At A Glance
Author	Piercing Princess
Contact	Piercing [email protected]
When	N/A

I am 22 Years old in just a couple of weeks and things have changed drastically many times through out my life. My knowledge of Tattoos and Body Piercing reach way back to the beginning of my memory.

I can remember being very small sitting in one of the chairs that my father had in his Tattoo studio, located behind our house, and watching him magnificently putting a very large flower design on a woman. I thought that it was beautiful. I can still see the piece in my mind, beautiful flowers of all different shades of blues, purples and pinks, with long green stems. So I guess maybe it all started there, my fascination with transforming the body into a walking talking work of art.

I grew up in a very small, simple-minded town. After my father moved to a large city when I was five my grandparents raised me with there traditions and values. They didn't hate tattoos, there son was a tattoo artist, just frowned on them. So that did it, tattoos were out of my life, except for when I saw my dad a few times a year when he was not traveling; I really had no contact with the art.

Still I could feel it. I would be flipping through a magazine in study hall at school and see a person with a tattoo and long for it to be a part of my life once again. I would go on and on to my friends about my dads arm sleeves, that he would be getting a new tattoo, or what famous person he had just worked on.

When I was 14 and a freshman in high school my dad asked me to come and stay with him over spring break. Of course I jumped at the chance. He was living in a city about 3 hours away, working a tattoo studio with a friend. As soon as I got to his place I asked when I was going to get a tattoo.

I worked at his shop the whole week. I would clean tool, make stencils, anything as long as I was there. It was the day before I had to go home and I had been asking all week to have a tattoo, just a little flower on my ankle. I howled the whole 20 minutes it took for him to give it to me.

I was definitely the talk of the school when I got back. I over heard teachers saying, "that's the girl with the tattoo," and my friends, "I can't believe her dad tattooed her!" I sure didn't care. I didn't know it then but my future with tattoos had only just begun.

I graduated high school, with only my little flower, and instantly was ready to move to my dads. He and all of the people that worked for him came to get me on their way to a tattoo convention. It was heaven, all of the beautiful artwork and shiny steel surrounding me. I had found my place in the world, the body modification world.

I spent almost the next four years working at the tattoo studio for my dad. I started out cleaning. I cleaned everything, tubes, hemostats, the lobby, the artist's rooms and workstations. I worked my way up the ladder, no special breaks, learning as I went. A few months after I had been there I asked if it would be ok if I apprenticed to pierce, this was just as fascinating to me as tattoos. I was told that everyone that worked there would have to approve, they were all in it together, and that I would still have to do my job.

It started slow and kind of boring. I was given a piece of leather with dots marked on it and told to get a needle and pierce through the dots, which I did for what seemed like forever. I wanted to jump right into it head first, but everyone taught me that if I did it that way I would never be the kind of piercer I could be. That you need to have patience and understanding, the ability to work with the person you are piercing, and to be perceptive to how they respond to what you tell and do to them.

After six months of working on leather, cardboard, hotdogs, you name it, I got to do my first real piercing. It was on the cousin of the guy I was dating, his eyebrow. The piercing its self went great, but I was so nervous that when I was putting the jewelry in my hand jittered just a fraction and it wouldn't go in. I felt so horrible, I thought that I would be great at it right from the start, but it takes time for the nervousness to fade. I redid the piercing four weeks later with no problem, and them a few others who were willing to let me "practice" on them and get a free piercing.

Soon I was working four days a week piercing. It was great working along side my dad. Since I started at that shop I have pierced hundreds of people. I have also done my fair share of odd piercings, the skin between the upper lip and gum, four in a navel, hafdas, almost every part of the ear, two in each nipple. I like to give people the piercing that they say they want but before I will do any piercings I like to take a few minutes and talk to them to make sure that it is them that wants it, not someone else pressuring for it to be done.

I myself have nine tattoos, all full of beautiful color and hard work given to me by those who I shared my life with, my tattoo family, and 15 piercings, including a 2G barbell in my tongue, �" in my ear, septum, nostril, and 6G barbells in both nipples. My little flower has bloomed all the way up my leg and placed its roots on top of my foot, another gift from my father. I do plan on having more, my next one, my eight month old baby daughters foot print on top of my foot, so she knows that her mommy will be there ready to carry her if ever she needs.

As of now I have moved back to my small little town to try and introduce to them that just because we have different colors on our skin and metal in out face and bodies doesn't make us "evil" or "impure." We have taken OUR bodies and made them into masterpieces, with collections of our favorite moments, our saddest times, and greatest memories for the world to see.

So maybe it is in me somewhere, passed to me from my father, that this is what I am to do with my body, maybe not. But this is me, even with tattoos and piercings, I am still the same girl who grew up with traditions and values. You just have to look through a little color to see it.