Roy’s Nut Hang” whose scrotum once split open during a suspension and exposed and almost caused the loss of a testicle]. I have had no complications. The reason is, I guess, that I built up slowly. I took my time to build strength. In the beginning I could not even bear 5kg. I carefully experimented with rings and blocks to give the balls sufficient support. The trick is that the ring must be tight, and well shaped. The problem with that is that it restricts the circulation, and the balls start swelling, so you cannot wear such a ring permanently. If the ring is too loose, you can feel that the epididymis is squeezed out under the ring when force is applied. This organ is the one that causes the pain when you are kicked in the balls, and consequently this is very painful, and not a “pleasant” pain. Adjust the size of the ring and now the actual testicles start squeezing out. I solved the problem by making the ring less loose and stuffing it with some foam rubber during a session to keep the epididymis in place.

It’s important to listen to the body. After all, the function of pain is to warn the mind to prevent damage to the body. I learned that from Lawrence of Arabia, who said “Pain does not matter and is useful. The trick is to know how much pain will indicate the start of real damage”. Balls are not designed to dangle from, and you have to develop their strength gradually — but it is amazing how fast this happens.

Shannon: Does it feel better to do the suspensions outside?

The best environment to play in is in the bush in the open air. Obviously most people will do their game inside because they do not have any other place to go. What we do can generally not be done in public… yet. But in my experience, do it outside whenever you can. It is much more relaxing and exciting. The sun and a little wind on the skin enhances the awareness of your body.

The most important thing of all is, I think, to feel your body. I think that many people do not “feel” their body. For most it is just there, and they realize that they have a body when someone touches it for sex, but I experience and feel my body and skin all the time. Clothing messes it up, and that is why I do not want it. Prepare naked for whatever you do. The body must be free.

Shannon: Does the suspension experience change over time?

Yes, the experience does change as time passes. The thing is that in normal life the brain is always busy with something, but when you suspend that is all gone. There is only one thing: the balls with the body hanging from it. Afterwards you lay down — do nothing. Maybe repeat the exercise after a few minutes. Maybe masturbate, but if not, you feel as if you had an orgasm… the same feeling of total satisfaction. As time passed, and the initial fear for damage or injury disappears, I enjoy it more. It is more relaxing.

Shannon: Is there a recovery period?

There is a short recovery period, allowing the circulation to reestablish. The scrotum is wedged tight in the ring, and you have to pull it back, but after a few minutes you can do it again.

* * *

Shannon: Can you describe some more what the pain-pleasure experience is like?

Just imagine the pain wracking your body, when you are hanging on a rope tied around your balls, and enjoying it! “Absolutely crazy”, so-called normal people will say — when I was a young fellow I worried a lot about that. However, the fact was that I had a much nicer and better orgasm, “helping” myself if I thought of being tortured — my body just begged for it. Naturally I tried it out. I whipped myself. I hung weights on my balls. I tied them hard. I experimented with needles, electricity, you name it. The excitement of just planning something, making my dick as hard as the handle of a hammer, was already a joy, but the kick of the actual pain of a thick needle slowly driven through the foreskin cannot be described. Before you do it, you can already feel the pain of the tip of the needle on the skin, slowly increasing, building up the pressure. The skin breaks, and stretches. You need all your power to drive the needle deeper. The skin on the other side stretches, turns white under the pressure, until the tip of the needle breaks through. You have done it. Then comes the reward of an extreme orgasm…

Nuts? Yes, sure, but I have now learned to enjoy being crazy. It took me time to realize that I was made this way, and that I did not create myself. If I have been created enjoying pain like that, well, I better enjoy it. To hell with what the rest of the world may think of it.

Shannon: Did you have other worries about what you were doing as well?

One thing — “Am I alone?” I wondered how far I could go? I dreamed about driving a needle right through my dick or balls, and I dreamed about hanging by my balls. I dreamed of having permanent needles through my nipples and dick, but the question remained: could this be done without undue risk and danger? What will happen? There was no one to ask, and I had a partner who did everything possible to stop me.

Then came the computer, and with that the Internet.

It was great discovering BME — after all these fake wishy-washy SM sites, finally something real. There it was: Needles right through the dick. The balls. Nails, cutting, rings, everything. I went right through the whole library. The biggest surprise of all: a guy dangling upside down by the balls, which were stretched out a foot or so. It could be done!

I hardly slept, and went to work straight away.

But how? I am an engineer, and I know a thing or two about stresses. I realized that just tying a rope around my balls was possible, but the stresses would be born by just a few strands of skin. The skin would be torn easily, and the stress would never be on the same place. I needed something else to distribute the force of my weight evenly over the skin and internal structures of my balls. At first I tied a curtain rope around my balls, which I protected with a piece of cloth in such a way that there was a loop in the rope on each side of the testicles. This distributed the weight quite well.

I hung a block and tackle from the ceiling, with a weighing scale in-between, and started exercising. That was tough! In the beginning I just managed to pull with ten pounds or so… This was going to be a long haul! By increasing the force a little bit each day I made progress, and after a month I could bear 30kg for a few seconds.

Shannon: What was it like as you started to approach bearing masses equivalent to your body weight, and could actually suspend?

The strain on my balls was enormous. Sometimes blood was oozing from the skin, but I came closer and closer to my goal, and finally that big day came when I released my hands from the rope that held up my upper body weight. I was dangling freely with a 12kg weight on my feet, stretched horizontally — 92kg in total. My balls were dark purple and the strain stretched the skin like a drum skin. They looked as if they were polished. The pain was enormous, but that did not prevent my dick’s reaction. The bastard knew what reward would be his!

I only managed for a few seconds, but I had succeeded! When I came down I had an orgasm like never before. Guess what? I am not so young anymore, and over the years the volume and strength of my come had been reduced. It would just lie there on my belly, at the end of my dick, but now, after all this exercise, some essential muscles have apparently been strengthened, and I came with a quantity and force as never before! Right up to my face.

The days, weeks, and month after, I continued exercising to be able to hang longer, but I also wished to hang without the weight on my feet. This took me another two months, but eventually I was dangling hanging by the balls, with my body leaning backwards. My balls stretch up to 25cm below my crotch or 10cm above the kneecap.

I finally replaced the wooden block with a permanent brass and stainless steel ring. It is a beautiful ring with my coat of arms on it. The ring keeps my balls permanently lowered to about 15cm below my crotch. It makes me aware all the time of the presence of my balls, when they dangle between my legs, whether I am dressed or not — usually not!

* * *

Shannon: You mentioned that you were a missionary child… Do you mind if I ask about your religious views?

I do not mind talking about it. As you can understand, I had a Protestant Christian upbringing, but because of where I have been, I have been in touch with many other beliefs. It makes you realize that it is so futile to claim that we Christians are the only correct ones. If I had been born a Muslim I would probably a fanatic Muslim by now. But then there is the question “is there a God?” We have absolutely no proof — it is just a belief. So I decided to die spiritually, and to be born again. I tried consciously to ban all of what I had from my mind, and I started reading — the Bible, yes, but also the Koran. I studied Bahia, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

My conclusion? I think that there is more to life than substance. I cannot prove it, but I can sense it, and see it in the way evolution is regulated and used as a laboratory for development. There must be a power which we do not know yet. The rest of religion is crap. What would such a power wish us to do with our lives? Well, the ten commandments are a good start — they just make sense — and it basically repeats in all faiths. And that is where my religion stops.

About our nakedness? Well, this big power, God, created us naked, and he saw that it was good. He never told anyone to dress up. Christ, that great prophet, died naked on the cross. It is only some church idiots who insist on always drawing a piece of cloth in front of his dick.

I am very curious to find out when I die what the truth is.

Shannon: Finally, anything you’d do differently if you could do it all over again?

Unfortunately my exploration of my interests comes a bit late, because definitely I would have done things differently if I had been in touch earlier. I am almost sixty, and I am not as randy and strongly masochistic as I was before. It is too late to find a partner with similar ideas. If [BME and greater awareness of this subject] had existed when I was eighteen, my whole life would have been different.


Shannon Larratt
BME.com

On Pins and Needles: A Life of Play Piercing [BME/News]

On Pins and Needles:
A Lifetime of Play Piercing

My friend “Mr. Thomas” was the artist behind the Pins and Needles bonus gallery in BME/HARD (members-only link) until his diabetes made him decide that it might be best to put his play piercing interests behind him — as he writes, “I guess I’ve had my fun, and now that I’m approaching middle age, it’s time to leave the fast lane, and start being more careful.” In this interview we reminisce about his experiences in over thirty years of heavy play piercing, almost all of it in secret. Because his play piercing interests developed independently and without outside influence, I think you will find it an interesting contrast to the standard play piercing that is currently popular.

* * *

Shannon: Tell me a little about yourself.

I’m in my early forties, was born in Colorado, and moved around the country a lot as my folks were in the military. We finally settled in the deep south of Mississippi in 1981.

I’m an A+ certified computer technician with an extensive background in holographic imaging for over fifteen years off and on, and I’m an amateur artist who sings classical choral music and opera. I love classical music as well as all other forms of music like new age, light rock, pop, disco, and so on. I’m heavy into science fiction as well as science fact. I’m also heavy into video games to the extent that I’m building an arcade machine for my living room. I’m considered legally blind from birth.

[Editor’s note: Thomas is currently involved in a number of fascinating projects that are quite public; unfortunately they can’t be talked about here without risking revealing his identity.]

Shannon: Legally blind?

Legally blind means that I have some vision, but not enough to drive, fly a plane, or recognize people at a distance. I also have limited fields of view, and some blind spots. In my case, I only see bellow the horizon, and my side vision is very poor. My vision in the left eye is only finger count at four feet, and the right is only correctable to 20/100 with lenses, but still both eyes have the field of view loss, and blind spots. This condition is called bilateral coloboma. It’s a congenital birth defect that involves the lack of cells that make up the light sensitive retina in some parts of the eyes, and is often mistaken for detached retina by less experienced eye doctors. The condition also affects the shape of the iris which gives me a “U” shaped pupil. Fortunately, I have brown eyes which hides this a bit. The United States Air Force medical division even did a medical documentary on my condition using video footage of me trying to read a book demonstrating another eye problem I, and many others have called “astigmatism” or something like that in which the eyes can’t fixate on a target very well, and move around too much to be able to focus properly.

I chose to make holograms because there is no focusing involved. You just bounce light off carefully placed mirrors, subject matter, and film. No camera is involved. Just a dark room. But I’ve been out of the holography business for a few years due to financial reasons. Hmmm… How about a hologram of a piercing for the cover? I only wish I were set up do industrial holography for mass production. Oh well, it was just a thought. I couldn’t do a live subject, it would have to be a small replica or something. It’s a physics thing.

* * *

Shannon: Tell me about your play piercing interest?

I frequently enjoy sticking pins into myself as an adrenaline rush as well as the satisfaction of an idle sadistic curiosity, I suppose. It’s also a kind of “mind over matter” thing. It really gets my heart pounding when I’m piercing my breasts and or nipples. It sometimes enhances sexual stimulation.

Shannon: How did you discover this interest?

I got started with this sort of thing more than thirty years ago when I was a kid. It all started when I accidentally crashed my bike into one of those trees that has all those long three to four inch thorns on them. Some of them stuck me very deeply in the arms, legs, and even my chest. The strange thing was that there was almost no pain, and I noticed I had become a bit aroused by the strange sensation of a dozen or so of these thorns stuck in me. Ever since that day I found my self experimenting with just about every pin and needle I could lay my hands on, and I also got extremely fascinated by images of acupuncture being done, or injections being given.

The next thing I knew, I found my self stealing my mother’s pins and needles and sticking them just under my skin in my fingers, and arms at first, and then a few months later, I started experimenting with inserting them into my breasts. The sensation of having pins stuck deeply into my breasts was awesome, and very arousing. I’m sure my mother wondered what was happening to all those pins she noticed missing from her sewing box!

Shannon: What specifically do you enjoy about it?

The sexual thrill, the rush, sexual, rush, and curiosity drove my obsession with needles and piercings.

Shannon: Do you think being blind plays a role in it at all?

There may be something to that, as tactile sensation does play an important roll in the life of someone with visual problems… Yes, it certainly played a major roll in my piercing sessions.

Shannon: When you started play piercing, did anyone know what you were doing?

All of this was happening while I was still in grade school, and I wasn’t even ten years old yet. I tried my first deliberate self inflicted piercing back in 1975. It was not much, just under the skin of my hand, and a friend of mine and I would freak out the girls in our class by showing them what we had mastered.

Shannon: Did you continue to “share” your interest?

Back in 1975, I really kept to myself, and only showed one close friend this activity. I think my mother was aware of my activity back then when she noticed a small scar on my left breast — she is a nurse, so she would know these things. My friend’s reaction was “You are weird!” But, he got over it, and I never pressed the issue with him. Even today, only about three other friends of mine know about my play piercing activity. Sometimes I’ll tell this to those I want to run off that I don’t want to be bothered by relationship-wise if they don’t get the message. It works well.

Shannon: How did your play piercing interest escalate?

For about twenty years or so I mainly stuck to shallow insertions just under the skin of my belly, and chest, and then gradually worked my way up to experimenting with the more dangerous straight in, and deeper piercings. I damned near punctured a lung with one of these stunts, but the sensation I felt of a needle that deep was awesome. But I came to my senses and never went quite that deep again.

Shannon: When did you start doing play piercing in your nipples?

