(no subject)

[novapsyche]

My friend twoofdtm posted about one of her piercings, which got me to thinking.

I have two ear piercings, but I cannot contemplate getting anything more. Also, I am very averse to acquiring a tattoo. I think my feelings toward both of these are related, but it's visceral so it's hard for me to give a logical reason why I feel the way I do.

Do you have piercings or tattoos? If so, how many? Either way, what would drive you to get them or to stay away?

Comments

[aiela.livejournal.com]

I got my first (and only) tattoo the first weekend I was living on my own after my first husband and I split up. It's an 8 pointed star on my left shoulder, and its easily hidden if I want it to be.

I have never had any desire to have any other tattoo, that one was just very meaningful to me that I "marked" myself when I became my own again after a terrible marriage.

I had some ear cartilage piercings but they didn't heal after a year and I gave up and took them out. I occasionally consider doing them again.

[eposia.livejournal.com]

I have surprisingly few body mods for owning a tattoo and piercing shop. Piercings I don't think I'll do any more of, due to the healing times and immune system impact, though I might try the new dermal implant anchors at some point. Tattoos I have a couple in the planning stages, large, but they've been being planned for years. I've got this skin my whole life, it doesn't bother me to take some time to decide how I want to decorate it, since we don't have the tech for programmable digital-ink tattoos yet. One is an abstract leg piece designed by my stepmother, and one is a themed armpiece on the other side for bilateral balance.

[eposia.livejournal.com]

I currently have two tattoos, both white ink, on my forearms. On the right is a line going down the center made to look like a scar, acquired on the day my divorce was finalized as a reminder not to walk down certain paths again. The left I got 1.5 years later, an infinity symbol just under the crook of the elbow, sort of a wedding ring to myself -- a reminder to keep my needs and goals first in the forefront of my awareness and energy expenditure, when I'm taken care of I have a lot more to give others. I got them at a time when I didn't know what sort of job I'd be getting next, so got them in white because I needed the tattoos to be in a place where I would see them all the time, but wouldn't necessarily draw the notice of other people.

[blackwinterbyrd.livejournal.com]

white ink. I am interested in this sort of tattoo also. do you reccommend it? (I'm pinkish pale)

[vrax.livejournal.com]

I do. One hole R lobe, 3 holes L lobe. 2 holes L cartilage (healed) I hole L nostril (healed) L eyebrow (healed) and my tongue is pierced.

I have a black spiral dancer symbol on my left shoulder (see icon) these on my right shoulder, just the snakes (in black and purple). I have a black crescent moon on my back. Tibetan writing on my left outer calf, and a I'm i the process of a 40-ish hour life size Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake spanning a length of 4'2" as it wraps around and around my right lower leg. It's quite realistic with all 1700+ scales individually rendered and shaded.

Why? Well each thing has a different reason, yet all are sort of tied together. Piercing is a transcendent experience for me, I hardly even feel it and it brings a certain odd clarity for a little while after it is done. It's sort of an awareness of separation between soul and body or some such thing. Also, the jewelery looks nice.

Each tattoo is a reminder or devotion to something. The snake is a religious devotion, and each moment I spend earning money for it, or getting inked is a time of holiness.

Partly because I was born with birth defects and have struggled with my body as a result, doing this, modification, it allows me a sense of defining my own form. Also, I'm kinda of into the needle feeling, it feel cool and I dig it. Hah.

[jennkitty.livejournal.com]

I currently have 6 piercings and 1 tattoo. At this point, I doubt I'll get another tattoo, although mine is 6 weeks old now and I love him very much. (Him being my frog tattoo)

I have 1 hole in each earlobe, 3 in my upper right cartilage, and 1 "rook" piercing on my right ear as well.

I intend to get more piercings. Each of them was significant to me. Even the one that didn't take now has significance. The healing curve is long, but the end result is worthwhile to me.

I am a pain slut (I know we've discussed this before) and something about the piercing experience I find very exhilarating while also very very relaxing.

You say you can't give a logical reason. Can you provide an illogical one, why you react so strongly to the idea?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Well, I run from pain (as we've discussed before! :) ), so tattoos seem especially out.

I might get another ear piercing, but anywhere else on the body seems too involved re: infection and/or just not something I want on my person (erogenous zone piercings).

(BTW, I liked the froggie! I wish you hadn't deleted it.)

