Piercings

Eyebrows

I have the centers of both of my eyebrows pierced with 14ga bars, with spikes on both sides. The bottom spikes are short enough to not hit my eyes when I move my eyebrows down, and the top spikes are much longer.

These pictures are of my eighth generation spikes. After about four to six months, the piercings are slowly pushed to the front of my face, until eventually the skin becomes so thin the bar is visible right through my eyebrow. I have only let it grow that far out once, and as a result, I'm left with a small scar. All the other times, I've removed it with enough time to let it heal without scaring. Essentially, these sorts of piercings are temporary. I've accepted that I have to live with that fact. When I notice the bar starting to become visible, I remove the piercing, let my holes close, and get re-pierced 1-2 weeks later. After my third piercing, it was no longer uncomfortable to get the piercing done. The first time I was pierced, the piercing itself was completely painless; even less so than my tongue. This was my very first non-lobe piercing, so I wasn't de-sensitized or anything. I guess eyebrows just don't have many nerves in them.

Labret

Pierced at 14ga, fairly unpainful. It was just a sharp prickly pain, a tiny drop of blood. There are two types of ways to keep a labret in one's mouth; the first is called a "fishtail back", and the second is just a flat disc. On the outside of the mouth is generally a spike, but of course, you need something inside your mouth / behind your bottom lip to keep the labret from coming out. A fishtail back is where the rod inside the mouth is bent at approximately a 90 degree angle, sorta like an "el" ('L'). With a flat disc, the rod is simply connected to a flat disc. The later method results in a significant decrease of irritation and rubbing against the front lower teeth. Eventually, I developed a little dimple in my inner lip that held the disc. Sometimes I wear a much larger spike, which is much more fun to stroke like a beard :-)! However, due to its size, the weight of the larger spike tends to pull the disc more into my lip, and hurts after being worn for a few days.

Tongue

I had a 4ga 3/4" bar with dime size balls through my tongue. This is commonly agreed to be the least painful of all piercings. The piercing itself was pretty uneventful. Very little pain, just a drop of blood, and no throbbing afterwards. It healed in under a month, which is considered fast. The initial piercing was done at 12ga.

Stretching it was the fun part though. Growing the hole to 10ga was uncomfortable, but not at all painful. After stretching to accommodate the thicker bar, it tended to heal within 4-6 hours, and felt really good - no "sharp" pain, as I felt with the 12ga bar. Going to 8ga and 6ga was even better. Going to 4ga from 6ga hurt the most, but the healing time was still one evening. I really like the large balls on this bar, and I've never seen larger balls on a tongue bar (I actually can't find them on any 2ga bar, or I would have gone bigger). Larger, heavier balls have one disadvantage: you can't click them as loudly on your teeth. This is however gone now, since I've split my tongue down the center.

After splitting my tongue, the portion where the bar was slightly closed up, causing the length of my split to also shrink a bit. I got pierced again with a 12ga bar as far back as we possibly could go. The bottom ball sits on the very base of my tongue, and there are two giant veins on both sides of it. I will be resplitting, using this piercing as an anchoring point. I don't plan on increasing the size of this piercing so that after my split, when it closes up, it won't be a big loss.

Ears

Right ear.	Left ear.

Industrial

This was my first cartilage piercing, a 12ga bar across the top of my right ear, through two holes. I greatly underestimated the experience this was going to be. This was extremely painful, probably because it was my first. The main reason of its pain during the piercing is that first they make the first hole and fit the jewelry in it (loosely), and then they make the second hole. The painful part is that while they are making the second hole, a long heavy bar is dangling from your ear, tugging on your bleeding first hole. The worst part is when they have to slide that long bar through the hole, line it up with the other hole, and get the bar through the second hole. The fact that the two holes can't be perfectly aligned causes it to be a bit more painful, plus the fact that the jewelry can't be pushed though nice and evenly; it must be either over-pushed on the first hole and pushed into second hole, or over-pushed into the second hole and pulled through the first. The healing process for this piercing sucked. Bump one side and the other side becomes irritated... you get twice as many bumps and yanks. As well, a lot of pain came from the fact that the bar is pulling on two holes trying to make them align perfectly, when they were not initially aligned perfectly. The better your piercer, the better this is, but I doubt it can be done perfectly.

Large Orbit

This is the vertical 14ga black niobium ring in the middle of my right ear. It was extremely painful. The insertion was tricky because I wanted the bead on the front of my ear. I got it done at 14ga thinking it would have hurt less. I was wrong. It probably hurt just as much, didn't heal as fast, and I wish I had put a thicker ring in there. I think this one took around 13 months to heal! The actual piercing part isn't that painful, but getting the jewelry in is a bitch. This is probably my most painful ear piercing. For the same reasons as the Industrial piercing, it was incredibly painful while it healed. In addition, due to the thickness of my ear, the holes went through quite a bit of tissue/cartilage - there was more tissue that had to heal. These are the kinds of piercings that take so long to heal that you begin to enjoy the pain of healing.

There is a neat side effect from this piercing. Before I had it done, the ridge on the side of my ear was kind of flat, but thin. There was a lack of lack of nicely defined ridge, and there wasn't too wide of an area between the conch and the side of the ear. This piercing caused the ridge to completely disappear, and also widened the area significantly. Compare the ears in the two pictures and you'll see what I'm talking about - but wait to read the section on the inner conch rings first. The small picture in this text is from the back of the ear, taken a few hours after the piercing was done. I really like how it looks from behind. Too bad I never get to see it from that angle.