It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I started exploring the intense sensation of pushing a needle deep into my nipples, and giving them a light twist. Even then, I still had not tried going through the nipple like one would for putting in jewelry. My first nipple piercing was of course straight in, and deep. This was an awesome sensation, and I did it frequently for a long time. I tried my first full breast skewering just within the last couple of years. I have slowed down my piercing activities recently as diabetes makes it take longer for the body to repair itself. But I still engage in it from time to time. A few years ago, I wanted to use very long needles for full breast skewering, and deep penetration, but could not find any anywhere, so I experimented with making my own needles from 18 to 20 gauge steel rods or wire, and a dremel with a sharpening stone on it. These actually worked better than the common straight pins I had. But I got tired of making my needles, and actually found a source for long hat pins through Manhattan Wardrobe Co in New York City, and a few other sewing supply houses that sell nice two and a half to three inch corsage pins as well. I suppose that in my time, I’ve used everything including common straight pins, safety pins, tacks, push pins, home made pins, hat pins, corsage pins, and even acupuncture needles, of which I was even able to find six inch versions although these are so flimsy you really have to work to use them. The only type of needle I have not used yet are the injection type needles. I won’t use these for several important reasons. Most importantly, they are not cheap. Second most important, they do a lot of tissue damage because they have an off axis tip which does more cutting than piercing. Third, they are hollow, which can serve as a a vector right into the body for bacteria. Also, I’ve noticed most piercings done with these needles tend to bleed. So I stick to pins and needles that do as little damage to tissue as possible. I have yet to try suspension, and probably won’t because I’m a diabetic. Diabetics have thinner skin than healthy folks, but I may at least try having the hooks put in, and do a light pull, just not a full load suspension. Who knows.

Shannon: Tell me more about the deep play piercing…

Very deep play piercing has its price. It’s highly risky if you don’t know your internal anatomy, and don’t pay attention to pain. I have a nice deep scar in my left breast which was caused in part by a very deep piercing which tore a muscle when I did not do the piercing right. I simply went all the way through the muscle, and well into the rib cage. That’s when I almost punctured a lung. Turns out I was very close to the heart, because I could see the needle swinging like a pendulum. It didn’t hurt and I didn’t realize how deep I had gone until I saw it beating.

The docs say there is nothing they can do about it without making the scar much worse. A pissed off iguana did not help matters by making the original scar area worse by tearing a nice gash in me when I was trying to force feed it after it had gone off feed from being sick. I neglected to get the injury looked at in time, and the resulting infection left the scar you now see. A friend said to me, “Well, that’s what happens when you breast feed an iguana!” These days, I’m more careful about not going into muscle tissue now that I know more about the fact that damaged muscle fibers won’t grow back. I stick to deep penetration, but stay out of the muscles. I’ve never been asked by a doctor about the scar. I also have noticed my nipples now have permanent holes where I had been going into the same part of the nipple repeatedly. After a few months of rest, they are finally starting to close up. As for the through and through breast skewering, this was partly inspired by the Slave Misty gallery, and I wanted to just try this for myself. I have not seen or experienced any ill effects from having done this, other than one bleed out that got my attention. No muscle tissue was affected by this. It was an extremely intense experience which really did not hurt at all. I did have one nasty experience where after getting twelve five inch hat pins through one breast, and taking all those pictures, and after taking the pins out, I closed out my imaging program before saving, and had to redo the whole shoot on my other breast. That’s why in some shoots you see a needle scarred breast in the first shots.

Shannon: What does the sensation feel like to you?

Actually I feel no pain other than a slight pinch on entry. I learned very early that you will only feel pain if you go into a nerve packed area and ignore the burn.

In case anyone is wondering, I don’t jam the needles in fast — I have found that it’s better to insert slowly. This lets me listen to my body, and if it does hurt, I can pull out, and try another site. Also, if you jab, you run the risk of breaking blood vessels, or hitting nerves, to say nothing of the risk of going through the ribs, and hitting an organ. By inserting slowly, the tip of the needle will simply glide around blood vessels, leaving them intact for the most part.

Shannon: Are there ever issues with bleeding or other complications?

Actually, in all the thirty years I’ve been doing this, I’ve only had about three or four bleed outs that really got my attention. Two of them can be seen in some of my later submissions which show about a dozen or so five inch hat pins inserted all the way through the breasts. Most of the times I luck out, and don’t get a single drop. Other times I might get a tiny drop of blood, what we call a micro bleed. Most often, the bleeds I do get happen between the nipple, and the arms where there are blood vessels found closer to the skin.

Shannon: Let’s talk a bit about different kinds of needles — it looks like you often use simple push-pins, rather than something medical?

Nothing is more frightening than to try to pull a pin out of your body only to have the head of the pin come off in your hand. This happened to me once, and I’m glad that pin had not been inserted all the way to the head of the pin like I used to do. If it had, I could very well have been off to the hospital to have it removed. The pin was in my nipple, but knowing how hard it is to pull a pin from a nipple, I made sure to leave a little pin hanging out so I could grasp it easily. As it turns out, that was a good thing, because the head did come off the pin, and I had to use a vice grip to pull the needle out the rest of the way.

So, when using pins with plastic, or other heads, don’t insert these all the way in, and avoid pushing them in so deep that if the head does come off, your flesh will envelop the needle. Leave enough needle hanging out that you can easily get at it if you have a problem.

Shannon: But you still prefer those needles over injection-style hypodermic type needles that seem more popular these days for play piercing?

I prefer to use pins over injection needles, because the tip of a pin is perfectly centered, and does not have the cutting edges found on injection needles. That’s why injection needles go in so easily compared with pins, but it’s why you tend to bleed more with injection needles. I find I have far fewer bleeds with pins, than with injection needles.

The other thing I don’t like about injection needles is the fact that they are hollow. This presents three problems. First, the hollow tube can act as a vector for pathogens to be transported right into your body. It’s harder for this to happen with pins, though not impossible. Second, the hollow tube can contribute to a frightful bleed out, if you don’t pull the needle out of whatever blood vessel the tip has intercepted. Finally, a hollow needle is more prone to bending or possibly even breaking than pins of the same gauge.

Shannon: What gauge and size of needles do you use?

I prefer to use needles of about 20 to 30 gage in size, because they do the least amount of damage to tissues. Acupuncture needles, are fine, if you use lengths under three inches. I have six inch acupuncture needles, but the gage is 28 which is just too flimsy to easily insert the needle all the way through my breasts. For this type of activity, I suggest a bit thicker needle that’s not too flimsy, but not so wide that it causes scars. I usually use six inch hat pins for going through my breasts, but never stick these into your rib cage, or insert in any direction that puts internal organs at risk. Just “stick” to surface to surface piercings, or deep piercings that don’t put you at risk.

Most acupuncture needles come with a tube. This tube is not for shipping purposes. It is used to start the insertion of the needle, and aids in easy insertion. You use it by placing the tube firmly against the skin, and then inserting the needle through the tube with a gentle tap. You will find the needle goes in much easier with the tube, because the tube stretches the skin, and keeps the skin from gripping the needle. It also provides rigidity to the needle while inserting. In some cases I’ve found it easier to shorten the tube by about no more than half an inch for the six inch acupuncture needles. This lets you get the needle in deep enough so that when you take away the tube the needle is less likely to flop around.

The larger the needle diameter (lower gauge), the greater that risk of infection as the hole the larger needle makes will also be larger. There is also greater risk of long term damage to tissues, blood vessels, and nerves.

For deep straight-in piercings, I prefer to straighten out a safety pin, or even make my own needles from 20 to 30 gage wire with a coiled, or bent head that I know won’t come off. You can go as deep as you like without worrying about plastic pin heads coming off, and leaving a pin buried in you.

* * *

Shannon: I saw there were some photos where you were breast pumping… What was your motivation in trying that?

The breast pumping was originally intended for enlargement purposes, but as I discovered it was not really working, it later just became little more than a kinky toy thing. I have discovered the danger of over pumping when I noticed one of my nipples bleeding. I also got tired of the “ring around the boob” effect of prolonged pumping. These happen when done for more than twenty minutes at a time, and when over pumped. I no longer engage in pumping other than as a funny looking kinky toy for entertainment purposes these days.

Shannon: You mentioned you sometimes do genital play piercing as well?

I generally stay away from the genitalia when it comes to piercings because that’s a high bacteria risk area, and especially for a diabetic — this is a no-go zone for me. Even healthy folks need to be especially careful with genital piercing, either play, or permanent [Editor’s note: I disagree with this assessment personally, as well as a few of the others]. This is also a high bleed out risk area for anyone. If done carefully, and if one takes the time to study internal anatomy, and learn where arteries, and nerves are, and exercises cleanliness, and sterile protocols, one can have a great experience with genital play, and permanent piercings.

Shannon: Since you occasionally cross-dress, do you mind telling me how you’d characterize your sexual orientation?

I actually consider myself multi-sexual in that I could easily go either way, and even though I have no desire to have a sex change, I also don’t have a problem with my large breasts, although I lately find myself gravitating more towards heterosexuality. A close friend dared me to try a bit of cross dressing, although that’s not my thing. It was an interesting twist just to see what a fat guy with a mustache would look like in a hot red boob out. It’s not the sort of thing I engage in on a regular basis. It was also done because I do have “A-cup” breasts. It was fun, but it’s behind me now, as they say. Who knows, I might try it again some day. I don’t mind talking about this to my close friends, or even with you for this, but it’s not something I’d rant about at the office.

Shannon: I have to ask you about your dress-up and computer gear in this hilarious photo — was that just a joke photo?

The computer gear is real, and in use, and you’re right, it was a hoot!

Shannon: Ever think about getting permanent piercings?

I have considered permanent piercings, but never had it done for financial reasons, and because of horror stories about angry lovers ripping them out on people. I’m also concerned about the long term affects of metal or plastic in one’s body, and am looking into any research that may be ongoing in this area. I have heard of some kinds of metal causing permanent tissue damage from metallic poisoning, but it’s pretty rare, and usually involves inferior quality jewelry, so I’m still looking into reliable sources for jewelry. I don’t think having permanent piercings would defeat the purpose of play piercing, but they might have some impact on how I went about the practice. That’s something I may have to explore someday.

* * *

Shannon: Any advice to people who want to try this sort of thing?

Make sure you are mentally ready for this activity. You don’t want to engage in this activity if you have thoughts of suicide, or of bringing harm to yourself, or others. Never do piercings if you are in a bad mood. And never do it in a thunderstorm when you might jump when a clap of thunder hits. This could be bad.

Shannon: Let no one say you don’t have

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About Shannon Larratt

Shannon Larratt is the founder of BME (1994) and its former editor and publisher. After a four year hiatus between 2008 and 2012, Shannon is back adding his commentary to ModBlog. It should be noted that any comments in these entries are the opinion of Shannon Larratt and may or may not be shared by BMEzine.com LLC or the other staff or members of BME. Entry text Copyright © Shannon Larratt. Reproduced under license by BMEzine.com LLC. Pictures may be copyright to their respective owners. You can also find Shannon at Zentastic or on Facebook.


Getting into Shape [BME/News]

I first met Leen about seven years ago in one of the Voluntary Amputee mailing lists where he was inquiring about bloodless ways to amputate his left leg, at the time considering dry ice. Not long afterwards he contributed photos of his recent toe amputations and other body modifications to BME, and a few months ago induced an infection in one of his toes (by, among other things, standing in dirty fish ponds and soaking it in motor oil) which eventually led to half of his foot being amputated by his doctors.

Outwardly Leen is a “normal” guy — other than his limp, without seeing his feet you’d never know of his interests. He’s a straight (and married) forty-two year old construction worker in Pretoria, South Africa, where his hobbies include motorsports, nature, working out, and reading — and still slowly working toward his dream of a LAK (“left above the knee”) amputation.

* * *

Shannon: When do you think your amputation interests first developed, and how?

As a child I was always fascinated by people that looked different. I loved to look at amputees just to see the stump dangling and not really doing anything… I just loved that. My mother always told me not to stare at people with disabilities, and that made me wonder even more what it would feel like to have just one leg.

Then at school we had a girl with one underdeveloped leg and one good leg because of polio. She had a prosthetic leg, but the best part was when the leg had to go for repair, as she use to come to school on crutches — those where good days at school. We also had a student teacher who had four fingers amputated on her one hand — she only had a thumb. It was always nice looking at her carrying her briefcase and writing on the blackboard.

Shannon: When and how did you come to realize that you actually wanted to become an amputee?

I was about five years old when I first tried to cut my two little toes off with a pair of scissors. I was unsuccessful of course. Also, when we would play doctor doctor, when I was the patient I always tied my one leg so that I would look like an amputee.

Shannon: That seems early… And when did you actually do the first successful amputation?

I did my first amputations when I was thirty-five years old.


Leen’s feet in early 2002.

Shannon: Did you ever see a therapist or wonder if you might be unstable?

No, I never saw a therapist. I always knew this was the right thing to do. There was no “internal struggle”… nothing like that.

Shannon: While many people into voluntary amputation are only into amputation, you’re into a broader range of body modification — I know you have a subincision, as well as having done a partial castration… Are they linked interests, or separate?

I just love to be different. Thanks to the internet I was able to see what other people do and try some of those things myself.

Shannon: How did the partial castration happen?

I was just exposing my testicle, playing with it — I struggled to get it back into my sack, but couldn’t so I just cut it off. There was a lot of bleeding, but I managed to stop it. Later I tried to do a partial penectomy, but ended up at the ER.

Shannon: Why did you go to the ER that time?

I was losing a lot of blood. I knew I had to get to the ER — as soon as possible! I fainted twice on the way there because of blood loss!

Shannon: I’m glad you’re OK — I assume that the penectomy and similar play means there’s a sexual aspect to your modifications in general?

Not all of them. I think to have a partial penectomy would be interesting — not to be able to have penetrative sex anymore, but still be able to cum by masturbating or from a blow job.