[jennkitty.livejournal.com]

It was very big and not a good pic. I will post more pics soon, and he will be one of them. :)

OK, I get the running from pain thing. My tattoo hurt, and did *not* make the switch from pain to pleasure, but for me it was a trial of endurance at that point.

My only regret with my right ear is that I talk on the phone w/ my right ear, so I've had to be very careful w/ my headset.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

I had both of my ears pierced but at this point, I've pulled everything out. I've never gotten a tattoo because I don't think I've ever seen anything I'd want to be marked for life by.

[thegreenyear.livejournal.com]

i have five piercings - my ears, my nipples and my eyebrow. next will be my labret, i think. my piercings have often symbolized significant changes in my life.

i don't have any tattoos, but i'm planning a large one - a vine from my left forearm, over my shoulder and across my back, down to my right ankle. it's going to have other symbols woven in. it will take a while, but i feel like it's worth it - that it's going to make me more "me."

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

I've always found piercings kinda distasteful, even the traditional pierced earlobes in women, but the more I hear about and see examples of female nipple and clitoral hood piercings, the more they seem pretty neat. As for on myself, well... see the tattoo answer.

I do like tattoos, for the most part, on either gender. I've thought of getting a spider or a treble clef or something, but the problem is, I'm a tremendous wuss.

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

I have neither for a combination of aesthetic, medical, and financial reasons. Neither is to my taste, both are contraindicated for lymphedema patients, and the permanence of tattoos would also be a reason not to. As for the financial reason, apart from the expense of the modifications themselves, my wife and I inherited a pair of burial plots in an Orthodox Jewish cemetary in Queens, NY (my paternal grandparents were buried in Florida) that we could not use if we had body modifications. NYC cemeteries are pretty close to capacity--most NYers are buried in the suburbs, so having to purchase plots at a great distance from our beloved 5 boroughs is also a disincentive.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

I got my ears pierced when I was 15. Mostly I don't wear earrings, and they'd probably need to be re-acclimated if I wanted to.

I have long thought about getting a tattoo, and will as soon as I figure out what I would want to have on my skin *forever*. I'll let you know when that happens. :-)

[blackwinterbyrd.livejournal.com]

Its a little pretentious, but i did my nose when i was 16 as a way of reclaiming my beauty for my own ends.

For years afterwards, I felt justified when older white/rich people would take it upon themselves to tsk "You would be so beautiful if it weren't for that thing in your nose." customers and random strangers, mind you. Sometimes I'd answer, but mostly I just stared. What would they suggest I do with my face besides decorate it?

It was sort of a amazonian deformation, and a renouncement of both the privelege and vulnerability of being a gorgeous pubescent blond. Thank god I'm not pubescent anymore. :p Thank god I'm not 16 anymore and prone to reasoning like that.
No tattoos. Pure vanity, I would do one or more with the right artist and potentially without black outlines. but not now.
I did my ears pretty heavily, I love shiny things. I occasionally regret it. recently I've gauged up so that I can wear semi-precious stones in some of them. I just think its neat. I did my bellybutton too. I don't know why. I was 18, durr.

[laureth.livejournal.com]

Two ear piercings, done at age seven, neither of which have held earrings in almost two decades. One more piercing on the right ear, done in high school to counter people teasing me about my gay mom. That one always got infected so I never bothered with it past a couple years, but the scar is still there.

No tattoos. Had big plans for one once (after leaving a bad relationship) but I just don't know anything I want on there for the rest of my life, especially a reminder of a bad relationship. I keep imagining being old and wrinkly in a nursing home and showing the other ancient Gen-X'ers my "winged Isis" armband as a muzak version of Def Leppard's "Pour some sugar on me" plays in the background. I can't do it. I think the human form is beautiful enough.

[brendand.livejournal.com]

No tattoos... Just. Not. Interested.

Piercings? Maybe. But adverse to pain, and not wanting to risk any health issues... doesn't seem likely. Maybe an ear cartilage piercing. Can't imagine nose, labret, or really any other piercing, although I think I'd be really hot with a labret.

[jdoggiedogg.livejournal.com]

I have one tattoo on my ring finger. I love it because I hate wearing jewelry, although it's not the greatest tattoo. I have since discovered that my friend the tattoo artist isn't actually very good. But it's very simple and it does what it needs to do.

