At A Glance
Author	iamthemessanger
Contact	iamthemessanger@hotmail.com
IAM	iamthemessanger
When	A week ago
Artist	Zachariah Brown
Studio	My bedroom
Location	Wilkes-Barre, PA

So here is another story about a needle and a lower navel. I have had a deep interest in learning the art of piercing for a long time. I have watched numerous piercings performed and the idea of self-piercing has always appealed to me.

I started by purchasing a few twelve gauge needles, clamps, and a good old receiving tube. The problem was that when it came time to pierce myself I drew a blank as to what I wanted to pierce. After about two weeks of thinking I had decided to perform a lower navel piercing on myself.

I was going to pierce in an upward direction toward the bottom on my navel, using a twelve gauge needle and followed up with a fourteen gauge curved barbell. After marking where I wanted my new piercing to be I played with the clamps for a few minutes. Eventually I decided to do the piercing freehand because of the way the clamps and my arm blocked the view of the entry hole.

Please note that without the clamps the skin was incredibly hard to keep taught for the piercing, so instead of using my left hand to hold the clamps it was busy trying to keep my skin where I wanted it as the needle was slowly passing through. As it was my first self-piercing, I wanted it to be as close to perfect as possible. In order to make sure I hit my marks freehand I decided to pierce very slowly instead of one large push. This probably made the piercing process quite a bit more painful, but not out of my pain tolerance level.

I quickly learned a lot about the piercing process that I had been ignorant to prior to this. The needle cuts the skin and does not push through it in the manner that I had thought. Also, the most painful part of the process is the exit of the needle. Not so much the needle coming back through the outer layer of tissue, but the length of the needle pulling the rest of the skin. I can say that I truly enjoyed watching the needle exit my navel, watching the needle thicken as it came through was worth the whole process. It took about five minutes to get the needle fully through, which is an eternity when compared to the quick push of someone else doing the piercing.

While it seemed like a long time to endure a needle slowing moving in my flesh the end result could not have been more perfect. I had hit both my marks exactly where they were placed. I followed the needle with a fourteen gauge stainless steel curved barbell that fit quite well inside the twelve gauge needle and made insertion very easy. There was no blood during the procedure, but I woke up with some blood on the barbell in the morning.

There is a down side to all of this. I hit my marks perfectly, but my marks had been off. If I look down, the piercing appears straight to me, but when looking in the mirror the piercing is about a half millimeter off to the right. While I had hoped it was just a little off because of swelling, it turns out that the piercing is a little off. It's disappointing, but it's something that I can easily live with.

There is another problem, maybe. The piercing is as deep as it can be for the barbell I chose, there is no barbell showing and if I had gone any deeper there would be pressure from either end. But that may not be deep enough. If I run my finger across the flesh between the beads I can feel the barbell, not a lot, but enough for me to notice. It will take quite awhile before I can say if it's going to reject. And if it does, then so be it. I can always re-pierce it behind the scar tissue using a longer barbell and maybe at a larger gauge.

Over all I am very happy with the results and I will probably continue to self-pierce. I love the way the top bead sits inside my navel, but I seem to keep bumping the bottom bead, I may change it to a flat disc in order to prevent that. It didn't hurt as much as I would have expected it to, considering the amount of time I took to pierce it. As far as recommending it goes, piercing your lower navel, I don't know if I would recommend piercing it yourself. It hurt quite a bit and it was in a very awkward place to use clamps. Please only pierce yourself if you know how to keep everything sterile and have a relative idea of what you are doing, but as long as you're safe then I see no problem with the act of self-piercing.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me.