Shannon: It’s my feeling that as a generalization amputation and body modification is sexual behavior, almost like the extreme mating dances that animals do to attract each other… To me this also helps explain why these extremes are almost always male behavior rather than female… What are your thoughts on that subject?

I agree with that.

Shannon: You’re into CBT as well?

Yes, I am into CBT… Every now and then I love to torture my dick.

Shannon: What’s the motivation?

It just feels good.

* * *

Shannon: You mentioned in the past that you don’t want to lose a lot of blood when you do procedures… Is that why you chose to induce an infection for the toe amputation rather than doing it by just cutting it off?

Yes. I think toes and fingers are easy, but anything more gets a bit tricky. I do it on my own at home, so if anything goes wrong I could bleed to death. Thus the infection route is better.

Shannon: How did you do your previous toe amputations?

For most of my previous amputations I put my feet in a bucket of ice for twenty minutes, and then I use a cable tie. For the first ones I just used a chisel and hammer and chopped them off. On later amputations I used a scalpel to cut right up to the bone. Then I pull back the flesh, and use the chisel and hammer to chop off the toe. Finally, I stitch it up. I take the stitches out after ten days.

On one toe I was just “playing” with an old chisel I found… I put it on my toe and pushed too hard and it went right through the bone — I then just had to push harder until the toe was amputated. Of course, an infection set in because the chisel was dirty and I had to go to hospital where they did a ray amputation [note: a ray amputation is where the bone above the toe is removed as well — this is what caused the “hoof” type split in Leen’s foot].


Preparing to chop off a toe.

Shannon: Which method would you recommend to others — a chisel job, or cut and stitched?

It heals much faster if you stitch it up. After ten days the stitches can be taken out and it is basically healed. The other way takes about two months to heal completely.

Shannon: Have you done any amputations (or other modifications) that are visible to the public, or are they all relatively hide-able?

None of them are visible — I just walk with a slight limp. Most people I meet ask me what’s wrong. I then just tell them I had a midfoot amputation.


Inducing the toe amputation, and the results of the first intervention.

Shannon: With the most recent amputation, where the infection got very bad and necessitated further removal, how risky was that?

My life was never at risk. I still went to work the Friday and Saturday after they did the midfoot amputation.

Shannon: What did you think of the “surprise” of getting a midfoot rather than a toe amputation?

I was in the hospital for two days and then flew into Africa for my Christmas holiday. I am happy with half a foot, but the first doctor wanted to do a below the knee amputation, which would have been first prize! Unfortunately he sent me to an orthopedic surgeon, and after more X-Rays and an MRI, they decided on a midfoot amputation.

Shannon: I’d make the argument that it’s probably more dangerous to use the induced infection route due to risks of septicemia and so on, versus the blood loss and shock risks of a “chop it off” method…

I’ve done both methods. Blood loss in my toes is not that a big of a problem, but if you cut off more, or start on something like your penis, there are big blood vessels so the loss of blood becomes an issue. The last two toes I did I struggled to get the stitches in, so I thought that going the infection route might be better. Since I am a diabetic, I just go to the diabetic foot clinic and they prescribe antibiotics which help against septicemia — I just make sure that my toe doesn’t heal and eventually they will amputate.


Leens foot stitched up after being shortened.

Shannon: What would you say to people who believe it’s an abuse of the system for people to “force” taxpayers to cover an amputation by “tricking” doctors into doing it?

I have private medical aid and the monthly contributions are quite high, so why not make them pay for the amputation? It is safer when a doctor does it, and it makes me happy. The doctors and nurses think it is fantastic that I don’t get depressed after an amputation, so I don’t waste tax payers’ money [with rehab or counseling].

Shannon: And how is the mid-foot amputation healing? Is it still maintaining that split “hoof” appearance?

It is completely healed now. The hoof split is because of the ray amputation I had a couple of years ago.

Shannon: When the stumps heal, what does it feel like?

In the beginning they are a bit more sensitive [than normal body parts]. After I did my big toe, whenever I woke up in the morning and I looked at my foot, it was still there! I think it is just imprinted in your brain, but after a couple of weeks it disappears. I do get phantom pains in my midfoot amputation — some days I can still feel my toes hurt.

Leen’s left foot, showing the healed ray amputation.

* * *

Shannon: Unlike other modifications, I think a lot of people have a guttural response to amputation and have difficulty convincing themselves it’s not always negative — that it’s universally “wrong” to induce a “handicap”…

Amputation is not like piercings and tattoos, which are more of an art form. Most people see amputation as a disability, and yes, you will struggle to do certain things, but to we who want amputations that is part of the fun! We know what to expect from life with one leg or arm — disability is all in the mind.

Shannon: So your amputations have been a completely good thing?

I love my amputations; I talk about them and show interested people my stumps… I go to gym, shower, sauna, and to the beach, and I don’t care if people look at my modifications.

Shannon: Any negatives?

Not many negatives — just the bleeding risks during the procedures.

Shannon: Are they your favorite body modification?

The amputations are my favorites. I get such a high amputating a body part! The feeling when the chisel cuts your toe off, and it just lies there, unattached to your body, and goes completely white… I just love that feeling!

Shannon: Do you think you have a specific end goal, or will you continue to do procedures to keep getting the high?

There is an end goal. I want to be a left above the knee amputee. I won’t amputate fingers.

Shannon: How do you explain the amputations to people?

People at work think I am unlucky!

Shannon: And the doctors?

The doctors believe what I tell them. For example, for my missing testicle — since I live in South Africa where there is a lot of violence and crime, I just told them that I put up a fight when a couple of guys wanted to mug me, and one of them fell on top of me and stabbed me in my groin area. They believed it and asked me if I wanted to go to the police — I said no, it was dark and I didn’t get a good look at their faces.

Shannon: Has anyone gotten suspicious?

Nobody has gotten suspicious. They may think that I have been unlucky, but even when I went to the ER they believed all my explanations. It also helps that I have had diabetes for twenty years, so it is normal to get infections in your feet that don’t heal which result in amputations. Nobody knows that I help the infections along and make sure they don’t heal so I can have amputations done professionally by a doctor.

Shannon: And what does your wife think?

She does not know.

Shannon: Wow… so you’re not “out” at all — how would you feel if people found out your amputations were voluntary?

I don’t really care if people find out they were all voluntary. They will get over it — there are more important things to worry about.

Shannon: Are you interested in meeting others with this interest? Assuming you weren’t married, if you were looking for a partner, would you seek out someone with this interest?

It’s easier if you have things in common — partners should have the same interests… and I would like to touch and play with women with amputations.

Shannon: With the majority of amputee groups being very fantasy/fetish oriented, does it make it difficult to meet others with the same drives?

It is difficult to find somebody to talk, to but there are a few in those groups that will answer your questions and give advice. The most I have learned is by reading the articles on your website BME [Editor’s shameless plug: if you find this interesting and want to hear more stories and see more pictures, get a BME membership and visit the full galleries].

Shannon: What advice would you give to people who feel like this is what they need to do?

If they believe that this is what they want, they must do it, no matter what society or their friends say or think about it. They must just be 100% sure that this is what they want, because if you amputate something it is gone forever!

Shannon: What are your future body modification plans?

I am going to amputate one segment of my middle toe on my right foot, just to get the proportions right for now. I am still going to become a left above knee amputee — that is my long term plan, my dream… Also I’ll do a glansectomy or partial penectomy.


A current photo of Leen’s feet healed after the midfoot procedure.

Shannon: Finally, something that I’ve heard brought up repeatedly by others is that voluntary amputation is an insult to people who’ve had it forced on them by fate — do you think that statement has any validity, and what would you say to someone who feels that way?

It has no validity at all. Voluntary amputations are just away to get our bodies into the shape we want them to be.


Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Cao: Growing up kinky in Borneo [BME/News

Cao: Growing up kinky in Borneo
A suit-wearing professional explores genital modification

Cao is a friend of mine that grew up and still lives in Borneo where he has a “normal” professional career. You’d never guess — but that’s almost always the case — that under his pants his genitals have gone through a series of modifications, and that he’s had a fetish for them since he was young. This interview is an excerpt from my upcoming book, but I wanted to print it now because I heard a recent Jim Ward interview in which he opined that piercing had moved from the sexual arena into the aesthetic, which made me think of many older friends like Cao who are still very much motivated purely by their sexual eccentricities.

Although the face of body piercing is certainly very visibly aesthetic, I still think his story will feel very familiar to many readers…

Cao’s current body modifications including genital beading and an adult circumcision.

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Shannon: Tell me a bit about yourself…

Cao: I am half a century old this year and was born on the island where the ampallang was said to be first originated — Borneo. I grew up on the island, but did stay overseas during my student life. At that time, body mod was not that popular or I would have gotten many done at the time.

Shannon: Can I ask what you do for a living?

Cao: I am a professional, and in our society it is still not acceptable to have visible body mods for man of my age. Yes, for youngsters it’s OK, but not for a professional like me or a man of my age. I am married and only my wife knows about my body mod — hahaha!

Shannon: Did you see piercing on the island when you were growing up?

Cao: I was born here in Borneo, but am not from the indigenous group. However, I was living near the natives who have a lot of cultural practices such as genital piercing (the ampallang), ear piercing with stretching, and large body tattoos for both men and women. These days, only the older generation still have the traditional ones.

When we were in secondary school, we went to the museum and someone pointed out the ampallang piercing in an exhibit, but it only struck me as an amusement and a tale of old times. We had a good laugh but I never thought of getting one. However, as I grew older, it did stick in my mind what a good thing it would be to have one. Later, during my working life I had the real chance to travel to the interior part of the island and I got to know a little more about this piercing. Most of the old men had them.

Shannon: Were you able to talk to the older men about them?

Cao: It was quite difficult to talk to the older men about genital piercing as it was considered to be very private. I could usually only talk to them about the visual mods — the the ear, nose, and the body tattoos. Missionary works had changed a lot of their culture. As I mentioned earlier, there was a generation gap in these practices. If you were to go to the age group between thirty-five to sixty, you would not find any modifications because during that time people stopped doing and having modifications due to the missionaries… So to see it we had to go to the villages where the old folks were. In the towns or cities these days you will find young people going to a studio for tattoos or piercings but most of them will get “modern” piercings like the labret or just earlobe piercings… not like what their ancestors have. I reckon this is because of the influence of the media. I’m not sure whether some of them have ampallangs — the ampallang was traditionally a sign of courage and manhood.

Shannon: Was your first modification an ampallang, or did you start with other things?

Cao: My first body mod was my circumcision, and after the first one my remaining foreskin stretched, and it grew back a couple of centimeters. After several years I went for a second one. Then it was quite nice and tight on full erection.

After that came the thought of an implant. I first had three pearls implanted on the top side of the shaft, and added a nice big black pearl a few months later. A year later I had two pearls implanted on the underside, but they were not done properly, and I retired them. My skin was quite sensitive and could not accept the stitches, so the holes just opened up and I just had to press the pearls out. I am still contemplating having a few new ones done on the underside.

Shannon: Other than the ampallangs in Borneo, how did you discover genital piercing?

Cao: I only got to know about genital piercing when I saw a picture of a naked man full of genital piercings in 1999 — I could not believe it! Then a chat pal introduced me to the BME site. Ohhhh, that was an eye opener! Ideas started to come into my mind — I felt a stream of excitement that flowed through my body. What a feeling it would be to have mine pierced!

It took me a long time to actually pierce myself and get my PA, and it was not that successful on the first few trials. I did not have the correct equipment or jewelry to do it with. It was only after the third or fourth time that I had a nice PA — I ordered everything on the ’net. Unfortunately it migrated and was only supported by a thin piece of skin. When I showed it to a pal, his advice was to cut it and have a meatotomy.


Cao’s meatotomy: procedure photo, freshly done, and healed.

Shannon: Why did you do the piercing yourself?

Cao: I chose to do the piercing DIY after I tried to contact “Primitive Art” in Singapore for an appointment and the piercer was not able to offer what I wanted; a reverse PA. As I said, I didn’t get it right the first few times, but I learned a fair bit — you know, at the time it never even occurred to me that a piercing could migrate! Many of my DIY piercings have been a failure, and I think now I’ve finally learned my lesson?

Shannon: Hahaha, ok, tell me about the first procedure you ever did on yourself…

Cao: I went to a pharmacy and got the biggest hypo needle I could — I was so excited to try it out. I didn’t have any proper jewelry, so to satisfy my ego, I tried with the needle and with a copper wire, after boiling them in water for twenty minutes. I sat on the toilet seat with the cover down, and with the needle in my hand, I tried to line it up into the receiving tube. Blood started to ooze out and I panicked, withdrawing the needle and giving it a hard compression. The bleeding stopped after a few minutes. I tried again — my hands were shaking, and it was hard to control. But, with determination, I gave a quick and hard push and the needle went all the way through… I held my breath… well, it wasn’t that painful. Then what to do next? I pulled out the needle and tried to insert the wire, but blood was everywhere and I couldn’t figure out where to insert it. I knew it was a failure and I abandoned the whole procedure.

Shannon: But eventually you figured it out?

Cao: Yes, after reading experiences and seeing how others did it I managed to do a 10ga PA, although I walked around with a twisted piece of wire in it for a few weeks. I was proud of it, but it looked awful, and I worried how long could I put up with it. I would not be able to have sex with my wife like that, so I was very happy when a curved barbell came in the mail.


Cao’s latest PA piercing.

Shannon: What made you want the circumcision and the beading?

Cao: Friends talked about things like circumcision and pearling — how would a girl respond to these? Ohhhh, as a youngster then though, it was real a challenge to get them. There was no studio that would carry out all these body mods. Circumcision usually was done by doctors or medical assistants, and pearling was also done by the medical assistants. There was no information then for doing it yourself — the Internet was not in existence, and there were no magazines or even pals to ask.

