Piercing and Body Art

by RipSlider

Just a quick point to start. Since June 2001, all INITIAL piercing in the Europian Union must now conform to the EU Nickel Content Directive. This means that most piercings (see note) must be made with very low nickel content jewlerry. This has the consequence that virtually all Surgical steel ( with exception of Wildcat's IMPLANTIUM) , should now not be used for first piercings. Most piercers still use it, but all are aware of the Nickel Directive. This means piercings should now be made with NIOBIUM or TITAINIUM. Piercings excluded from this directive are EARLOBES and NOSES , side walls only.

My first piercing was a rather extreme choice. I went directly for a Prince Albert. Before this, I'd never been pierced, but I liked the idea of it. When I got a summer job in a large insurance office for the summer, I found that there were a number of people, including my boss, Mandy, who had a lot. Mandy, when i joined, had 21, but they were discreet, mostly ear work, a labret, and the rest she wore under clothes.

We talked a lot about piercings and tatoos, which I had, but she didn't. As I was half way through a year long, part time, military selection course my options were very limited, but in the end I went for the PA.

A friend of hers, John, had recently opened up a shop in town. There were three piecer/tatooists already in town, but I went to John becuase of his reputation. As a director of the European Piercers Guild, and having done many Uk "firsts" ( first UK Spinal, First UK leg pockets etc) I felt that he was a guy I could trust an important part of my body to. The fact he'd been shown in Savage 3 times also gave me a lot of confidence.

He was very cool about the whole thing, from our first discussions about it, where he first discussed the PA and Reverse PA with me for about an hour, to me actually dropping my pants in front of a guy wearing rubber gloves. I thought I'd be scared, and I was up until I walked into the piercing room, but then it was so proffesional, it was done before I got stressed.

He measured me first, and then re-checked his measures three times before he was happy. He then used an anistetic paste inside and outside my urethra and let that take effect for about 5 minutes.

A hollow recieving tube was then slide down my uretra and a 2.6mm hypodemic needle was used for the piercing, with a Surgical Steel 2.4x22mm ring used as the jewelrry. An extra large ball was used to stop it slideing down the urethra.

I had expected a lot of pain, and to be fair, the initial pirecing did stab like crazy when it went through, but after that there was little if any at all. the only uncomfort came in the first week when I got erections. This though is a personal thing, some people find it pretty painful for the first couple of weeks.

Cleaning was easy, just salt water, but the PA is a very low maintainance piercing. A persons urine is sterile to them, so its virtually self cleaning.

The only problem occured in the second month, when the piercing and the skin in contact with the metal started to become very sore, and the hole increased in size. This is whats know as Backwards Rejection, and can happen to any piercing, becuase of the wieght of the jewrelly. A change to a titanium BCR meant that the problem had sorted itself out competly inside a week.