Inner Conch Rings

These are the two 12ga captive bead rings in my left middle ear. They were pierced at 14ga, and immediately stretched to 12ga. It was amazingly unpainful. I thought my piercer was inserting the jewelry for my first hole when he was actually just finishing with the second one. Healing time was quick too - about one month until it was mostly healed, and two to three months until it was completely healed. I like the size of the rings a lot too. I'll never get anything like this smaller than 12ga again, as I did with the orbit. Like the Orbit, these piercings molded my ear. The exact opposite of the effects of the Orbit were caused by the rings. My ear was slightly pinched, causing the ridge to be a bit more defined, and also helping to create room for more Helix spikes. It also held my ear tightly, to help create the shape I currently have. I think that I have the most perfect ear shape possible, and I am extremely pleased with the side effects of these rings.

Helix

I have 5 of these in my left ear and 1 in my right ear, all at 14ga. They were done very quickly, but the pain was quite sharp and noticeable. Healing is not painful, but very annoying. It takes 3-4 months to get to the point where they don't really bother me much anymore. After 7-9 months, they are completely healed. I started with 2 Helixes (this picture of the two Helixes are now the second and fourth I currently have). The discs are on the back/top of my ear, and the spikes are pointing inwards/down. Later, I turned the spikes to the outside, and got another one in between the two already there. I liked that so much I had another two put in on the extremities of the existing three.
I had the one in my right ear put in perpendicular to my Industrial piercing. The Industrial and the Helix were done at the same time, and the bottom of the spike was pushed out a bit since it was sitting on the top of the Industrial. That's the way it healed, so now the Helix points out a bit. Helix's have the same advantage of molding the ear as the inner conch and orbit piercings did. After I healed the three in the middle, the ridge on top was defined enough to allow placement for another one on the sides. Before, the ridge flattened too early to fit another Helix in it. The inner conch rings also helped define this ridge better.

Inner Conch Bar

Very recently, I had a 8ga hole burned out the bottom of my ear conch with a cauterizing scalpel. I'll write about it once it heals and I take good pictures of it.

Lobes

I personally think lobe piercings hurt a lot. They are pretty uneventful though. Currently I've removed everything so my lobes will heal up and I can start over with something new. I'll have new pictures as soon as I finish.

Apadravya

I had thought a lot about it before having it done, but it took me quite a while to get enough courage to have a 8ga 1.25" bar inserted vertically through the head of my penis. This was probably the most painful piercing I've had done. My choices were 12ga, 10ga, or 8ga. I didn't want to make the same mistake I made with the Orbit, so I went with the 8ga.

This piercing was done in two parts. The first part was done in a similar manner as a Prince Albert. A receiving tube (a hollow metal pipe, which "catches" the needle once it has been pushed through half the head of the penis), is slid about 1/2" down the urethra, The tube, inside the head of the penis, is then "bent" vertically, with the extruding end pointing up, which of course bends/folds the head of the penis. This results in the inserted end of the metal tube pushing down on the bottom of the head of the penis, where the head meets the shaft. The 8ga needle is pushed, rather quickly, through the bottom part of the head, and into this tube. I must have had quite a few endorphins already (just freaked out about the idea of getting it), since it didn't hurt while the needle was still in me.
The receiving tube was then removed, and the needle was now sticking through the bottom of my head, exiting through the tip of my penis through the urethra. At this point, I could have opted to have a Prince Albert, where a ring completes the loop -- a ring which starts at the base of the underside of the head, exits through the tip of the penis/urethra, and wraps around.

The tip of the needle was pulled back into my penis, so that the tip was in my urethra. My penis was permitted to relax to its natural position (no longer bent in any way), and the needle was then lined up correctly to go through the top of my head - to pierce the top part. It took almost 30 seconds of slow, but firm pressure, to get through the top of my head. There is quite a bit of tissue there to go through, in comparison to the bottom part of the head. Due to the size of the needle, as well as the nerves that this piercing went through, the pain was unlike any other piercing I've had. This was more like an incredibly painful urge to have to urinate. Not pleasant in any imaginable way, but definitely a very unique experience.

After it was done, there was a sudden lack of pain. Putting the jewelry in was uncomfortable, but not painful. I was bleeding like a stuck pig though. Blood everywhere, on my legs, on the table, dripping on the floor. It's quite amazing how much blood can come out of a penis. After I was all cleaned up, my penis was wrapped up in gauze and tissues, and I was given glove to wear around my penis for the next few days in case it bled while I was going on with everyday life. It really didn't hurt at all that day, but at night, I had to urinate. That was almost as painful as the piercing itself. The next day, the second time I had to urinate, was worse. The third time (about 36 hours after I had it done) was so painful that I was laying on the bathroom floor sure I would pass out. I assume it hurt the most at this point because the blood in the urethra was clotted and wanted to leave my body. After this experience, urinating slowly became easier. Finally, about 10 days later, it didn't hurt at all. The thing that sucked the most is that if I didn't drink anything, I didn't have to urinate, but then it wouldn't heal as well since the actual act of uniration actually helps to clean the wound. If I drank a lot, it hurt a lot, more than I'd like. After about 18 days, I was able to move the bar somewhat vertically, and rotate it fully. After 4 weeks, it was functional, but still sore. At 6-7 weeks, things were perfect. Now, I'm all healed and extremely happy with it. It looks great, it feels great, and I'm extremely glad I got it done.

Back.