Shannon: So you got the circumcision as an adult?

Cao: Yes, although everyone talked about being circumcised in school — to have clean genitals, to have the ultimate sensation, and so on. So I was was interested in having a circumcision as a teen, but never had the opportunity until I turned twenty-five. Here, circumcision is performed by a doctor or a hospital medical assistant, and luckily is a very common practice because of religion (Islam).

I went for it after a few guys in college who had theirs done showed them off and boasted how great it was — they helped me arrange getting it done. I always overstretch my foreskin during masturbation which caused it to bleed — I noticed that just after healing, it was a nice new sensation. I have been very happy with my circumcision, although I know there are guys who want to have their foreskins back.

Shannon: Do things feel different now that you’re circumcised?

Cao: With the rim, my feeling is different. I usually will only use my glans for the initial play without pushing in the whole thing. When my wife starts to apply pressure, I then insert the whole thing and get the maximum feeling. But the circumcision didn’t give me all the feeling I was looking for and I wanted to get an implant as well.

Shannon: Tell me about it?

Cao: I have one big pearling which will usually moves around and that gives the ultimate feeling. A male nurse did it for me. I went with a friend, and when it was my turn — I went first — he put a cloth with a hole over my dick. It kept getting hard and he had to apply pressure quite a few times to get it down. After injecting a local anesthetic, he cut a hole with a scalpel, and had to try a few times before he got it right — in my mind, I worried he had not done many of these! After the pearls were in he stitched them up.

Shannon: When you say “pearls”, do you mean that literally?

Cao: Yes, mine are real pearls — as you know, in Asia, pearls are very common (I reckon people in Japan also use pearl for the implants). I had to go to a shop that sells pearls and bought those without the hole in them.

Shannon: Were any of your implants DIY?

Cao: Almost… I made a homemade taper by sanding a chopstick down to size. I boiled it along with some pearls and needles. I made a piercing with an 8ga needle and then started to push through the taper. It started to hurt as I had to push it harder and it stretched. But then I started to wonder if I would have the skill to get the bead in… I had come so far, I couldn’t give up, but the bead kept slipping off. The bead wouldn’t go in and blood was oozing out like anything. I tried again but still couldn’t get it in and eventually gave up.

The bleeding continued for a few days, and when I had sex next — about a week later — the wound opened up and started bleeding again quite badly! I’m telling you this because I would not want anyone else to have the same experience… if you really want to, do it at your own risk. For me, the next time I went to a professional!

The crown implants were done much later. I had an opportunity to visit Canada and got in touch with a piercer — I told him through e-mail that I wanted to have a piercing done as soon as I arrived there. I wanted an apadravya so badly. I went to the studio that afternoon after I arrived, expecting to have it done then and there, but he only gave me an inspection. On seeing my PA, he advised me to have a meatotomy and get a deep PA together with a reverse PA. I was not too willing to let go of my PA, and as he did not have the jewelry, he would only be able to do the piercing a week later. With the anxiety of waiting there for a week, a few days later I decided to get implants instead — mostly the fear of being pierced through the glans made me chicken out! He agreed to do the implants and suggested the crown placement.

I love it, and in hindsight should have gone at least half way around. These implants were done with silicon beads, and he ensured they would be very stable and I’ve had no problems with them. When I returned, whoa, it was a hard experience with my wife! The circumference of the crown had increased and I had a hard time trying to enter, hahahaha! But now I have developed a technique of entering her sideways…


Cao’s reverse PA piercing (and crown implants).
L-R: Needle in, bleeding during procedure, ring in place, and later removed.

Shannon: Does your wife like your piercings?

Cao: After I got my first PA, my wife was not too happy or excited about it. I wanted to have sex with the jewelry, but she was too scared. Fear overcame the excitement and the enjoyment part. I had to take out the jewelry each time. Since I have the jewelry stretched to 8ga, the piercing hole has stayed quite permanent. I could leave the piercing without the jewelry for a long time.

Shannon: And the implants?

Cao: Before I got married, I already had the initial implants, so she had no complaints about it. She never said anything how she likes or dislikes them, but I reckon she loves their presence, hahahaha.

When I first got my implants done, and it came for the time to see how good they were with sex, I met a girl willing to play with my modification — she really enjoyed it! We made love two times in a row that night. But I had to be very careful in getting other girls to make love, as not all of them liked the idea of being with a modified guy. I did get a few rejections, but that was fifteen years back.

Shannon: Thanks for talking to us! Any last advice to others?

Cao: If you like DIY like me, do good research before you embark on it!


Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Ashley Crawford: Post-Gender [BME/News]

Ashley Crawford: Post-Gender

“Body modification is a personal choice. Primarily, my genitals are the site of erotic pleasure rather than a symbol of my identity or politics. My primary interest in changing my genitals is to enable me to do new and interesting sexual things.”

Those of you who are regular ModBlog readers and BME members may remember that about a month ago I posted — I think for the first time — photos of a cervical piercing. I interviewed Ash Crawford, the piercer who’d done this DIY procedure on themselves, about the piercing, thinking that would be the focus of our conversation, but the interview soon moved into a fascinating conversation about post-gender existence.

A twenty-six year old body modification artist and sex worker that’s spent most of their life in various parts of England, Ash began as a tattoo artist six years ago, later moving into piercing and scarification, and has recently opened their first studio. As a tattoo artist Ash specializes in extensive cover-up work and enjoys combining large scale blackwork with scarification, as an alternative to white-over-black tattooing. A life long interest in body modification first expressed itself doing DIY genital piercings a young teen, and then visible piercings and tattoos after leaving school at age seventeen, aiming for full below-the-neck coverage.

As an adult, Ash became increasingly interested in body modification that blurs the line between male and female — for six years modifying secondary sexual characteristics through steroid use (testosterone) and more recently a bilateral mastectomy. Ash has been making her primary sexual characteristics increasingly ambiguous — not “more male”, but something that seeks a perfect balance between both, with each as prevalent as the other, in order to deny the limiting factors that come with traditional gender roles. As a post-gender human, Ash sees this transition as healthy and liberating, and believes that this view of gender will become increasingly common.

* * *

BME: Let’s get right to it — how would you describe the cervical piercing procedure?

Difficult. It took a lot longer than most piercings. I was doing it all by touch. It took ten minutes or so just to dilate my cervix enough to get the clamp positioned correctly. I used a canula needle, which helped a lot because with these it is possible to shield the point of the needle with the canula until it is positioned correctly and also to insert jewelery in the opposite direction to the way the needle went in. Originally I pierced with a straight barbell and one end sat inside the womb most of the time. I found that when I leaned forwards the ball would “pop” out of the womb, which was distracting and slightly uncomfortable, so I changed the jewelery to a curved barbell which enabled both balls to sit outside the womb at all times and this seemed to solve the problem.

After the procedure there was some cramping and light bleeding from the womb, similar to menstruation, for a couple of days. Due to steroid use it’s been a long time since I menstruated, and I rather enjoyed the novelty of the experience!

While the clamp caused some discomfort and mild pain, the piercing itself was completely painless. I don’t say this lightly. I don’t have a high pain threshold at all. I struggle with the pain aspect of getting my body mods done, and I previously believed that all piercings hurt to some extent.

However, the sensation I felt during the needle insertion was like a deep pressure. It reminded me of getting fucked really hard with something big… Definitely pleasure rather than pain.

BME: How has your cervical piercing healed?

It healed incredibly quickly, and with no action on my part other than abstaining from vaginal intercourse for a couple of weeks. The nice thing about internal piercings is that you just leave them alone and they heal themselves — you don’t even have to worry about the cleanliness of anything that comes in contact with them because nothing will, provided you abstain from penetrative sex for a while.

Sadly I had to lose the piercing when I asked someone to change the jewelery over to a segment ring for me after approximately six weeks. Mainly I wanted someone to do a visual assessment and confirm that the size ring I’d chosen was correct because too large a ring would be holding the cervix open to an uncomfortable degree, and also, to be honest I’ve never put a segment in a segment ring “blind” and I wasn’t confident that I could. This other piercer had trouble and ended up creating a new exit hole with the jewelery which was at approximately 90 degrees to the original. I ended up with a very shallow surface piercing (which I removed) and a lot of swelling which prohibited me fitting jewelery in the original hole.

I am definitely going to re-do this piercing. I was sad to see a couple of comments on ModBlog along the lines of “there is no reason for doing that except to show off”, because I can honestly say that it was one of the most enjoyable piercings I have ever had. I am not ashamed to admit that [im]proving my piercing skills was one of the benefits I gained from this procedure, but it was not the primary motivation. A few comments were also made speculating on any past or future pregnancies of mine. For the record, I have borne one child, who is now seven. I have no plans for more children in the foreseeable future, but if this changes I see no reason why retiring the piercing before attempting to get pregnant would not solve the obvious problems it presents in relation to pregnancy and birth.

BME: What were the motivations behind the cervical piercing?

Having already gained a lot of pleasure from my g-spot piercings (the first of which I did for myself around six years ago) and been delighted with the fast healing involved, I decided a couple of years ago that I wanted to get my cervix done too. I had been intermittently asking around for a piercer who was experienced with this type of piercing, as originally I thought I would be unable to do it myself. A couple more years’ piercing experience and no luck finding someone who had done the procedure before lead me to decide that I had as good a chance of getting it right as anyone.

I wanted to feel more connected with that part of my body and to be more aware of it during sex and orgasm, and the piercing fulfilled these goals totally. With the piercing in place, I became physically aware of the action of the cervix during orgasm, which I had only had a theoretical knowledge of previously. I did feel a slight “pinching” type of discomfort during and immediately after orgasm, most noticeably in the first week, and to some extent for the entire duration of wearing the jewelery.

It was not severe enough to cause me any worry or distress, and would always pass completely a minute or so after orgasm.

BME: Wow, you have a g-spot piercing as well?

I was probably being incorrect in calling it that. It’s more over the g-spot than through it.

There seems to be more tissue on top of mine than most people’s I have felt. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a hymen piercing, but the point of it is to facilitate foolproof location of the g-spot. An average sized fingertip fits snugly between the two balls, and voilà, you’ve got the right place! I’ve had a few, one of which I stretched up to about 8mm until it split. The inside of the split feels fantastic!

BME: I guess it’s sort of like a subincision in that it’s exposing more nerves to direct contact… I assume these atypical piercings have given you much broader insights into your own sexual identity both on a philosophical level and on a physical level?

I’m not so sure about that…

The fact that I thought about these piercings, that I thought they would feel good, and that they did feel good, would seem to reflect a higher level of body-awareness than I have had in the past. In turn, they have changed my body and given me new sensations to be aware of, so in that sense they have increased my awareness even further. They have been positive and perhaps improved my relationship with my body a little, but I wouldn’t claim any deep insights as a result of them.

BME: Your cervical and g-spot piercings were done DIY and by touch — is DIY an important part of the process, or is this something that you could offer others on a commercial level?

With certain clients I would consider doing internal piercings, but there are a number of issues.

The main thing to consider is the anatomy of the individual. My “g-spot” piercing works because I have a larger than average bump there. On some people it would be physically impossible to do the same piercing because there is not real protrusion there to pierce. With a cervix piercing, a client would need to be able to achieve good dilation of both the vagina and cervix and also be able to use their pelvic floor muscles to push and hold the cervix lower down in order to make it more accessible. They would need to demonstrate an understanding of the potential dangers of trying to sustain a pregnancy with this jewelery in place and commit in writing to remove the jewelery before attempting a pregnancy or at the first sign of any unplanned pregnancy. They would also need to understand that placing oneself at risk of STIs with this in place would mean an increased risk of pelvic inflammatory disease, where an infection travels into the womb.

The second issue is my relative lack of experience with these particular piercings. You wouldn’t consider someone to be fully trained and experienced in, say, navel piercing just because they did it on themselves one time! It’s a tough one, because of course you always need to start somewhere. I feel fairly confident that I could get it right a second time, with the right client. Is there any room for being “fairly confident”, as opposed to 100% confident, and still being ethically able to offer something like this to clients? I really don’t know. I guess it would depend on the client and where they were coming from.

One further concern with the cervix piercing is the invasive nature of the procedure. Of course I am used to dealing with genitals as a piercer, but with no other piercing would it be necessary to put my hand inside a client’s vagina. This piercing is a difficult one to do; it’s not quick. When I was doing myself I was in there for maybe ten minutes. A person doesn’t expect to go see a piercer and get digitally penetrated for ten minutes! I’m sure I could decrease the time taken significantly as I gained experience and refined my technique, but still… Of course, this level of contact would be appropriate since the procedure requires it, but I would still have some concerns about how it might make the client feel. It’s important never to touch a client more than they feel comfortable with.

BME: You’ve had more traditional genital piercings as well I assume? How would you compare them?

My first genital piercings were in the hood and labia, and these were for decorative purposes rather than enhancing pleasure, which was satisfying to me at the time. In the last few years I have had somewhat higher expectations of my piercings and have retired the ones that don’t work for me in terms of sensation. I have recently retired my vertical glans piercing after almost two years because that one had always felt slightly uncomfortable, and I figured after all this time that was as good as it was going to heal. I had a horizontal glans piercing before, and that was just terrible — I only kept that a couple of months. I kind of knew that one wasn’t going to work for me, but when I turned up for a vertical glans piercing the piercer was convinced that it would be better horizontal, so I went with that. I guess it works for some people, but for me it got in the way of how I like to be touched so I couldn’t have an orgasm while it was in. I get some sexual pleasure from my fourchette piercing. Both the internal piercings have been less painful and faster healing than any of the others, as well as feeling good, so those are my favourites.

