First Play Piercing

Okay, I've promised this post for too long. And here it is, an entertaining story with an important lesson at the end.

I had the opportunity to attend my first BDSM convention about 6 months ago and I learned so much there and had an absolute blast. Due to a combination of lack of funding, nervousness, and work schedules, I opted to attend a single day of the 3 day long convention. And I knew about a dozen other people headed to the event from the local community so I was all prepared to let my inner perv roam free for 24 hours.

The night before hand I was like a kid on Christmas Eve. I was saying "We seriously need to sleep. Okay, time to close the eyes, starting.....now. Okay, Now. Damn it, I have to get some sleep". That was pretty much our 3+hour inner monologue while I lay in bed at my parents house, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. I last saw a clock at 4:15am and I woke up at 6am. So yeah, we were not sleeping very well or very much. I got dressed and made myself look as pretty as possible and then headed off in my car. I also decided to skip breakfast and just drink Diet Coca Cola.

More than 2 hours of driving later I arrived at the hotel with 4 empty Diet Coca Cola cans sitting in various places of the car. Yeah, it was about 9am and already I had consumed 4 cans of soda and nothing else. Not the smartest idea, but it seemed to be working for me. I arrived and immediately registered, found some people I knew and then started chain smoking. Again, not the smartest idea, but it seemed to be working. See I was chain smoking because I was nervous as I could possibly be, surrounded by all these big, bad, scary SM people.

Several members of our group had decided to attend a play piercing workshop together and I decided to join them because I had recently felt an interest in play piercing bloom. This also happened to be the first workshop of my first BDSM convention. Well, the workshop was very well presented. The demo at the end was exciting and intriguing. The presenter was fabulous and very well versed in his art. After the class he said anyone wanting to try a few play piercings could come up and get jabbed a few times. Naturally, I went up the the front to have a few needles put in me.

Now, the first hour of this two hour workshop was devoted to safety. And of the safety section, the first part of that was devoted to being in the right space to be pierced. One of the first things he said was "Don't do this if you're tired. Don't do this if you're in a bad headspace or extraordinarily nervous. Don't do this unless you've had something to eat. This is serious stuff and if you don't prepare yourself physically and mentally then things are going to end badly. Be prepared to stop a piercing scene if you start loosing it, start feeling very out of it, or get into a bad headspace".

Good advice, right? Yes, definitely. If you think I was bright enough to listen, you obviously haven't been paying attention. I said to myself "Look, I'm freaking Jake Bullet, man. I've given blood. I've had my ears pierced many times. I can handle this. I'm a big boy and I can get away with ignoring the advice of a proven expert." How do you think that turned out? ::evil grin::

Well, I nicely asked to be poked and he nicely agreed to poke my arm a few times. And I sat down in a chair, put my arm up on the bondage table, took a deep breath and watched him prepare. As I was watching him prepare, all of the people from my group in the audience stayed behind to watch and offer moral support. And I started subtly freaking out I watched him glove up, clean my arm, prep needles and generally prepare. And by subtle freaking out, I mean I started entering a bad headspace from the get go. Here's how it went down:

In goes one needle. Everything seems fine.
"How are we doing?" he asks
"Great, great, that felt kind of cool" Jake Bullet replies in a slightly nervous, but relatively collected voice. I have enjoyed the first needle.
"Okay, here comes the second one, just breathe" In goes another needle "How's that? Still alright?"
In a spacey, altered, distant voice "Oh yeah, I'm great" Add in a stupid grin here. I'm also feel pretty out of it at this point, but I want another one and don't want to wimp out.
"Okay" prepping a third needle "You ready for one more?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm good" I'm gently swaying in the chair now.
Brief pause as a needle enters the sharps box, not me. "No, no you're not. You're white as a sheet and you look like your going into shock." Out come the two needles. "Come on, lets lie you down on the floor. Can someone go get me some juice?". He starts to move me onto the floor.

At this point, I simply want to die. You can just kill me now. Infront of all my perv friends, I have just embarrassed the shit out of myself. I wanted to curl up and sink into the floor. Back to the story.

"No, no, I'm fine, I swear, I don't need to lay down, I'm fine, please"
He lets out a very firm "Domly look" and he says in one of those Domly voices "Yes, you do, you're about to go into shock, now lie down now"
I lay down on the floor where he indicated and just cover my face because I am so overcome by shame, he proceeds to take my pulse, obtain juice for me and gently tries to reassure me and bring me back to a more normal frame of reality. Finely 10 minutes later, after several attempts by me to get up and being firmly told no each time, I'm deemed back to normal (relative term) and allowed to get up.

The pericer and I talk and I sheepishly admit that I really hadn't slept, eaten or been in any semblance of a good space when I walked in the door. He sort of clucks his tongue and tells me this is why you're supposed to follow directions. We later talk more and discuss more how that could have played out better. We part ways with me sheepishly running to the smokers lounge to hide and enjoy a little relaxation. Hiding didn't work since two of my friends joined me in there. While I am mortified with myself, my friends generally say "Well, did you learn to listen? You did? Great, We've all had bad scenes or demos take place and yeah its embarrassing but no big deal". I did learn some very important things, in addition to lots of cool information on needles. Here is what I learned:

-When a BDSM expert says "Don't do that" they always mean it.
-In BDSM, rules exist for reasons and are generally best followed.
-No one, not even me, gets to take safety rules/advice for granted.
-Being in a good headspace is very important to having a good time.

Now, I found out at Shibaricon, where I attended a very similar workshop by the same piercer, that he now shares that story when he teaches these classes. But we both smiled about it and he was the one who for real pierced my right nipple. I may be asking him in the near future if we can do a real play piercing scene at Kinky Kollege.

Anyway, time for me to try to sleep again. Enjoy, and please feel free to comment or make suggestions for posts.

Jake Bullet