A Man Called Horse-

I started messing with body modification when I was just a little pup.
One morning (when I was in elementary school,) I was really upset about something. I took a needle from my mother sewing box and sat there, seeing how far under the skin I could sink the needles. Whenever everything seemed dark, I would go through this ritual. After a while I started using thread, I loved the feeling of pulling the thread really deep into my finger tips, then spreading my hand and watching as the thread slipped around under my skin. 

When I was around 8, my Mother took me to the film “A Man Called Horse” which had a huge impact on me. I can still see clearly, in my head, Richard Harris being strung up by bear claws pierced through his chest.  It stirred something deep inside me. When I got home from the movie, I went down into the furnace room (the place always scared me deep in my stomach,) and stuck some pins thru my nipples. I left them in for a long time. I did all this very secretly, somehow knowing that no one would understand the ritual.

By the time I was fourteen or fifteen I bought my first coffin.  I would lay at night in the velvet lined box up in the attic, take sewing needles and slowly pierce my nipples or dick. This ritual made me feel calm, centered and in control of myself. By then I was sure that this was not the stuff that you talked to anyone about.

I started going to this leather bar (the Interchange,) when I was 16 or 17.  One night I saw this hot guy thumbtack his nuts to the benches they had there. It was that act that bound me forever to piercing mixed with sex (and I finally knew that some other folks also liked piercing.)

The first time that I saw a nipple ring, I was laid out in a hospital bed (my appendix having exploded sometime earlier.) My new roommate was getting a spinal tap (by my soon to be doctor,) he turned over towards me and I could see a large gold ring through his tit.  I had to have one.

In “82”, Ed and I were living in Chicago and I was really feeling really shitty about myself (because I couldn't find a job.) Ed came home early and found me in my art studio shoving a large triangular sailing needle through my big thick nipples. He was the first person to ever see me piercing myself. Later, he bought me a hoop earring that I eventually sharpened and stuck through my nipple. I was flying high on the endorphins and felt calm and in touch with the cosmos for days afterwards.

The first time I did a (piercing that wasn’t an ear,) was on Michael. He had this big ass gauntlet, 10 gauge piercing needle (looked like a coke straw,) and wanted the piercing to mark this new thing called AIDS that he had just been told that he had. I read up on technique and how to pierce in P.F.I.Q. (a piercing magazine by Gauntlet and Jim Ward.) The night of the piercing we were stoned on mushrooms and I did the piercing in his kitchen. Michael’s rings were the first that I had to take out of a friend’s corpse, keeping them in my death box.

Soon I was piercing many leather and queer folk. In the late 80’s I met a cool tattooist (Mad Jack Kaplan,) who started doing most of my ink (he did the boot prints on my back; they are the bottoms of his boots that we copied.)

At “Living in Leather,” one year, I met Jim Ward and Fakir (heroes of mine.). Jim really put me at ease and he did my PA and Guiche.  Later during the convention, Ed had chains welded around my wrists, neck and ankles; I kept them on for many years after.

About this time I met my favorite piercing client Karen. She came in one day to get her labia done and we really hit it off. The piercing that I am most proud of on her we called the daisy, It was 5 or 6 rings that encircled her nipple creating flower peddles. One winter she got it in her head that she wanted the web between her little toe and the next toe pierced; fuck, she screamed and kicked me for the first time during a piercing. She is some gal!

By the mid “90’s” I had done thousands of piercing's. By then piercing had become a huge fad and I was really sick of giggling girls coming to get their navels done. I got so irritated that I closed up shop and now only pierce folks that I find really interesting or hot. Do you fit the bill?

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