BME: What are the considerations in piercing a testosterone enhanced clitoris? How does the anatomy change from a piercing point of view as it develops?

I’d consider a testosterone enhanced clitoris to be a small penis for the purposes of piercing. Piercing a clitoris is normally a very fiddly procedure, but after a few years on T it’s wildly different. If you are talking about an otherwise unmodified organ then there are some differences that prevent a full range of male piercings being done, but you can still do a lot of them. After a metoidioplasty with urethral relocation the organ is generally indistinguishable from an average penis apart from its size. However, I would be hesitant to do any piercings to a surgically extended extended urethra, as these have a nasty habit of healing shut. I would be concerned that the healing stimulated by the piercing might encourage this to happen, although if the surgery had been performed many years ago I would be less worried than if it was newly healed. If a client came to me with that sort of anatomy I would advise them to seek advice from their surgeon. Piercings like the apadravya and ampallang can be performed with less worry on a metoidioplasty like mine with no urethral relocation. Alternatively, a type of PA or a reverse PA could be done which might give the appearance of exiting at the urethra, especially if stretched, but would actually be exiting the glans from a normal piercing type hole. This could be useful if the client wanted their penis to pass for normal as much as possible in the context of sex or general nudity, but was not worried about using urinals.

BME: Are there piercings and modifications that are uniquely suited to people who are living in a post-gender body?

People with a post-gender identity or outlook aren’t necessarily perceived to be transgender and may not have any sort of transgender body mods. Even among transgender people there are such a range of bodies and minds, I don’t think it would be possible to say X piercing will suit people with X identity. However, a couple of piercings come to mind as particularly suitable for FtM-spectrum people wanting to make the most of their testosterone-enhanced cock/clit: the triangle, one or more of which can act as the first step toward a metoidioplasty, and the glans piercing which is much more suited to a larger organ than an average sized clitoris. This piercing can provide additional stimulation to a partner during intercourse — very useful considering the size difference between this sort of organ and an average penis — and possibly to the wearer as well, although I wasn’t so impressed with it myself in that respect.

BME: Has the steroid use changed your perception and sensation sexually? That is, does your mind interpret female anatomy in a male way now? Or is that just a gendered misconception about sensation?

It has changed my anatomy, which has in turn changed my sex life. I am a lot more focused on my clitoris now that it is so much larger. It seems like my most important sexual organ now. Sex used to be mostly about penetration for me, but now being penetrated seems like an optional extra, even though I still love it. It’s something I do less frequently, when I want to have a longer sex session and get turned on, but not necessarily come.

I had never had a proper orgasm before I used steroids, and then about a year after I started taking them I learned how to have one. This has had a really major impact on my quality of life in general, not just because I feel so much more relaxed and happy when I have regular orgasms but also because it quickly toned up my pelvic floor muscles and thereby cured the stress incontinence I’d suffered from since my child was born. I don’t know that I would never have learned to orgasm without taking steroids, but I definitely think the anatomy I have now is more easily satisfied than the one I had before. That benefit, which was unexpected, has actually been the greatest one of all.

BME: You mentioned earlier that you self pierced your genitals as a kid. I did the same, as did a lot of people who are now into body modification seriously as adults… Was it just sort of a gut instinct to do so, or was there a context for it?

I’d say it was an instinct. I don’t remember knowing about anyone else having genital piercings so I can’t explain where the idea came from.

Nobody knew, not until I was a bit older anyway. I don’t know how I would have explained it if someone had found out. I suppose I’d have said it was decorative, because in my mind that’s what piercings were always for, and I hadn’t ever heard of another reason. I was mainly aware of ear piercings, which I had always resisted having. It was expected of me as a female to have a piercing in each lobe. One example of this is that on several occasions I received earrings for pierced ears as a birthday present. People just assumed I had it done. I resented what I saw as an attempt to make me modify my body to suit society rather than myself. So, a hood piercing was my very first body modification. It’s hard to know why I chose that area specifically — I think it was just because nobody would see and I wanted it to be my secret for a while. I don’t think it was anything to do with sex at that stage.

BME: Do you think the motivator is more nature than nurture?

People are extremely varied in their motivations. I wouldn’t attribute a reason to serious enthusiasts in general.

In this topic, as in general, I lean more towards nurture in nature/nurture debates. In my case there was no big, obvious thing that lead to my love of body modification, but I am more inclined to think my life experience gave me a number of subtle pushes in that direction than to believe I was born with an inbuilt desire to modify myself. That said, body modification is something humans seem to be turned on to quite easily, in general. There are few, if any, cultures whose people never practice any form of body modification. So maybe the potential to be attracted to body modification is inbuilt in all of us to some extent.

BME: How did you initially come to decide that you wanted to undertake an female-to-male gender transition?

The concept of “a” transition being “one” that I wanted to undertake doesn’t seem very accurate to me. People talk about “a sex change” like it’s one thing, but in fact the term usually describes a collection of different body modifications, and in my opinion each of them deserves to be considered individually.

Using steroids was the first thing I did that would clearly be classed as transgender body modification, although I had been collecting tattoos that some people interpreted as masculine for several years, so perhaps that counts too. There were two main reasons for wanting to take testosterone. I was getting into weight training at the time. I was impatient to feel stronger, and I knew that taking steroids would help me achieve that. That was the main reason. I had done my research and I knew that taking testosterone would make my body a lot more masculine. I was ambivalent at the start — some of the androgenic effects took me a long time to feel at peace with. But at the same time there was an attraction to the idea of looking less feminine because I knew that having such feminine body often made people treat me in a way I didn’t want to be treated. I think that many people have rather low expectations of what girls and women can achieve in certain areas of life, and that sort of attitude has always been very frustrating for me to confront.

BME: In regards to the “masculine” tattoos, do you mean because of their design, or do you mean tattoos being interpreted as masculine in general?

I think it’s just a prejudice that being heavily tattooed isn’t feminine. It was reaching a certain level of coverage that seems to do it rather than the designs themselves. Particularly getting my hands done — so many people interpreted that as a very masculine thing, which seems really bizarre to me. I never thought of my sleeve and hand tattoos as being a transgender or masculine thing when I got them done. I only started to think about them that way later when I was being assessed as a transsexual so I could get a steroid prescription. My extensive tattoos were taken as a clear signal that I was already doing my best to live as a man, as was my short hair and the fact that I only had one lobe piercing at the time. This was an incredibly strange experience, because I’d had that stuff for years and never thought of it as being gendered. The whole thing was so easy for me because my body modifications happened to fit the psychiatrist’s gender stereotype. It’s pathetic really, cause I know a lot of people way more transsexual than I am who are having the opposite problem. At some clinics, trans-women who wear trousers are being told they aren’t committed enough. Most women wear trousers these days for goodness sake!

For a lot of people there is a strong sense that the most important thing a woman can do with her body is to present and modify it to be as attractive as possible to straight men. People don’t frame it like that of course — they try to imply that these efforts simply amount to taking care of ourselves and making ourselves feel good, but a lot of what mainstream society expects women to want from their bodies is extremely narrow-minded and heterosexist, in my opinion. For example, I often hear people debating the acceptability of large tattoos on women. Some people say it is “disgusting” and other people say “no way, women with big tattoos can look really beautiful and feminine…” This can of course be true, but what strikes me about this sort of conversation is that neither side have been able to step outside the paradigm where it is taken for granted that all women want to look feminine so that people who eroticise femininity will find them attractive. To some extent taking steroids was very reactionary. I was so sick of being told via advertising, popular entertainment, and the attitudes of people around me that one of my main concerns in life as a young woman should be to look as pretty and feminine as possible so that guys would fancy me. But then, of course, not to actually fuck all these guys that fancy me, and certainly not to take money for it, because nobody likes a slut or a whore. Riiight… so what is the point of all this looking pretty again? Looking deliberately masculine was very appealing in the sense of doing a big visual Fuck You! to a society which shames women who are not young, thin, large-breasted, free from body hair, and all that bullshit.

Before using steroids I’d get cruised almost exclusively by straight men, and that meant that my sexual relationships were always based on the heterosexual butch/femme dynamic. Even with guys that I liked and who seemed to basically respect me as a fellow human, I struggled to create egalitarian relationships under the burden of such a restrictive social script. Having a more masculine body was a way to opt out of that dynamic and to attract more sexual partners who would be open to other ways of relating.

To some extent, I had internalized a lot of the messages I’d been given about female masculinity being unacceptable. Even though I felt oppressed by those messages and was reacting against them by deliberately making myself masculine, there were often moments when I felt disgusted by the changes. I suppose what made me stick with it was that my androgenised body really worked for me in terms of changing the way people viewed and responded to me in social, romantic, sexual, and professional contexts — basically, in every area of life. While there were some changes that were negative, in general the changes were positive.

My main memory of being feminine was how patronizing people can be. For example, when I had not used testosterone for long and was still quite feminine, clients would often treat it as a joke or at least some sort of a big deal that there was a female tattoo artist in the studio. I remember one guy asking, “how did you learn to be a tattooist — did your boyfriend teach you?” I came back with “how did you learn to be so patronizing — did your boyfriend teach you?”… which I still look back on and feel happy about, because you know how often the witty responses don’t usually come to mind until its too late!

In a sexual context too, everything changed for the better. Suddenly I was getting cruised mainly by bisexuals, and they didn’t have this dumb way of approaching sex like too many heterosexual men I’d met. That idea that the woman may be reluctant and the guy’s job is to persuade her to fuck anyway by introducing the idea gradually or just by being persistent… How disrespectful! Of course I’m not saying that all straight people are like this or that all queer people are great at respecting each other’s boundaries, but in my own life I’ve noticed an obvious trend there. These days, I get cruised by bisexuals of all genders, dykes, and the occasional gay man, and it’s very rare for me to encounter someone who doesn’t accept that yes means yes, no means no, maybe means we should talk about what we both want and see if it matches up, and most importantly that having casual sex means we are both sluts and that being a slut is no bad thing anyway. These aren’t difficult concepts to grasp — why can’t more straight boys understand them?

I have now learned to accept, and even perhaps to love, all the changes to my body. To some extent it just took time to adjust, but it has also helped to have had so much love, lust, and general positive energy directed toward my body and mind by all my friends and allies over the last few years.

I was offered a bilateral mastectomy on the NHS [National Health Service] about a year after I started using testosterone, which I accepted. This is not a modification I would have pursued for its own sake. The main motivating factor was the knowledge that if I went along with the standard transsexual script — that I wanted to look as male as possible — then I’d get my steroids free for the foreseeable future. The other thing is that there is a lot of breast cancer in my family, so I was always half expecting to loose my breasts eventually regardless of any transgender issue. It was a more a case of “do I have this done now or in middle age?” than “do I have this done at all?” Basically I feel pretty neutral about this modification. I didn’t hate my breasts but I don’t miss them either.

I guess the interest in becoming more genitally intersex just stemmed from the amount of clitoral growth I got from using testosterone over the years. When you’ve grown something that gets almost big and hard enough to fuck with, then I think most people who were comfortable with that would become fascinated by the possibility of making a few changes so that they could choose to take the insertive role in sexual intercourse more easily.

BME: “Post-gender” as a concept, versus a more delineated switch of gender role is very interesting to me… how common is that concept?

I’ve noticed that a major genderqueer/post-gender scene here in the UK seems to be very much based around the fringes of the sex-positive dyke and bisexual scenes and there seem to be a large number of people there on the FtM spectrum, probably because a lot of those people used to identify as butch dykes. However, there are some very vocal post-gender spokespersons on the MtF spectrum too. Kate Bornstein is a big name among those of us who like our gender theory good and radical. Also, genderqueer people on the MtF spectrum have been hanging around the gay male scene for years. Maybe those communities have developed a slightly different language and set of priorities around transgender issues, but interesting things are still going on there.

Post-gender is absolutely not a transitional point between genders. That phrase implies that there are two proper genders to travel between and post-gender is somewhere you stop off on the way. The gas station of genders, if you will. Not a proper sort of place in itself. I see post-gender as a useful viewpoint for looking at society in general rather than a sort of half-way place between genders at which individuals can choose to reside.

For me personally, the basis of a post-gender identity is being aware that nothing is essentially male or female other than the reproductive organs, and that even these can occasionally be other than male or female; for example, they can be intersex. Anything else that appears to be gendered just seems that way because of stereotype and social convention.

Most aspects of behavior and appearance can be a gender signal to some extent. For example, for an androgynous person, having long or short hair can make the difference between being read as male or female. Yet hair length is weakly gendered, and will only be noticed as a gender signal in the absence of stronger ones. If stronger signals are there, a man can have long hair or a woman short hair without being considered transgender. Long hair may be traditionally associated with women but it isn’t an essential part of being a woman. It’s optional.

OK, so let’s take a more challenging example: Breasts. Most people think these are fundamentally female.. but are they really? If so, how did the concepts of “man boobs” and “bitch tits” ever come to exist? Why does the body modification called “male chest reduction” exist? It’s not just FtMs having this done! Of course there is a major trend towards men having less fat on their chests than women, but what we have come to accept as normal and acceptable does not include all of the body types that exist naturally. This is why increasing numbers of women are having breast implants and increasing numbers of men are having liposuction on their chest.

BME: I’ve actually had this procedure done because I was teased most of my life about it and wanted to move to a more stereotypically male body that I felt more comfortable in.