I hate jewelry, so piercings are of no interest. I love art, so the idea of using my body as a canvas fascinates me, but I only have one canvas, so I really want to make sure that I fill it with the right art.

ya wanna list?

[m0n90053.livejournal.com]

Piercings:

Left ear:
12 starting from the lobe up the outer edge; for several years, I have only worn anything in the lower 3 or 4 at most, but I check occasionally on the rest to make sure that they are still open and cleaned-out
1 on the little tab that sticks out and I don't know what it's called, that I don't wear anymore because it migrated too close to the front/outer edge; I think about repiercing it every once in a while
1 in the upper broad are, front to back, which is about ½ inch and took about 6 months to heal completely, getting infected at least 3 times in the process; 10-gauge barbell
1 in the lower well, inside to outside; don't often wear anything there, and not sure it's still open

Right ear:
3 from lobe up
1 top to bottom on the upper inside ridge
1 on the lower inner ridge, just before it breaks down to the lower part of the opening

Nose:
2 left nostril, 1 right nostril

Nipples:
both pierced, no longer wear anything in them because holes migrated outward

Penis:
2 Prince Alberts, the first of which was too near the end and started migrating; no general problems with either even though I have worn nothing in them for years, but the first leaks if I don't cover it when I urinate, which is why I normally do so sitting down
Frenums: don't recall the count off the top of my head because I did most of them a bit shallow and so again have not worn anything there for years, but I think 7
Head: if you put your right thumbnail perpendicular to the cuticle of your left thumbnail, and then mark off 3 approximately evenly-spaced locations between there and where the cuticle starts the dramatic curve, those 3 places would be where I'm pierced. Not wearing anything there

Tattoos:

Back of left hand: Coyote, my prime totem animal, and my RRB artist's chop
Left pinkie, continuing twice around left wrist:
a braid which calls to mind Roger Zelazny's character Merlin of Amber's artifact Frakir
Left wrist: in the inch or so between the two loops of the braid, a Celtic/tribal type pattern
Left wrist/forearm: a newsprint-fade pattern which I like to think of as moving from dark to light
Left palm: a gecko (second totem animal); half-framed by the curve of his tail, a blank question mark on a dark ovoid background
'Bottoms' of fingers of left hand: on each, 5 straight lines forming a rough triangle, pointing toward the tip; these are meant to act as 'diodes' for energy, reminding me that if I only draw power with my left and and only release it with my right, I'm bound to get caught up short sometime when I'm not able to use one or the other

Left ankle/calf: a dragonscale pattern which I hope to one day do in color and extend up the leg to the front of the thigh; it circles the ankle and after several rows up starts the split which will continue as a dragon if I ever complete it
Left ankle, in the heel section below and behind the bone: the one tat I copied from another source, 2 eyes, nose, and smiling mouth
Left calf, above the knee: 2 lines approximately parallel, about 1 ½ inches long, which commemorate my experimenting with Eskimo tradition of needle and sinew (I used thread)

Right leg: on the knee, what started out as sort of a labyrinth but has over the years smudged out so that it looks vaguely Nordic; above this, a tribal pattern which didn't particularly mean anything when I first drew it, but now (again, if I ever get to it, and color) will be a stylized phoenix; three spaces in the 'body' are occupied by crosses, one by a spider (third totem animal) hanging from a web; below the spider, an infinity symbol; below the knee thing, a recycle symbol

Right wrist: 2 lines of text; top band says Justify my love... Do me, Baby!, lower band says Just do it. Just do it. Just do me.
Right upper arm, just above elbow: a large BandAid™-type strip bandage

So far, I've done all my work myself.

Re: ya wanna list?

[m0n90053.livejournal.com]

And I ran outta room...

Reasons for wanting my totem animals close to obvious. (Still haven't added snake and cockroach.)
'Frakir' and newsprint fade fall close to that.
'Diodes' were a creative way of handling energy flow and discipline, which being something of a chaotic I always have to remind myself is still important.
Phoenix and dragon as archetypes.
Bandage had to do with trying to deal with years-old social/romantic trauma that had left me thinking I was never going to learn how to interact with others, particularly women, particularly romantically.
Most if not all of my piercings had something to do with concepts stated above of internalizing pain initially created externally, taking it and having control of it; some people call it mutilation, I'm on the side of those who consider it decoration. And it's MINE!