After reading Elisabeth's reflection on 10 years of being modified, I realized that it was nearly exactly 5 years since my labret piercing. So here's a look back on how I got here.
At A Glance Author Skitzo Contact [email protected] When Five years ago I got my first piercing at the age of 9. My mom took me. We got it done at Claire's at the local mall. I had been bugging her since the age of 7 to let me pierce my ear. I didn't really know why I wanted to get it done. It just seemed cool.
About a year later, I lost interest in that ear ring and out came the piercing.
Fast forward about 5 years. I'm fourteen years old, on summer vacation before my freshman year of high school. My school had a trip organized to send a group of students to Holland for a week of sailing and then 2 weeks in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. I went on that trip and decided before I got home, I wanted a souvenir I would never forget, as I figured that would be my only trip out of the country. The opportunity came when we had to stop in a little town called Horne, Holland. While we were running around and exploring the city, I came across a tattoo shop. Immediately I knew what I had to do. I ran back to the boat where some of the other kids were hanging out and we all went down to the tattoo shop, teacher included. I talk to the guy working the desk at Sparta Tattoo (Andre was his name. I still remember this like it was yesterday) in broken German trying to ask how much a lip piercing costs. Not understanding a word I said, he pointed to some molds of different body parts they could pierce. After the initial laughter of everyone from the pierced penis mold on the wall, I pointed to a labret stud. He goes and gets the piercer who comes up and explains to me how to take care of it afterwards, luckily he spoke English. I selected my jewelry, walked to the chair around the corner, watched him open all new gear (I may have been young, but I knew I had to take care of myself) and then my friend decided to ask a question we've joked about since. "So are you going to numb it or anything first?" and the guy just looked at her funny and said "Well there's a baseball bat in the office. You guys are free to play with that if you want."
A couple minutes later, I had a mod at the age of 14 and I was damn proud of it. I called my parents from a payphone that night and broke the news the only way I knew how. "Dad, can you do me a favor?" "Yeah?" "Tell mom I pierced my lip. See ya in three weeks. Bye!" and hung up. When they picked me up from the airport, their only response was, "Looks good. But ask next time. It'd be nice to think we still had some control over you."
And from there, the gates were open for me to experiment with body mods from the beginning of high school. Only rules were I had to pay for them and if one of them gets infected, I can't get more. And no tattoos until I turned 18. I accepted their terms and went nuts. A tongue piercing a couple months later, a 4 gauge plug in my left ear about 6 months after that (soon to have 14mm's in both ears), 4 eyebrow piercings, a bridge piercing, and 6 tattoos all in the span of the past 5 years.
But while I sit here right now, the only mods you could find on me are a plug in one ear and a bit of Kanji on the back of my neck. Up until recently, I almost felt naked without my mods. I remember throwing a fit at my first job because they made me take a 2g plug out of my ear during my shifts. Now, I've let all but my lobes, tongue, and labret (yep, the original piercing) close up and I've matured enough to know I have to work twice as hard thanks to the mods I have now. But I'm ok with that.
I haven't quite lived a "normal" life up till this point. I was working for a hard rock magazine as a concert photographer for a couple years, so my idea of after school fun was going to a few concerts a week, taking pics of some of my favorite bands, and getting paid to do it. I took off after high school and spent some time traveling Europe and then moved to New Zealand at the beginning of the year.
How have my mods affected this? Well in different cultures, I found different levels of tolerance for my mods. I was denied service at some nicer places in Europe, I was denied simple backpacker jobs like working reception or working a bar because I was "too pierced." I was always one of the "weird and scary goth kids" at my school because I was one of the few people in a school of 2600 kids with stretched lobes. I knew from the start I was going to alienate myself from most people I was around. But looking back, I view the alienation as a really good thing. It caused me to look more inward, it caused me to explore different things that kids my age weren't into, it let me learn about anything I wanted to learn because I wasn't worried about what the others thought any more.
Do I regret any of it? Not in the least. I have plans to get more work done, as well as really start exploring the ritual side of the community.
I know I'm only 19 and I still get the talks from some older modified people along the lines of "You're gonna regret that someday!" but 5 years later, I still love what I've become.