I’m not knocking these types of modification, I’m just pointing out that the physical characteristic of having a substantial amount of fat on the chest occurs naturally in some men and does not occur naturally in every single woman. So, having breasts or not is a gender stereotype rather than an essential part of gender. A man could have a quite lot of fat on his chest, or a woman very little, and neither would be considered transgender if this was the only way they deviated from their gender stereotype. They might be considered unattractive and made to feel bad about their chests, but there wouldn’t be a real sense that they were something other than male or female.

Post-gender is about realizing that gender performance is elaborate and complex, but when you strip it down to its component parts, there’s nothing really there. Almost nothing about a person is truly gendered, although most things can be, in context. Post-gender means choosing not to “do” gender. People will still see gender in you because we are all raised to see gender in everyone (and you can choose to play with those perceptions) but as a post-gender person you have that awareness that gender is not a real thing. A haircut is just a haircut and a chest is just a chest. You bring that awareness to the way you think of yourself and interact with others.

BME: Do you think this awareness is possible for everyone? Or is it possible that having this awareness is a physical impossibility for a majority of people?

I don’t see why it would be a physical impossibility, but everyone has different views about the world and this is not currently a popular one. That’s OK. People are different and that’s what keeps life interesting. As long as people can refrain from being horrible to each other, it doesn’t matter if they have different opinions.

BME: What insights does it give you about the world to be able to have experienced life from multiple hormonal foundations?

While a change in hormone levels had all sorts of temporary effects, I got used to my new base-line hormone levels and now I experience a full range of moods and have the same personality I’ve always had. Well, as much as anyone has the same personalty after gaining several years’ life experience. I think when people say things like “men are more sexual and more aggressive than women, and this is because of their hormone levels” they are hugely overestimating the role of biology in the behavioral traits of men compared to women. I think these things have far more to do with socialization than biology.

I’m not saying that hormones have no effect on the mind-body. Clearly they have many effects. However, these are frequently blown out of proportion by people who want to justify their differing expectations of men and women in work, social, or sexual contexts. I have always believed these sorts of arguments to be spurious and prejudiced. My experiences of steroid use have given greater foundation to this belief.

BME: I’ve heard these arguments often most strongly from inside the transgender community as well — is there a philosophical rift between transgender and post-gender?

The transgender and transsexual communities are very diverse, and there is a lot of infighting over issues like this. I can understand why. There are a lot of transsexual people who only believe in two genders, and that they got the wrong sort of body to go with their inner gender. It’s threatening to hear someone say that inner gender doesn’t exist — it probably feels like I am undermining the importance of their transition. I’m not trying to do that. I respect their reality, even though it’s not mine. Someone tells me they experience God, I say cool, I don’t, but hey, maybe you’re right. Someone tells me they experience gender identity, I say pretty much the same. I’m not arrogant enough to believe that my reality is the only one or even the most valid one out there, but it works for me. When someone’s beliefs mean that they feel justified in doing something that harms me, then I guess that’s the time to start arguing about the truth. Other people’s transition or gender identity doesn’t do that. It’s only if they start telling me what to do with my gender and my body that it becomes an issue. Les Feinberg made a very wise statement on this subject: “My right to be me is tied with a thousand threads to your right to be you.” The same society that gives transsexuals a hard time when they don’t pass is responsible for giving me a hard time when I don’t look unambiguously male or female, and for the same reasons.

An interesting thing to consider is that what seems like a massive difference in identity may be simply a matter of semantics. For example, a few months ago I was chatting to someone who wanted to start taking testosterone because they felt like they might be a man in a woman’s body. I asked them to tell me more about that experience in detail. When we broke it down, we realized our motivations for wanting to take testosterone were virtually identical. The person experienced a huge dissatisfaction with the way they were treated because they had a female body and preferred the idea of being treated like men usually are. In addition, they wanted to have a stronger, stockier body because they thought it would feel more comfortable to be in. I can relate to all that; it was just the “man in a woman’s body” label I don’t understand and wouldn’t want attached to me. It’s helpful when people can put aside their differing labels for a while and concentrate on what they have in common.

BME: With testerone being the first major undertaking you took, to what extent did this shape the further ones? I remember being struck in the “You Don’t Know Dick” documentary by people who’d started taking testosterone commenting on how much it affected their view of the world — do you think the testosterone changed your course (or accelerated it) in any way?

Definitely. It started with taking testosterone and this lead to the other modifications.

I definitely wouldn’t have agreed to have the bilateral mastectomy if I hadn’t enjoyed taking testosterone so much. When I got diagnosed as transsexual and my name went down on the waiting list, I told myself I’d just take the steroids until I got a date for the operation and then say I’d changed my mind. I didn’t want it done. However, I had such a positive experience with the testosterone that when the time came I decided it was worth losing my breasts to keep getting the prescription. I didn’t realize at the time how easy it was to just buy testosterone at gyms, on the gay scene, and even online. Perhaps I’d have made a different choice if I knew, but I am actually really happy with the way it worked out. After the operation my chest felt weird — I could feel bone where there was flesh before and I hated it. I’m not bony anywhere else! I compensated for the loss of soft tissue by doing loads of pec work in the gym. After a couple of years I had pretty much the same measurements as before, only it was muscle rather than fat. It’s hard work to maintain (in fact I haven’t maintained it of late and need to get my lass back in the gym!) but I love the muscle more than I’d loved the breasts. Having something you’ve worked hard for it always more satisfying, isn’t it?

The testosterone lead to me becoming more intersex and I’ve started doing a metoidioplasty to enhance that effect. That’s not something I could have done, or would even have thought of, without having the testosterone first. My clit is trying its best to become a dick under the influence of the testosterone. If your dick was attached to you all along its length you can probably imagine how frustrating that might be sexually. It seemed obvious that if I cut the tissue away I’d have better sexual function. Only after I had done it did I read that doctors offer a similar modification to FtM transsexuals. Surprisingly, though, it actually seems smaller most of the time now I’ve done that. Before, it was stretched out full length and held in place, but now it shrivels down to nothing when its not erect.

BME: Finally, and I worry that this question is almost offensive in nature, but since you say you never experienced an orgasm until you started taking male steroids, do you think your life and view of gender would be different if orgasm had come to you easily “as a woman”?

I think the biggest difference would probably be that I wouldn’t appreciate it as much. How many able-bodied people in their late twenties think “wow, it’s just so wonderful to be able to do this” when they jerk off? Not so many, I bet! In all aspects of life, it’s easy to take the little pleasures for granted when they have always been there.

I don’t see it as being a major issue in my life. I like sex about as much as I did before, and I still enjoy lots of sex that doesn’t include orgasm. Orgasm is not the most interesting or rewarding thing about sex, in my opinion. I can’t see how being orgasmic at an earlier age would have affected my non-sexual life or my view of gender very much, if at all. Who knows, though… Sometimes in life the little things affect the big things in ways you could never have predicted.

BME: Thank you, Ash, for one of the most enlightening conversations I’ve had in a long time!

You can also visit Ash at the following websites:

Thanks again to Ash for a wonderful and eye-opening conversation.


Shannon Larratt
BME.com

Alvar Saenz-Otero: Droid Master [BME Publisher’s Ring Interview]

Droid Master

Earlier this year I was watching the Discovery Channel‘s “Daily Planet”, a science news show, as I did some programming or BME work or whatever it was that my primary focus was supposed to be. The show caught my eye when I noticed they were interviewing someone with a fair chunk of facial piercings:

It turned out to be Alvar Saenz-Otero, a scientist leading a team developing a series of networked microsatellites at MIT that have been undergoing testing in the International Space Station. The space program has certainly attracted its fair share of unique and expressive individuals, notably Erl Van Aken who is not only credited with inventing the bridge piercing, but also helping create the lunar rover. That said, because there continues to be a strong social stigma against the heavily (or visibly) modified individual, I’m always fascinated by people who are exceptional enough in what they do to be able to succeed in highly demanding fields while continuing to express themselves in the way that makes them happy or comfortable.

The easiest way to explain the SPHERES project is to say that they are reminiscent of the “battle training droids” that Luke Skywalker uses in Star Wars — these very small, relatively autonomous utility droids able to self-organize and navigate on their own, both independently and in formation (so multiple satellites could work together on a larger task). Here they are being tested both on the ISS and in a zero-gravity flight (sorry about the luddite screen caps — these are just photos of my television — there are much better pictures later in the interview!):

As you can imagine, I was absolutely thrilled when Alvar (or should I say “Dr. Saenz-Otero”?) agreed to do an interview! The interview is in two parts, beginning with a discussion of his modifications themselves, and them moving on to some information about the SPHERES project.

– Shannon

Part One: Body Modification

What first drew you to body modification, and when did you first start getting piercings?

  Alvar with Owen from Chameleon Body Arts
Alvar with his main piercer, Owen

I would say that since sometime in elementary school (4th or 5th grade, I think) I thought it was very interesting for boys to get piercings… it was somewhat breaking the rules, although at that point I never did it (after all, I do admit I was the “nerd” in the class). It also really was not “body modification” for real, but just the idea of an earring that was not supposed to be there by “standard” culture. I got my first piercing (earring) on 10th grade, and from there until sophomore year in college it was only earrings.

For some extremely unknown reason to me during sophomore year one day I just said, without knowing anything about body modifications in general, “there should be other places that can be pierced” (or, in my original translation from Spanish “where I can have earrings”). The nipple was an extremely obvious place, but at that point it was more like play-piercing, since I would never keep any of those piercings.

After that I spent a summer working in Atlanta, and during the 4th of July parade I saw a guy without a shirt with a nipple piercing (and a very impressive skull tattoo in the arm)… that told me “it really can be done”, and that’s when it all got really started. I got my first real body piercings a few days later (right nipple & tongue, which I noticed elsewhere). And a couple weeks later was the first time I saw BME (it was quite new at the time!)… this was all during 1996.

After 1996, when I discovered BME, I began to see other people with large-gauge rings (like 10ga or 8ga) both in real life and online, and that really caught my attention. In 97/98 I began some stretching and a couple other “beyond earring” piercings (septum – which I used a ratainer for, and still do, it’s very “intrusive”, and tragus, which I retired for a while because of sports).

Originally I thought I’d never go beyond 10ga. Then around 00, after seeing lots of stretching on BME, I began real stretching, up to 1/2″. I also started with the facial piercings. I like symmetry, so while I began with only the right eyebrow, I ended up with both pierced. The bridge was fun: I had a trip to Europe (aerospace conference), and after that travelled around Europe a little bit… and decided I really wanted a new piercing, so I got the bridge in Frankfurt (it’s my only “metric” piercing… BTW, using Teflon bars for a bridge is incredibly amazing! It heals fantastic, and as the piercing healed (and the swelling reduced), I simply cut the Teflon to make the barbell fit). It all happened reasonably gradually, with about 1 new piercing every six months (the main thing is that I have not really retired many, or at least they come back).

How did your family and friends respond?

I really don’t remember how they reacted to the first earring. I’m quite sure my mom said something to my dad like “we’ve always told them to experiment things with their body if they want to”… and I’m sure my dad just groaned by did nothing major about it. Both were ultimately truly understanding, and it was very clear they cared a lot more about my values that my physical decisions. As long as I was a good student and good person, they never pushed me otherwise.

Still, the ’96 summer I really never let them know. Somehow I actually kept both piercings hidden without them knowing. I’m not sure why I cared so much… except that even from then I began to have the attitude that they were my piercings, I did it because I wanted them for me and not anyone else… and that if they made a big fuss about it then it would become something not just for me, but about others too.

My mom never cared, she always laughed or simply did not care. My dad was a little harder… he actually very directly told me that he did not like some of them (like the earlets) but he liked others (the eyebrows) – and I guess others he did not care either way, like the industrials. So sometimes when I went home, to make him happy (but never because he forced me), I would take out some jewelry and keep other in (once when I lost an eyebrow barbell he actually asked me why I took that one out, he liked it!).

So, it was a two-tier thing: first, it all happened gradually over multiple years; and second, my parents were truly very understanding.

About friends — MIT is an amazing place that way, and because I always did tons of things to be around people because of academic or social reasons, while they sometimes reacted to the piercings with “wow” expressions (both good and bad), the fact that I did not let it bother me meant it did not bother them, and things went on. I never looked for anyone else to tell me what I should do or not, I did it on my own time when I wanted to.


Alvar’s ear work

I assume you had summer jobs and “normal” jobs before doing your current research — did your piercings affect that experience, and if so, how?

Unfortunately not having US Citizenship made having an engineering summer job basically impossible for me, so on this one the answer will not be extremely helpful.

My 1996 job was somewhat annoying, in that they did make me take the piercings out (which meant my first eyebrow piercing never had time to heal). But since the other “new” piercings were hide-able, they survived.

After that I always worked at MIT. While I did have some “customer jobs” (I managed a grill/restaurant a couple years), again, it was the fact that I really made them a non-issue and that people saw my character rather than the piercings, which made it never matter.

As you got more piercings, how did teachers and fellow pupils, especially as your education became more advanced, respond?

The more I got the less they responded. I think the most response always came from stretching the lobes, and always from fellow students (or administrators)… professors never told me anything about them in any serious way (one professor did point out when I had a clear-acrylic 1/2″ plug: “be careful, that looks like a magnifying glass, don’t burn yourself!”). I think that was the best part in that sense, professors (the people who I guess I trully ultimately looke up to) never told me anything about them. They saw my work, and that’s what they cared about.

I have to admit that by staying in the same place it made it a lot easier, because I did make a reputation for myself. I did have to work with new people (like Deans) coming in, but the reputation did follow me a little bit, and I did personally feel very secure at that point. I am sure it would be different for someone who tries to go to a new place every few years, and I don’t have the experience to give any good feedback on that one.

Do you find your piercings are accepted more in Mexico or more in the United States?

