"...After the nose ring stage."
At A Glance Author Skip3s Contact [email protected] IAM Skip3s When N/A I was a bit offended at first when I heard this comment, who is one to judge what is and is not a stage of life until it has obviously ended. This single comment by my girlfriend's mother last night (8-25-05) though sparked kinder that has lain dormant in my mind for quite some time after the initial offense. Life after piercing, after these years where I find them so interesting and worth while. Will there ever be such a time? Will these pieces of stainless steel be with me for always? Of course there can be scarring, which I have no fear of, but what about these small self-inflicted wounds I have filled with steel? Their memory will be with me for as long as I can still functionally think; reasons may fade, but never disappear. Will these pieces I consider artful personal expressions of myself be with me till my physical body lies rotting in the ground?
Truth be told, I know I am not sure, and quite honestly, I do not know if anyone truly knows. Within the community there are those (from personal experience they seem to be the younger generation) with the battle cry "Get Pierced" "Pierced For Life" "BodMod Rules" "BodMod Forever" on the grounds of "no matter what". I have read experiences, I have viewed IAM homepages, I have interacted with those in the business. Through them all I find no one more headstrong about such things as the younger generation, whom many of which (not all), really do not understand the history, trials and tribulations, and other such characteristics of such things. They do it out of jealousy, following a fad, or "I wanted to rebel and really stick it to mom and dad". Don't get on the offensive just yet, by no means am I trying to denounce such actions. On the contrary, I embrace them, finding one's self is a delicate and important aspect of life, "who are we and why are we here" are the oldest questions in the history of mankind. It is what countless numbers of scientists, from both the hard and soft sciences, have been trying to answer for decades. So why the mentioning of it? Well, it has a lot to do with recent conclusions I have come to after sitting down and really contemplating to the best of my knowledge the information I have available to myself.
By now you may or may not have looked at my IAM page and seen that I am only 21, still in college, and may have even guessed not living on my own. None of which I can say I am ashamed of as they are completely of my own decisions and consequences of actions I have taken. However, I tend to not relate to many of my own generation and actually find myself relating more to those before us. I don't find myself doing things out of fad or rebellion as many do, but for myself in trying to find out whom I am. While those two previous statements can completely contradict each other in more ways than one, they also compliment each other better than any other description I have come by. The generations before us have gone through World War I and II, the Great Depression, the 1960's (which in American speak for themselves), Vietnam, the Gulf war and a host of presidents which have by and far split us as a country based on our ideals. Who better to try and emulate than those who have survived, conquered and overall become wiser. True, there are those who seemingly slipped through the cracks, but overall, I more wisdom here than anywhere else, and it is not just their age, but the time from which they come. Many of them had to find themselves during a time of great difficulty. Yet, here they are, alive, most of them well, and many of them living how they wanted too according to their ideals, just as we are all trying to accomplish, no matter what subculture we subscribe to or hail from.
"BodMod till death!"
It is not that I do not expect myself to start hating what I have chosen to do, but that my tastes will change with age as many find happen. Perhaps I am just thinking acting beyond my years and too rational, forgetting that I myself have had similar thoughts and feelings, but I find the above quote clich� and starting to become devoid of meaning. Overused and misunderstood, I feel as though it has become a rally cry for the youth of today to stand behind in an act of rebellion. Standing behind notable figures in the body modification world without really knowing why. Standing behind them because they are in the public's eye modifying themselves like they want to do, but on a much larger scale then they themselves are looking for in most cases. Not to be taken out of context or as an offensive comment, but many of those won't be here in 10 years, anything can happen, ideals and lifestyles change; it's the way of a subculture. Can we say we will still support those same notable modified people we once stood behind? How about if the roles were reversed? In our ever-growing community there are a relative handful of those who would have a very difficult time turning back should they ever want to return to their former physical self. Who would still stand behind them supporting them in their "reverse modding"? Who would retort to calling to dubbing them a "sell out"?
The Lizardman Eric Sprague, for example, is an active member on BME. He has hundreds of hours of modification including teeth filing, tongue splitting, tattooing, piercings and implants. While possible, should he decide to turn back and want to look as he did before the tattooed scales and filed teeth, it will certainly be expensive and I am sure very painful. How many of us though would support this decision? He is quite considerably a "celebrity" in the sense of being in the public eye quite often, in the Guinness Book of Records and in Ripley's own collection of oddities. Would you support Eric in his decision to transform to his former physical self as you do his lizard transformation? I highly doubt it would matter much to him whether you supported him or not, it would weed out those who support Eric the Lizardman and those who support Eric the person.
