My Summer Vacation in Berkeley, part III

New Jewelry

I still can’t quite talk about anything important. So I want to thank, in a search-able manner (well on blogspot, if not flickr), Eldo Chan at Body Manipulations for AMAZING service.

I got my lip pierced when I was 21 or 22, and within a month it swelled up to a bizarre, frightening, amount. Infection, I’m sure. A girl at work told me that this was just part of living with piercings; hers got infected every once and a while, no matter how well she took care of them. I was shocked. This was not what I’d signed up for. I had been prepared to suffer for neglect. If I messed up, sure, I’d get infections. But if I did everything right, I still had to go through this?

They sent me home from work (no one wants to buy cameras from a girl with an open, infected, wound in her lip), and I took the damn thing out, smothered it with Neoprene, and resolved to end my piercing career.

Since then, I have always been nostalgic for my month of jewelry. I’ve thought about how much I liked it, but those thoughts always ended with yeah, it’s too bad I can’t have one. But when I told the story to a friend this summer, he said I’d been misinformed. I must have done something wrong, and if I’d done something wrong before, that means I could do it right the next time. There could be a next time.

So I thought I’d ask a friend for recommendations for body piercing in San Francisco. It seemed like a good souvenir to bring back to the Midwest. He said he’d heard very good things about Body Manipulations, so I looked them up.

It turns out that the place that pierced me before neglected to tell me nearly everything I needed to know about the care and feeding of my new jewelry. They’d told me to rinse with mouthwash after eating or smoking, sure. And I’m sure they told me to clean the ring twice a day. But they didn’t mention avoiding alcohol (in cleaner, mouthwash, even in drinks), they didn’t mention sea salt soaks, they didn’t tell me not to spend all night making out with Yuri. These things might seem obvious, but I often need the obvious spelled out. So I not only did something wrong the first time, I’d done everything wrong. This was great! This meant I could do it right this time.

I was still anxious, though, when it came time to actually get it done. I was obviously a beginner. I was nervous, unsure, out of my element. Eldo was kind, friendly, and confident. He gave me all the hand-holding I wanted. He walked me through the procedure, showed me all the safety precautions. And not only did he give me much more detailed after-care instructions then the last place, he explained them all. He explained why I was going to get crusty deposits on the ring, he explained what happens when someone else’s saliva gets on the pierced area, he explained the effects of alcohol, dehydration, airplane travel. When I told him I was leaving town almost immediately, he got me a reference for a colleague in Iowa City he recommended.

Eldo Chan, at Body Manipulations in San Francisco. I can not praise him enough.