I do think in a very objective way that the US (especially the coasts, like MIT/New England) is more progressive than Mexico, so there is some truth to being more accepted in the US than Mexico.

For a while (especially early on) I seriously felt as they were more accepted in the US. I felt like the piercings did not fit in Mexico, so I made myself feel like I should take them out while there… they were something I did in the US, so they should stay there? And looking back, I think it was more of a personal thing…

Today I’ll go to schools/universities in Mexico and walk among both professors and students there, and while there may be a quick “shock”, I quickly make them realize I stand by my MIT degrees and I mean business, and they realize that I don’t have to be dressed “business casual” to mean it.

Because people face prejudice toward both race and chosen appearance (such as pierced people being banned from employment under dress code rules and so on), people sometimes compare or even put the two in the same class. As someone who has experienced both, do you feel that suggesting that pierced people receiving the same protections as other protected groups (ie. just like you can’t fire someone because you find out they’re a religion you don’t like) is a valid or invalid statement? And how has being heavily pierced affected interviews and so on in the professional world?

This is a very tough question. Trying to be rational (that’s why my life is about at MIT anyway):

  • You are born with a race/color, you don’t choose it.
  • You do choose to be pierced/modified.

In that sense, no, the same protections are not the same… of course, then you go deeper and say “is being gay a choice or not?” In that case, whether a choice or not, I strongly believe people cannot be discriminated against for it. So, then, if you choose to be pierced, should people be allowed to discriminate?

In the ideal society, no. The truly intelligent society will exist when there is no discrimination based on any physical characteristic (choice or not) whatsoever, but only on the mental and moral values of people. A person in a suit who lies and steals is way worse than someone with dozens of piercings who makes an honest life piercing others. In blunt and condensed terms, in my opinion the piercer is a much better human being than the liar in a suit.

In the real society, I think it is a battle we need to fight, and one that basically comes from us showing the rest of the world that discriminating on looks is counter-productive to human kind.

My attitude is:

  • I will show up to interviews, conferences, and meetings (e.g., including with Deans at MIT) with my piercings.
  • If people decide based upon on them that they don’t want to work with me, then in my opinion it’s their loss.
  • I come very prepared to every meeting — if the piercings shock them, I make sure that I shock them way way way more with my performance at the meeting.

Saying that “it’s their loss” is arrogant, but I go beyond that by truly sticking with the third point: I impress them with what I do, not how I look (many times we end up laughing at the looks, but in a very friendly way once my real point has gone through).

Should someone have to work harder because they’re pierced? No, not at all… you should simply always work hard. Being pierced/modified should neither give nor take any rights from you — you deserve the same treatment, and you are free to look different.


Alvar with his advisor David Miller and the first astronaut that operated SPHERES aboard the International Space Station.

What advice would you have to people who want to choose to look different than the average person, but still want to have a successful life?

If you choose to look different, do it because you really want to do it, and do it for yourself. That’s what I did. These are my piercings; they are not there for someone else to look, they are not there to attract attention of random onlookers (I’m sure almost everyone out there hates it as much as I do); they are there because I want them.

When you make them your own, then when you go meet others you act as yourself, and any smart person will be able to see who you are.

So, to that, I simply say: be a good person.

Don’t get pierced and say that therefore you have to be X or Y; don’t let your friends think you’ve changed because you are modified. That was really important, as I got more piercings, my friends began to see it as part of me, and not as something that was changing me!

You want to succeed and go to MIT? Be good at math, don’t be a stereotype (MIT really does not like them!), take many AP classes, and show that you are well rounded (sure, be on a band, why not!) When you apply to college nobody will look at your picture and decided from it if you are in or out, they’ll look at your accomplishments. So, accomplish things.

I have mostly kept my “professional” and “modifications” lives completely separate. At work I really don’t let them bug me, and when anyone tries to point them out, I very quickly make it clear that’s not the point. Similarly, I really never talked about anything “work” related with any piercing/tattoo staff for a really long time.

I’m not saying this is good… it’s not really bad either, although maybe a little bit. It does make you feel “lonely” when something that is clearly part of you is only part of you for part of the day.

Around 2001 I began to be a “repeat offender” of Chameleon Tattoo & Body Piercing in Harvard Square (Cambridge MA, close to MIT). It really wasn’t until I met Owen there that I had shown anyone who I ever did any “mods” with anything about work. But finding Owen was good, because he kinda showed me that the “mod” circle can also be very open (I was always scared of saying I was from MIT and people either not believing or, more common, simply saying “oh” and not saying anything again!). I took me about a year of knowing Owen to take my laptop over to the shop and show him (and others there) videos of the SPHERES stuff (I do want a plug for Owen and company: for mods in the Boston/Cambridge area, definitely go to Chameleon!). This attitude really kept me from really joining any “mod” circles too, because I’ve been always somewhat scared that I’ll be the “nerd” again (HS was somewhat painful being the nerd)… and you wanting an interview I hope may be a turning point (just like you were shocked at getting a response from me, I was in shock to learn that you saw “Daily Planet”, paid enough attention to get my name, and then the time to find me and contact me!).

So, in this sense, I hope that me “opening up” with a BME interview allows others in very “professional” circles to also open up (without needing a BME interview for it), and at the same time to even further kill any myths that the mod-community is not open to “nerds” too!

Part Two: The SPHERES Project

I’d read that one of the design inspirations for the SPHERES project was the little floating droids in Star Wars — is that a fair way to introduce them to help people who haven’t seen anything on them conceptualize them?

 
Three SPHERES undergoing testing abord the ISS

I think you need a mixture of two things to conceptualize SPHERES: yes, the first is that each of our satellites is like that droid in Star Wars, it floats around inside the space stations and moves in all directions (although not that fast!).

The other thing is to think that there are many of them (in our case up to three), and that they work together. That is very important, we built them so that we can understand who many satellites can work together to replace one bigger one. One example relevant to today is the idea of going to Mars. We are going to need a very large spacecraft, larger than what we can put in space. That means we’re going to have to send many parts, and then put them together in space. We’ve done that: the ISS… but it’s very expensive! We need to get the parts to assemble themselves in a cheap way without all the expenses of the ISS.

One of the really hard thing for people to understand is: if the droid in Star Wars floated on its own already, what’s so big about this? SciFi inspires us, but it also makes the life of us scientists harder: it was humans who moved the droid in Star Wars, and which tell all those robots in movies exactly how to move… on SPHERES, the satellites are figuring out on their own both where they are and how to move!

What is your primary job in the SPHERES project?

I’m the “Lead Scientist”, in other words, the every-day manager of the project who makes sure (or tries 🙂 that the science that needs to happen does. We have many contracts with different government groups, with private industry, and with other universities. I need to make sure that the tests we run on the space station will meet the needs of the government and industry, while at the same time allow other universities (and our own “self motivated” research) to have some tests. To do this I manage a group of 6 to 8 graduate students (and 2 to 4 helper undergraduates) so that between all of us we program all the software and prepare for the tests. It also means interfacing with NASA to make sure they give us test time (and NASA is not easy!).

What do you see the main roles of satellites using the technology you’re developing being initially, and later as the technology matures?

The earliest roles will be, I belive, to “service” satellites — in other words, to be able to launch satellites that re-fuel or repair other satellites (e.g., the next generation of the Hubble will not need the shuttle to be repaired, we should be able to design it so that a “service” satellite does that).

In the long term it will help to find other planets. We are going to make huge telescopes by using small satellite sin special “formations”, and we will be able to say : that planet really looks like the Earth!

What are the challenges in developing guidance systems on Earth (where I assume you can’t really test in three dimensions other than in a simulation) that are intended for use in a zero/microgravity environment? As you moved from simulation and lab testing, to parabolic flights, to the ISS, how much did your code and hardware have to change? Or is the design of the code such that when perfected it will operate fairly adaptively to whatever gravitational fields are affecting it?

You’re right, on Earth we can’t do everything in 3 dimensions (3D), we have to do everything in 2D.

We began the project fully aware of the need to operate in 3D, therefore everything we built was originally designed to work in 3D and then “downgraded” to work in 2D (although sometimes not enough — we actually ran into a problem that should only affect us in 3D in the 2D tests, and made things very hard!).

That said, your last point is the closest one to what we do: our goal is to show that the algorithms are very “robust” — that they will work even when we had lots of simulation/modeling errors. None of the real satellites that use the science we’re working on with SPHERES will look like SPHERES (they will be larger, different shape, have different components, etc); but if we show that the algorithms are very “robust to uncertainties” in SPHERES, then as long as we know the new real satellites “well enough”, the algorithms will work.

Do the SPHERES have Earth-based applications as well? (ie. autonomous micro-blimps for military and media use and so on, or even high powered ones — I’m asking this in part because of DARPA’s interest?)

DARPA’s interest in on the “servicing” missions, they actually have one going on in parallel with SPHERES.

That said, our algorithms will be able to help ground-based applications in the future too, especially because they advance the science of controls, which is needed everywhere. I don’t have a specific example right now, though.


Alvar’s large gauge nostrils

Can many current satellite roles be better performed by microsatellites or formations of microsatellites, or do SPHERES create an entirely new niche and set of possibilities?

Currently we’re advancing both. Today microsatellites usually work on their own, so they can’t yet fill the role of an existing large satellites — we and others are working separately on making microsatellites do everything they need to replace existing technologies.

But they also open new possibilities: for example, even with very advanced technology we’ll never make a space telescope that is 1km in diameter (we can’t build such a mirror, at least not for many decades). Formation flight will allow in less time, I believe, for us to simulate such a telescope in space and obtain the same results as a real one. Other interesting one is on space radar. All the movies that show us the military finding a card and then reading the license place are using dramatic license to make it happen… it can’t today. But by using many satellites to make a “synthetic” radar, we might be able to. The satellites can start aligned so that they cover a very large area, and once they find a “blurry” target, change their formation shape so that they can see the license plate.

From an engineering and programming point of view, was it more difficult designing the initial stability/motion code, or is formation flight the more difficult challenge?

In my opinion the hardest thing so far has for the satellites to figure out where they are. This is what we call “metrology” (the science of measurement). For an object like a satellite to know where it is, it’s a very hard problem. Many people think “but GPS knows”… except that it does not work for two reasons on SPHERES: first, GPS is good for distances of about 1m, but since the satellites are only 0.22m, it’s not good enough; second, GPS does not work inside the ISS.

Of course now that we’re starting to do formation flight, we’ve had our share of challenges there too. Wireless communications between multiple satellites is actually a hard problem when you want them to be synchronized to milliseconds of each other! A human speaking on the telephone does not mind a short random delay… but the satellites do, so we have to research a lot of “coordination” between them.

Do you see a much wider range of applications for the underlying technologies (ie. automated docking of larger vehicles, etc.), or is this optimized for much smaller devices?

I think this goes with what I said above: SPHERES is to test the robustness of the algorithms, such that they work on larger “real” satellites.



Shannon Larratt
BMEzine.com

So what’s it like having magnetic vision? [BME Publisher’s Ring]


So what’s it like having magnetic vision?

If you don’t already know about magnetic implants, you may want to read our previous articles on the subject, including the original interview about Todd Huffman’s magnets, a six-month retrospective on mine, as well as a magnet risks article with a follow-up by Jesse. In short, magnetic implants are small, encased magnets designed to be implanted in nerve rich areas in order to give the patient heightened sensitivity to EM fields — that is, magnetic vision. Because the magnets vibrate very slightly, the wearer’s senses begin to extend, giving them an awareness of electromagnetic fields and radiation.


Just like iron filings want to align themselves with a magnetic field, magnetic implants also want to align themselves with magnetic fields. This motion can be felt on an intuitive level by the fine nerves in the fingers, tricking the body into feeling like it’s touching a physical object when it interacts with electromagnetic fields of all sorts.

In this interview I wanted to talk about the “day-to-day” aspect of having implanted magnets — “what’s it like?” Magnetic implants are still quite uncommon, with possibly less than a hundred people having them. We’ll talk to eleven here — in order of when the magnet was implanted, Todd Huffman ([email protected]) had his done in January 2004, a stack of six magnets in a single case, implanted by Steve Haworth and made by Jesse Jarrell (Mr. Bones), who had a silicone case molded 1/16 length X 1/8 dia N45 NIB installed by Steve a few days later. Steve Truitt‘s magnet was self implanted in mid-2005 (and removed about a year later), and my (Shannon’s) magnets were done at about the same time by Steve Haworth. Also by Steve, Quinn Norton‘s magnet, since removed, was implanted in September of 2005. Jymmi‘s magnet was done in September 2006, and Powder‘s was done a month later, both by Steve Haworth. Fred has a 1/16″x1/16″ neodymiuym magnet implant in a custom made titanium casing (all the others here are in silicone), implanted by Nickk Leading. Anton and Dean were both done in January of 2007, and KYO got his most recently, in April 2007.


Jymmi having his implant done by Steve Haworth

When and how did you become aware of being able to sense things with your magnetic implant?

Fred: For the first month I thought this was a failure; my main goal was to be able to sense things and I hadn’t sensed anything so far. I work for a company where we manufacture a number of electronic things, and one day my friend was testing a large 230volt power supply with a huge transformer in it so I walked up and waved my hand in front of it and got that cool vibrating sensation in my finger tip. Immediately after I just started putting my finger up to several things I knew had transformers, clocks, cell phone chargers, and microwaves. So far my nebulizer, which I use for my asthma seems to have the strongest field.

Steve It was probably two weeks into having it that I started sensing things. I could feel my microwave stronger than anything.

Jymmi: I could feel small things at about a week to two weeks, like an electric shaver and a one inch earth magnet. After about three or four months I also could feel the electric fields in my non-magnetic hand. It’s not as strong as my magnetic hand — it’s more of a general feeling. About a month ago I started feeling the vibrations in my feet.