Another example, though not a part of our IAM community, is Dennis Avner, Stalking Cat, or Catman, by any of those names, he is the same person, and is well known for his transformation into a Tiger. Full body tiger stripe tattoos, reshaping of his lips, eye area and ears, implants and teeth filing and capping were all implemented in his ongoing transformation. His transformation stemming from his wanting to make his physical appearance match his spiritual calling. Again, we all support him, it is his choice; it is what he feels he needs to accomplish in his life. With little to no doubt I can say we as a community support Stalking Cat, he is trying to accomplish the same thing we are, to make ourselves match the image we see ourselves as. Our images may or may not be as vivid and detailed as his, we may never be able to realize them to the extent as Stalking Cat has, but little by little we try to make ourselves that image of personal perfection we have in our minds.
Bringing this down to a more personal level again, my friends, my true friends, family and loved ones are those who admittedly and truly support me and my decisions. Those who continue to love and support me as I continue to poke holes in my flesh, tell of ideas to add color to my skin and overall change my physical appearance from what they were used too. These are the people who will continue to see me as the person I am and not as the person they are looking at, of course there is a bit of an adjustment period. When I first had my labret pierced, it was as if I had made a life changing decision. My father would not talk to me, my aunts and uncles had a hard time making conversation, and I was overall embarrassed to show up without trying to cover it up. Adjustment, however, occurred; the realization that I am still George, I am still Skip, I am still who I was the day before I decided to have a piece of metal inserted into my lip.
"...I thought he was a druggie, and because you were with him I thought you were too."
The italicized quote above came from the mother of the boyfriend of a friend of my girlfriend (even I had trouble following that one). She made this brilliant conclusion from a single encounter during which the only words we exchanged were "Hello, nice to meet you" and "Goodbye, it was nice meeting you". When I was told this I laughed, this woman had passed judgement on me from a single meeting, which lasted no more than 30 seconds in total. How can someone be so ignorant as to judge? If I were to do so I would have categorized her as "white trash" and could have very well looked down my nose at her. Child's toys strewn about an unkempt lawn, the smell of cat urine emanating from the bushes and the cat's themselves running rampant. Loose pieces of plywood leaning against the house covering a hole in the siding, and another nailed into the window that I was told had been there for quite some time now.
Inside the house the smell of cat feces was strong, it was very dark with only one light, and trying to walk across the room was very much like trying to cross a mind field. It was not because of trying to avoid "gifts" from the cats (in fact they did not keep any cats inside the house), there was simply stuff thrown everywhere, pillows, blankets, clothes, nick-knacks of all sorts. However, I did not treat them any different as I would a close friend, I acted politely, thanked her son for his hospitality in offering me something to drink and somewhere to sit. Nothing about my appearance or speech would suggest I was a drug addict, however, this woman I had never met before decided I was and because of this was told her son I was no longer welcome in her home and neither was my girlfriend if I was with her. I am not one for political correctness by far, but this is a bit outrageous, "calling a spade a spade" is one thing, but making decisions based solely off of my choice to adorn myself with piercings is another. Overall I found the mother and the son to be generous polite people to my face and just trying to make it on what they earned. Of course negative thoughts ran through my head, but not once did I speak them out and found that while the appearance of their home would suggest it, they were quite the opposite. How someone in that situation can still come to pass judgement and vocalize assumptions such as her's still boggles my mind.
"In the end, all we have is ourselves."
Whether you find something in here I said to be useful in your daily life, something to ponder, or just something you take for face value, I cannot say this applies to everyone. I cannot say this will ever apply to anyone else, although in my mind I believe it has, is currently and will continue to do so. What do I expect to be taken from all this? Nothing really that I'm sure most already know, but might get others "new to the scene" thinking more openly. Ignorance can occur from any group, no matter how freethinking and accepting. Keeping an open mind and remembering what it is to be a community is really key, even after the piercings have come out, our wrinkled tattoo are half-covered, fully covered or even removed and the scars of our experiences are all we have left.