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Pierced as Fuck

28 May 2001
George always gets stopped at airports.

Getting my knees done was one step too far. One step beyond. Except that once the ring was in place, there weren't going to be any more steps anywhere - not for another six weeks until the skin had healed and I could bend my legs again. This was something that I hadn't banked on in the shop. None of my other perforations had caused the loss of movement. Clearly, things had gotten out of control.

My mum told last week that I looked like a fleshy sieve which irritated me more than I let on. I do not look like a colander. None of my piercings are exposed, all are filled with niobium or steel. Trying to drain pasta or vegetables through me would be a trying business. My younger sister put it better after arriving back from school at Christmas, clutching a pomander that she's made herself. The connection between the clove-stuffed orange and her big stud-filled sister didn't go unnoticed, and jokes about me being keeping pants smelling fresh went on until March.

I do actually blame my mum for all of this - if she hadn't got me on the habit so young then I might have taken up crochet instead. All my money could have been spent on spanking new yarn instead, and pus-stained cotton buds wouldn’t be scattered round the house. On holiday in Portugal when I was six months old one of the locals told mum what a handsome boy I was. The starter studs went in the day that we arrived back in Britain.

One simple misunderstanding! And here I am eighteen years later, a victim of my mother's fears of gender discrimination. Would she have made that appointment at Hair Flair for her firstborn to have metal rods pushed through baby flesh is she'd known what the outcome would be?

But I digress. The next pair of studs went in when I was five. By the time I started secondary school I had the potential to have nine pairs of hoops in my ears - and I hadn't even moved into the crunchy cartilage zone yet. But school being school, I was restricted to one piece of jewellery per ear only. After the constant influx of gold into my lobes for so many years, going back to such small amounts regressed me to my toddler days. What was a girl to do? I moved onto the parts of my body that no teacher could see.* Stomach first, and the longest period in history to get out of games whilst I waited for it to heal.

Then the crunchy parts of the ears. And that was an error - I'd assumed that "ear=simple=quick healing=painless";. Ha. And fool fourteen-year old that I was, I had both ears done at the same time. Three months of only being able to sleep on my back, stretching the necks of jumpers to avoid ear-brushing as they went on, not being able to answer the phone properly. The getting out of games excuse had long expired and I had Karen the Bitch-Queen Heffalump aiming the netball at my head in every match, even when we were on the same time.

Some people might have stopped at that stage. Lesser people may have taken a break, left their body free of adornment for a few years and re-evaluated what having lumps of metal pushed through their skin meant to them in a spiritual sense. Me, I was up to 21 and in gambling terms that seemed too lucky a number to stop at. So at the start of the summer holidays I hitched to Birmingham, found a studio that swallowed my false ID and got both nipples done. They healed more quickly than I'd anticipated, which gave me time to get my tongue done a fortnight before school started again. It was the last year before sixth-form started anyhow.

I got the vertical clit piercing for my sixteenth birthday. With hindsight, it was somethig of a forerunner for the knees - movement was very difficult for sometime after without making squeaking noises.

I should point out at this point that none of my jewellery is, or has been elaborate. I go with the basic bars and rings -none of this spangly gold crap for me. Seeing someone with a Diamonique frog hanging off their tummies makes me feel ill. Keep it simple, I've always thought.

And then I left school and my habit came out of the closet. My mum until that stage had been reasonably unconcerned about what I spent my pocket money on. Suddenly, in a fortnight her baby girl came home with newly glinting eyebrows, nose, lips and cheeks. The fact that my entire face didn't become a squishy dish of E.coli still amazes me, and is testimony to the healing powers of tea-tree oil, saltwater and pizza.

After mum's screaming fit I cooled it for a few months until she'd calmed down. Once my face was better it was off to town again for some studs in the cheeks. And then (in no particular order): Top of nose. Lower lip. Tragus .Lower tummy. Front of neck. Back of neck. Septum. Labia majora. Labia minora. Finger webbing. Tops of my nails. Back of the knees.