Powder: A few days after I had the implant done I was standing in my father’s garage near a large running engine. I felt what I thought was a light breeze on my hand but realised it was only in my implant finger. I started moving my hand closer and farther from the engine and felt slight differences in the sensation.

KYO: On the sixth day I picked up an electric sharpener and had a weird sensation — then I realised it was actually the magnetic implant reacting to the electro magnetic field from the engine.

Jesse: I tried static fields from large magnets fairly immediately after insertion, but the first really astounding sensation was provided by a power drill.

Todd: To quote from my blog, two days after getting the implant:

I experienced my first "in the wild" implant sensory experience. I was in the library checking my e mail, and as I walk out there is an anti theft gate thingy. When I stepped on the pad I felt my implant oscillate, and quite noticeably so. My initial reaction was surprise, since I wasnt consciously paying attention to the implant. After the initial adrenaline rush I walked back and forth through the sensor gate, and it is quite interesting. So far my interactions have been planned, i.e. putting magnets and metal near my implants to see what happened. Todays event was rather significant, it was not planned, nor was it forseen.

Dean: The first thing I noticed was while drinking a can of Coke. The magnets themselves obviously weren’t strong enough to pick the can up, but I could feel a slight sensation when holding the can itself. The best way to describe it is a tingling sensation. To date, I am the only person out of the three i know with the implants to get this with a can.

Quinn: Right after the implant, Steve passed a magnet close to my finger. I felt it move, and jumped. After that I wasn’t sure which sensations were the healing process and which were the magnet, but as time went on, I was able to distinguish more.

Shannon: The first thing I noticed was the drives and fans in my computer. I think I remember a vague buzzing in my fingertips, wondering what it was, and then moving my hands around and realizing that I was sensing definite fields and from that point on it snowballed (although I think they may be becoming less senstive over time — I don’t know if this is due to scarring or demagnetization).


Fred’s magnet picks up another small magnet.

What range of sensation are your magnets capable of?

Anton: I can feel rather faint magnetic fields and also electric currents at times, depending on how strong they are.

Fred: I can’t feel store security poles, but I have felt a metal detector as I walked through — surprisingly it didn’t go off like I thought it would. I have to have my hand less than a foot away from whatever I’m attempting to feel.

Jymmi: I am more sensitive to electrical currents. Sometimes the implant will vibrate or twitch depending on what I walk by. We have these big space heaters at my work, about fifteen to twenty feet up in the air and my whole hand vibrates when those turn on. We also have electric forklifts, and when I get close to the battery chargers it feels like an electric current running up my arm.

Steve: I could sense some electrical currents on certain things, especially larger things like my stove or dryer. I could feel certain types of security sensors at some stores. I was never able to feel anything from my computer though.

Powder: I can feel different amperages in various cables. I can also tell when a metal is a ferous or not. My favorites are the fields around microwaves (a couple of feet out), AC transformers (a few inches), and fans under the keyboards of laptops (about half an inch above and while typing).

KYO: range is hard to define since I find new things on a daily basis. But I’m basicly able to feel the magnetic field around magnets, my computer, some speakers, the oven, some fields around the electric wires (I can actually detect the flaws since the lower protection allows the field to get trough).

Jesse: On the lower end I can feel higher power draws through standard 120v insulated power cords (wall power), various functions inside computer equipment(from a distance), magnetism in the more magnetic alloys, on to stronger things like various components of high voltage equipment used in my machine shop, including insulated high voltage leads from a foot or more away, transformers, motors and magnetrons wherever they may exist, store security devices, the stove, and so on.


Closeup of Jymmi’s magnetic implant being installed.

Todd: Static fields are pretty uninteresting, and need to be pretty large. Oscillating fields I can sense at much lower amplitudes, and are more interesting because they occur more frequently in the real world for things I find interesting. I’ve never quantified the exact range, but I can sense a current running through an insulated wire if there is enough of it. Whatever a power cable to a hair dryer pulls I can sense, and probably about three quarters of that current.

Dean: The magnets themselves aren’t that strong, although I am able to pick up tiny pieces of metal and can also use them for various magic tricks in conjuction with my magnetic wedding band ring. The most sensation I get though is when walking through magnetic fields — those sensors they have by shop doors. Again it’s like a tingle within my finger, almost like a sixth sense.

Quinn: I felt about three different sensations from my implant. I can’t really describe them very well, but one of them I got consistently from my laptop, and another from electrical cords. The third I felt very rarely… And of course, a fourth: other magnets pulling on my finger. To this day one of the oddest things I have ever felt was the magnet spinning in my finger in response to circling it with another magnet. I tried to practice with it everyday, bring it close to things I thought would be sensable and concentrate on the sensation. After a while it became a comforting and even enjoyable thing. I would pass the magnet over parts of my laptop, and feel them consistently. After a while it helped me feel kind of like all was well with the world. I enjoyed concentrating on the feeling more than I thought I would. I was pleasantly surprised when I would run into unexpected sensations.

Shannon: I can barey feel static magnetic fields unless the field is very powerful (such as a large magnet). Vibrating EM fields ranging from spinning magnets in engines (power tools, the fans and drives in a computer, and so on) to any A/C or otherwise fluctuating electrical fields are very easy to feel. Powerful fields like you find in some security systems (especially the type that need to deactivate tracking tags) can actually be quite painful, but essentially an EM fluctuation is just like a physical vibration. So for example, a power cord will have a “buzzing” halo around it that I can feel without touching the cable itself. The size and tone of this field make it fairly obvious what I’m touching.


Paperclip trick by Powder.

What are some day to day ways you use your magnets?

Anton: I work in a hospital (in the ER) and I can tell if the MRI is in use about fifty feet away from the room. Needless to say, I can’t go in there when it’s on, or it will rip the magnets clean out of my finger — I guess that’s one way to remove them.

Fred: I actually use my magnet quite a lot, mostly just to see if stuff is turned on. I am able to locate transformers inside objects and thus detect if they are on. I work in production where I make tons of different electronic components. It’s fun because Im around a lot of huge transformers so it’s interesting to see how strong each of them are. I found a magnet under my bed once by feel alone, even though I wasn’t even looking for that and couldn’t see it.

Jymmi: I like to walk around work or through a store or just from room to room in my house and find different places that give off electric feilds — like air conditioners, tattoo machines, and refrigerators. I use my laptop everyday and there are still a lot of fields that I can’t figure out where they are coming from — the disc drive is kind of going bad and everytime it spins trying to read discs it puts off a crazy field. There is a small field around the steering wheel on my car — I can’t figure out if it’s from the metal vibrating. or if there is a magnet somewhere in there. Some cars have it, some don’t.

Steve: I didn’t really have any day to day uses other than just being able to sense things. Now that it’s been out for over a year, I can still sense the same magnetic feilds, just not as strongly.

Powder: I have used it to find hot cables in a bundle, and sometimes use it to test reed switches in some of the electronics I repair.


Jesse’s magnets being installed.

KYO: Working at McD, there are the fries that beep once the cooking is completed, and the magnet allow me to know about a second ahead that they will beep since there is a diffrent field that appears to make the alarm go on. Also, my imitation iPod tends to turn off by itself or simply go on pause, and the magnet allows me to know if it’s on or not without taking it out of my pocket. My cellphone is on vibrate, and I’m never sure if it’s my cell or not, but by holding my finger about half an inch away, I can tell for sure if it’s actually the cell that’s ringing. Finally I had used my magnet to troubleshoot a laptop, being able to detect something strange under the keyboard, and the tech did change a card that was located exacly in the area I had spotted the irregularities.

Jesse: Immediate awareness of high voltage is very comforting in a lot of ways — there is a reasonable amount of it around me in the shop where I live. Determination of ferrous alloys is frequently handy without having to go look for a magnet. Circuit tracing inside various equipment is often aided by it. Common shop dialogue: unenhanced individual: “Hey, what the hell is thing I pulled off that old assembly line?” enhanced individual: “I don’t know, but its got magnets inside the case here, here and here, I’m guessing the two along that guide rod are for positional sensing, and the one over here is probably a transformer.”

An interesting note is that I sometimes get “noise” from it — moving fields with no apparent source. Some of it may be the magnet just “righting” itself after being moved by a previous field or physical force and slowly settling back into a position that fits better with the tissues in my finger, but there have been a few occasions that were not so easily explained away, where I sensed apparent moving fields in open air with no visible source.

Todd: Occassionally I use it for diagnostics. For instance, in airports often the power plugs on the walls don’t have power, and I can test them out by just plugging in my power adaptor and feeling for the field — I don’t have to get my computer out. One time I was trouble shooting a water pump, and I could tell that the motor component was working just by feeling the fields, letting me know that the problem was with the pump-shoe thingy. I can also feel my laptop’s hard drive stepper motors, and I like knowing when my computer is moving out of RAM and dropping down into the HD for info.

Dean: I usally get most of my day to day use out of the magnet when going in and out of stores. It also helps to tell when certain things are turned on if there no other signs to tell you so. Like my computer monitor… the standby light has broke, but I am able to tell if it’s on standby of not by placing my hand on the screen. Then again though, it really is an old messed up screen. I really should replace it.

Quinn: A couple times, in determining if something was live or not. Once, I was able to work out that a demo wasn’t realistic based on the sensation from a cord.

Shannon: I’m very aware of power, so for example it’s easy to tell if something is plugged in because I can feel the power leaking out of the extension cord (and I can tell how much power is being drawn — and also tell the quality of the cable assuming there’s a frame of refernece). In day-to-day life, my electric stove has bad connections in some of the burners, so the amount of heat that a given dial-setting generates is different from day to day. Now, instead of using the dial, I just hold my hand an inch or two over the burner and “feel” for the right setting by sensing the amount of power that’s leaking off the coil. It’s actually quite fascinating how EM-saturated our environment is.


Jymmi’s powerful magnet picking up a couple of safety pins.

Does your magnet have functional (as in non-sensation) uses?

Fred: Sadly, I am only able to pick up other magnets and only small things like staples.

Anonymous: I’ve gotten laid a number of times directly attributable to the implant. Occasionally a girl on the fringe of my social group will be all like “are you the guy who put a magnet in his finger?” (swoon).

Anton: I can pick up very small, very light objects, and move the compass on my keychain — it’s great for bar tricks.

Jymmi: The most I can do is pick up screws, paper clips, and bottle caps — or spinning lighters. It really freaks people out when they hold your finger and you move the implant around with another magnet they can feel it moving around under the skin.

Steve: It didn’t hvae any functional uses for me, other than some “party trick” type stuff like picking up paper clips or things like that.

Powder: I use my magnet to pick up small screws I might drop while working on various electronics. I have used it to single out a cable in a bundle of cables. I mostly use it to do small magic tricks like playing with my compass or rolling other magents around without touching them. When I’m bored I’ll play by swinging a paperclip back and forth.

Todd: It has functional use in that it helps me reconceptualize the world around me, and every now and then I say something smart, and that is what people pay me to do. I got into my PhD program solely because of the implant. I was at a conference and some dude was all like, ‘there’s this dude who put a magnet in his finger’ and I was like ‘oh thats me’ and he was like ‘no, really’, and I was like ‘no really’. Then he made arrangements for me to get into my PhD program. Which I promptly dropped out of for sociopolitical reasons but it was pretty cool at the time.

Dean Newman I suppose the most use i get out of the magnets again would be when using with magic. Stopping a compass, or sometimes even a watch although that is a lot harder. After a while i was able to use it to “palm” certain objects although nothing bigger than a paperclip.


Shannon’s silicone-dipped magnetic implants being placed.

Why do you think some people report magnetic sensations without the magnet? (Both in new areas, and after removal)

Jymmi: I’ve been wondering if you need to have the implant to feel the electric field — if you can train your body to feel it without the implant. It would probably explain why I can feel it in both hands and feet, or maybe i’m just a freak. I think it is real. I’m not sure if it’s nerve density or something biological like high iron in the blood?

Todd: I sometimes percieve the magnetic sensation in two fingers, my left ring and pinkie fingers. However, I only have the impant in my left ring finger. I’ve thought about this phenomenon, and here is what I have believe is occuring. In the course of normal finger operation your pinkie and ring fingers often percieve things in parallel. For instance when you grab an ass or run your hands down a woman’s back those two fingers are feeling pretty much the same thing. Your nervous system has limited resources for transmitting information, and uses clever tricks to up the amount of information processing per calorie. Since those two fingers often run in parrallel, at some point for efficiency the nervous system constructed a compression algorithm. The dual finger perception with only one implant is an artifact of that compression. The phenomenon isn’t 100% consistent, I’d estimate 10% of the sensations come up dual.

Shannon: I can’t currently sense EM fields in any place other than the fingertip that contains the magnet stack (and the ones that have been removed don’t appear to retain any sesnation), and don’t have any “crossover” between fingers.

Quinn: I suspect this is a matter of learning to concentrate. Before I went to Phoenix I designed a test just to make sure it was real, picking out a live wire from 4 choices. We did it double blind back in California with unmodified controls. People actually could pick out the live cord better than the stats would have had it. When I sat down to try it, I could pick out a live cord about 80% of the time, about twice the other controls. We were all surprised, but after talking to some people that worked with electronics, it turned out this was not at all unique. I think it’s entirely reasonable to think that learning to concentrate on AC would let you do it with your skin even without a magnet; though not as reliably. We are, after all, conductive.

Please note that magnetic implants are still highly experimental and the underlying encasement technologies and so on are not yet mature. If you want one, please be sure to research and understand the risks in advance!


Quinn’s implant (note the discoloration) just before removal.


Shannon Larratt
BME.com