Last summer, I volunteered to be part of a fetish night at a club in my town (I'm not going to specify exactly where because I don't want to make any of the other people involved, uncomfortable in any way). My friend S. had done play piercings before and wanted to do some on my back for part of the show. I figured, he's done it before, I've had play piercings before (though not in front of an audience), so I'll give it a go.
At A Glance Author SpikeyAnnie Contact [email protected] IAM SpikeyAnnie When N/A In retrospect, I'm surprised that I agreed to this. I don't regret it, per se, I just wonder how it was that these people were careful enough. Yes, they had a sharps container. The guy piercing me wore gloves and changed gloves at all appropriate times just like a regular piercing. He wiped down my back with rubbing alcohol. Everything was sterile and as clean as could be.
Then again, I also realize that they were still amateurs. We were still piercing in the middle of a smoky, not-so-clean nightclub. They cut corners when it came to proper needles, and used 14g piercing needles rather than the play-piercing needles that BME sells. (Yeah-eek) And even though S. was experienced with fetish performances and play-piercing, he has never apprenticed at a shop or anything like that. I'm not saying that should be a requirement but in this situation I think it would have been helpful.
My rational, ethical thinking on it now is different and more apparent than it was at the moment I got pierced. I feel that the other people involved were doing this for what was obviously shock value, whereas for me, piercing (and any other modification) has always been a very spiritual, introverted experience. This bothers me. Then again, there is a practical, ordinary side to every life-changing mod: for example, while you are lying there getting tattooed and feeling that your body is slowly floating upward to a plane of higher consciousness, the simple fact remains that you're paying somebody to do this and that's a very concrete, real thing.
I too used to pierce my friends, up until quite recently. Then I stopped. Why? Because it was one thing to pierce myself in a ritualistic way and accept every potential consequence of not being in the environment of a piercing studio, but it was another to expect others to understand this mentality. Also, I have a friend who's a body piercer and while he recognizes and respects my reasons for self-piercing, I know he would be adamantly against me piercing anybody but myself. That's good. I'm glad he feels that way. In my opinion, he is a great piercer because he is open to new ideas and is always very helpful and informative. He also has a very precise knowledge of how piercings work, why certain jewelry works better than others for certain people, and all those things that it takes YEARS to find out. Emphasis on YEARS. I remember when he apprenticed at the shop. The other piercer oversaw him as he pierced my conch, still as an apprentice. Finally, he reached the next level. He was trained by yet another great piercer, who went through the same process.
This being said, people have asked me "how I learned to pierce" when I tell them that many of my piercings are/were self-done. I tell them about how I used to shove safety pins through my ears when I was thirteen, and maybe that has something to do with it, and then I found BME and learned more, and so on. Then I say, "But I am not a piercer." Friends say to me, "Hey Annie, I don't want to pay a ton of money to get a piercing, will you do it for me?" And after all, you learn from experience, so who am I to turn them down, right?
In my eyes, no, that is not right. Doing piercings for friends like it's something as easy as giving them a haircut or helping them paint their nails, is not right at all. My old roommate wanted her labret pierced and I had some extra piercing needles (unopened, of course). She said, "You have needles and jewelry, right?" and was expecting me to pierce her. I said, "Yep" and handed her the needle still in its package and told her if she was going to pierce herself, use her own jewelry because I had no way of sterilizing mine. I told her as much as I could think to mention about risks and responsibilities. Then I walked her through her first needled self-piercing (she, like me, had done the safety pin routine before...who hasn't?!). It was a little bit crooked and a few minutes later it was gone, but she had done it.
I see this as being slightly different than if I had pierced her myself. I still wasn't totally comfortable with the situation, but I could tell she wanted to try piercing herself so I provided a safer means to do that than if she had used another safety pin. My conscience stayed quiet. I hadn't committed any moral faux pas...not quite, anyway.
Even so, that experience started to change my thinking, though not quite enough to dissuade me from piercing a friend's lip and then getting pierced by *another* friend at this fetish event. First of all, for me to sit someone down and pierce them in my goddamn living room, even if all equipment is sterile, strikes me as a little wrong now. You just never know. I have been able to accept that "You never know" factor in self-piercing because it's one thing to give yourself a responsibility and resolve to maintain it, but it's another to hand this off to someone else like it's no big deal. Like, "Ok, here's your new piercing, keep it clean. Bye." That's what hacks do, and I do not want to be a hack.
Second of all, in my opinion, it's basically the equivalent of me saying to a friend, "Sure, I'll pull your wisdom teeth for you" or "Sure, I'll stitch up that cut you got on your leg". There are certain things that should really only be done by qualified people. Granted, these qualified people might *still* screw up and turn out to be hacks anyway, but at least the effort is there to find a "professional" rather than "Oh, I'll just have my friend do it".
And third of all, I feel that to become a black-market, bedroom-piercer is an insult to people like my friends over at the shop who have worked years to get to where they are. People who have had to pass tests and observe and clean up every fucking thing in sight and deal with idiots every day. They have to have the same bedside manner for the idiots as they do for everybody else. They follow very careful guidelines. They don't cut any corners. This is all assuming one goes to a reputable shop.
Having said that, I would not want to insult the great piercers out there by irresponsibly jabbing my friends. No matter how hard I could try to be responsible, it would never be enough because the fact remains that instead of a professional piercer jabbing my friend with a 14g needle, it was me, and that doesn't feel right. As I said, self-piercing is a different can of worms for me, but you never know what other people can handle and what they can't. It takes years to try and figure that out, and even then, you still don't know completely. Who am I to disregard that process? I do not want to be a hack!
In conclusion, I'm not trying to stop anybody from doing anything, but please consider this: every time you pierce your friend so-and-so's navel with anything-whether it be a rusty exacto knife, a safety pin, or even a needle you got from BME!-, you are doing a disservice both to them and to the respected and knowledgeable piercer right down the street. Regardless of the logistical issues of anything surrounding this piercing, maybe you should consider your morals. That's just me, like I said, I'm not speaking for everybody because for all I know you pierced your friend Joe's septum and it turned out great and now you are the next Fakir Musafar, and I still plan to self-pierce, but my views on piercing others have definitely changed.