No, It Didn't Hurt....Really!

So I've wanted to get my tongue pierced for awhile I guess. I wanted to do it a few years ago, but I played clarinet at the time and figured that it would be bad for my playing. So I kind of forgot about it for awhile, and then when Mo and Kathy got it done at school, it sort of reminded me, and since I don't play clarinet anymore, I didn't really have any reason not to do it anymore. So this weekend, Justin, Kathy, Rachel and I took a little field trip to The Piercing Experience in Little Five Points. (Little Five Points is a kind of alternative/counter-culture center of Atlanta.)

When we first got there I started asking questions about the process because I had heard so many conflicting stories about what it's like. The first things I learned were that we don't use the word "hurt" in this studio because it has negative energy associated with it, and that the reason she was a little distracted while she was talking to me was that there were four planets in retrograde and she just didn't feel like herself. Despite the fact that I didn't really share her astrological and spiritual views on the universe, Sommer struck me as very professional and knowledgable about her craft. So I filled out the paperwork and after a bit of a wait, we got started.

She took me back to one of the piercing rooms where there was this big dentist-office-like chair (and a folding chair for Justin, who came back with me for moral support). I told her I was a little nervous, and she told me to take deep breaths (and demonstrated for me). Justin commented that he felt perfectly relaxed, which I sarcastically thanked him for sharing, and which Sommer sincerely told him was exactly what we needed from him - his strength and his calmness. She marked my tongue with some kind of dye and then cleaned my whole mouth with something that tasted awful and that I had to swallow. But she was right - that really was the worst part. She had Justin move around so he could see, and asked if I wanted to hold his hand, but I opted to try to stay totally relaxed and avoid clenching or gripping anything. Now this is the part that's different from most piercing studios - she didn't clamp my tongue. She put some gauze over it and massaged it ("Feel where it's going to go...I'm moving things out of the way...like blood vessels and such..."), and then was able to just hold onto it with her hand. She said that the reason that most people get swelling so bad is that the clamp bruises their tongue. She told me to inhale deeply, and I guess when I took the breath in is when she started pushing the needle through, but there was no acute pain or specific moment that I could feel it enter my tongue. I just kept breathing and I felt some pressure, like someone was pinching my tongue, and then I could feel the needle moving through it, and then it was over. I felt a little faint afterward and had to lie in the chair for awhile drinking water but after the initial shock of oh-my-god-I-actually-did-it, I was fine. I was able to eat normal food pretty much immediately (we went to an Indian restaurant that night). I just had to eat slowly and carefully. I was speaking totally normally too. The next day it swelled a little bit, but still not that badly. And it was never really that painful - just a little sore - like muscle soreness after a workout. The other unusual thing about The Piercing Experience is they tell you NOT to rinse with mouthwash. I'm not supposed to put any cleansers in my mouth for a week - not even toothpaste (ew, I know...). Sommer said that there are over 300 strains of bacteria in your mouth and only 5 are bad and she didn't want me killing all the good ones. They want your body to heal naturally. At first, I was skeptical, but given the way I'm recovering, I'm convinced.

If anyone in Atlanta is thinking of getting anything pierced, I highly recommend The Piercing Experience. It was very professional and extremely clean (she showed me a test strip proving that all her materials had been sanitized in the autoclave immediately before my piercing). And the recovery has been excellent - I was very worried about how long it would be before I could talk/eat/etc. but I've been fine. It was definitely a very cool experience - and I really like my tongue ring already.

An extremely flattering picture of me moments after the piercing...(ew, bad photo quality, sorry!)





...and again, looking a little happier this time...