And here we are, at my A-level social history essay (first draft). It was originally going to be on piercing histories through the ages, but after my knees I couldn't get to the library without a wheelchair. So here I am. I can’t think of anywhere else to get done, and I've done a proper internet search. Maybe it's time to move onto tattoos.

* [back] Or so I thought. Mr Teylor (not his real name) and I got jiggy one afternoon, two weeks before my GCSE exams started. He was stunned by the amount of metal that I had under my uniform.

 

 
     
Previously on upsideclown

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Current clown:

18 December 2003. George writes: This List

Most recent ten:

15 December 2003. Jamie writes: Seven Songs
11 December 2003. Dan writes: Spinning Jenny
8 December 2003. Victor writes: Rock Opera
4 December 2003. Matt writes: The Mirrored Spheres of Patagonia
1 December 2003. George writes: Charm
27 November 2003. James writes: On Boxing
24 November 2003. Jamie writes: El Matador del Amor; Or, the Man who Killed Love
20 November 2003. Dan writes: Rights Management
17 November 2003. Victor writes: Walking on Yellow
13 November 2003. Matt writes: Disintermediation
(And alas we lost Neil, who last wrote Cockfosters)

Also by this clown:

1 December 2003. George writes: Charm
10 November 2003. George writes: Dead beat
20 October 2003. George writes: Shortening
29 September 2003. George writes: Manhattanites are Cleavage-Starved
11 September 2003. George writes: How to Bring Us in Line With the Future
18 August 2003. George writes: Slashtastic
28 July 2003. George writes: Underground Independent Small Press Comic Fight Club
7 July 2003. George writes: Careering
16 June 2003. George writes: Choose your own adventure
26 May 2003. George writes: Revelations
8 May 2003. George writes: Picture Perfect
14 April 2003. George writes: MetaPirate
24 March 2003. George writes: Preparation X
3 March 2003. George writes: F of x
13 February 2003. George writes: Three is the magic number
23 January 2003. George writes: Recorded Delivery
30 December 2002. George writes: Meat Bingo or Death
12 December 2002. George writes: Royal Inquisitor
21 November 2002. George writes: This Clown is Cancelled
28 October 2002. George writes: Shopping with God
3 October 2002. George writes: SaferSpoony
16 September 2002. George writes: Supercalanthropomorphicexpealidocious
26 August 2002. George writes: The deformed animal menagerie
5 August 2002. George writes: Plaice that Funky Music, Whitebait
15 July 2002. George writes: Safe as Houses
24 June 2002. George writes: Two Lions (DB/DS)
30 May 2002. George writes: Series 8
9 May 2002. George writes: Market Stall
11 April 2002. George writes: I, the Enlargened, Crunchy Product
18 March 2002. George writes: Cakexterminator
21 February 2002. George writes: Fiction Suit
28 January 2002. George writes: Spunk Gunk
31 December 2001. George writes: Fairytale of New Pork
10 December 2001. George writes: Circular
15 November 2001. George writes: A Man With No Ass Is No Man At All
22 October 2001. George writes: One Night in Heaven
27 September 2001. George writes: Uncut
3 September 2001. George writes: Porn Pants
9 August 2001. George writes: Names of the Roses
19 July 2001. George writes: No Fun Here
21 June 2001. George writes: All Your Elections are Belong to Us
28 May 2001. George writes: Pierced as Fuck
3 May 2001. George writes: My Lovely Horse
9 April 2001. George writes: Eight Hundred and Forty-Three
12 March 2001. George writes: Kill 'Em All
19 February 2001. George writes: Formal
25 January 2001. George writes: Sticks and stones
11 January 2001. George writes: A Thought on Morality
11 December 2000. George writes: You can't put that into a soufflé
13 November 2000. George writes: Lyrical Genius
19 October 2000. George writes: Wet wet wet wet wet
25 September 2000. George writes: Built on an Indian burial ground
31 August 2000. George writes: This Way
31 July 2000. George writes: Runt of the Litter

Let meeeeee entertain you

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