Having houseguests isn't always fun. After I bought my house a friend of mine came to stay with my family and me for a while. After a month or so I found myself leaving my house a lot because I had lost my privacy and I just needed to get away. One night Laura and I went to Columbia just to mess around and go to the mall. This was before I had any tattoos or had started stretching my ears and I really hadn't even spent much time in any shops. On the way home Laura came up with an idea, "Let's go get your tongue pierced. "
At A Glance Author Jasonthe29th Contact Jasonthe29th@bme.anon IAM jasonthe29th When Five years ago Artist Some girl with baby Studio Some hole in the wall I had never really given it much thought before, but it didn't sound like a bad idea. So after we got back to Augusta, we went to a tattoo shop that we had been to a couple weeks before with a friend. It was not the nicest place and it wasn't on the nicest part of town, but at this point in my life it was exactly like I expected a tattoo shop to look. Flash on the walls, people hanging out, and buzzing all around. I went to the counter and told the girl what I wanted and she gave me a form to fill out and made a copy of my driver's license. "That'll be thirty dollars." She said.
I paid and was directed to a back room, kind of like a doctors office where I waited. I had seen some of the employees while I waited, big guys with lots of tattoos on their arms and necks and I was trying to figure out which one was going to pierce me this fine night. After about a ten-minute wait, a young pale girl with no tattoos or piercing comes in and puts a baby down in a crib that was situated in the corner. I thought it was a joke, but she started getting everything ready. She gave me a Dixie cup full of brown Listerine to rinse with and it tasted awful. After that, I stuck out my tongue and she marked it with a blue dot. I looked at it in the mirror, but I didn't know anything about proper placement so I guess it was just a formality. Once again I stuck my tongue out and she grabbed it with a long clamp with an eye on the end, something I had never seen before. She pinched my tongue really hard and shined a flashlight through it. Then she told me to look up and that she was going to count to three. Before I looked up, I saw her grab the needle. "Okay, ready..." she said as she stuck the long needle through the bottom of my tongue. And it was done.
She didn't have any trouble getting the long barbell in and after rinsing one more time I was done. She told me to rinse my mouth every day and that it should heal in a few weeks. I was pretty happy about it. It didn't hurt at all and I walked around showing everyone like they have never seen it done before. When we got home, my houseguest wasn't too excited about it, but I didn't care to much what he thought anyway.
The next morning I woke up to find out that my tongue had swelled up like a Macy's day balloon. It was horrible and it hurt and I could hardly talk. I thought it was going to explode. I could feel the blood pulsing through it every time my heart beat. I figured that this was something that I was going to have to get used too at least for the immediate future.
The swelling lasted a week or so. I didn't eat much during that time which was not good. After the swelling went down and I was able to eat I was afraid to. I kept thinking that I was going to bite into the barbell. It still kind of hurt to chew and so I had to find something that I could get into my stomach with the least amount of discomfort. The answer? Waffle House grits. I hated grits, but after a week of not really eating, some grits sounded fine to me. After the grits I moved onto spaghetti, which was pretty easy to eat as well. After a while I had gotten used to having the bar in my mouth all of the time and it wasn't bad. I eventually started eating normal again.
I have had my tongue pierced for a bout six years now. I don't wear it all of the time anymore, but I still like it. I have never really had any problems with it, and I don't think I have ever bit into it or chipped any teeth with it or anything like that. It hasn't given me any super powers, as some people would assume; it's just something I have. I don't go around sticking it out at people. I like to keep my mods to myself, I know that I have them and that is good enough for me.
Hopefully one day I will move to a more advanced tongue project, but I am content for now.