Almost exactly nine months ago I made a spontaneous decision. This is rare for me. I like to research, I like to Google something until all the links are purple from me visiting them. I’ll ask other people about things, I’ll read books on it, I’ll run through scenarios in my head for days before an event happens to try to think of all the possible outcomes and reactions. It makes me indecisive but it’s my process and it keeps me from freaking out. Very rarely do I do something without agonizing about it first, and much less often does it involved sticking needles in my face.

Nine months ago my friends wanted to get their Tragus(s?) pierced. There was a tattoo shop nearby that does “Twenty Dollar Tuesdays” meaning that almost any piercing was only twenty dollars. I didn’t know a lot about piercing prices, but I figured this was a bargain. At first I was only going for moral support, but as the day grew closer the peer pressure started as it often does with these two and it occurred to me it had been over 3 years since I’d had something pierced. Since age 8 I’ve gone by an unconscious schedule of not going more than 4 years without something new. So I went to my trusty interwebs to see what my newest ear ache would be.

Up until the day before I stepped foot in the place I was going to get my anti-tragus pierced. However the more I looked at it, the more I worried about wearing headphones, wearing earrings in my lobes, and Jesus that was a lot of cartilage.

 

So I went looking for something else, something different, and I found it. The snug is officially called an anti-helix piercing because that’s the name of the ridge that sticks up in the middle of your ear. Some people should never attempt this piercing, because their ridge isn’t defined enough for the jewelry to go through. Honestly, nobody should attempt this piercing, but I’ll get to that. I did do that much research, and I decided I had an okay ridge, and with multiple tabs still open and unexplored, I went downstairs and got in the car to meet my friends and seal my fate.

My first clue should have been that it wasn’t in the book. There was a whole book of piercings that had been done from Industrials to Nipple piercings but there were no snugs in there. The second should have been the looks the guy at the front desk gave me when I handed him my information. My friends went first, two college girls getting their tragus pierced on “Twenty Dollar Tuesday” must have been a regular occurrence, then came me.

“What are you getting?” He yelled over the overpowering house music booming through the small room.

“My snug.”

The eyebrow went up, and stayed there, but he took my papers and my money, which now made me nervous. Another guy came out from the back and asked me if he could take a picture of my piercing to put in the book, so I guess that’s something.

I won’t lie, I did hear one more thing about snug piercings, they hurt, terribly. I had never been pierced with a needle before so I had no idea what to expect. My other piercings had hurt, but not to an unbearable level, I definitely focused on them though, in a way my friends didn’t. We all got our Cartilages done, against our better judgment, at Claire’s when we were in high school and they continued to shop afterward, while I followed in a daze trying not to touch my burning ear. My friends went first, I watched one of them, the one that pierced her third holes with a pipe cleaner, and felt no better when she told me it wasn’t bad. 

I took everything in, what was on the trays, if he let them look at the placement or not, and what was being said. Doing this every week, all day, our piercer was a stoic guy who had no patience for anybody making a fuss while he was working. I know this would bother a lot of people, I could understand not wanting a bunch of people screaming in your ear while you’re trying to pierce someone, all I wanted was to get him talking. By the time he got to me, he was, he told me I couldn’t pick where I wanted mine because there was only a specific part of my ear that was “good” on both sides, and he was going to have to use a bigger gauge of jewelry on mine and a longer bar because he wasn’t sure if mine was going to swell or not. It’s funny, this kind of stuff makes a lot of people nervous, they don’t want to know the details, they just want it done, this was what put me at ease hearing phrases like “some snugs swell like crazy” and “I’m not going to clamp you because of the placement” that’s expert talk, that’s someone who knows the jargon and has seen some shit and they were going to take care of me. My friend later confessed that was the very moment she got nervous for me. He told me to take a deep breath, I did and on the exhale he stuck a 16g hollow needle through the outside of my ear. I flinched as an afterthought, and then felt stupid about it, it was pressure more than pain. I focus more on the “pop” for cartilage piercings and this was no different, the pain was like cracking a sore knuckle. Seconds later he had the jewelry in and I realized later how lucky I was as I watched dozens of videos on YouTube where they left the needle in for sometimes as long as twenty seconds before changing the jewelry, stopping to joke around with the client, fumbling around. This was nothing like that,  I sat back and pulled more from him about his piercing knowledge while he held a q-tip to my ear until it stopped bleeding. Another thing my friends told me I was being paranoid about and wouldn’t happen, and of course hadn’t happened to them. I was okay though, I had Googled it. He knew a lot about dermals and told me every ear was like a fingerprint, even my left ear was totally different from my right. As he was screwing the balls on the jewelry he leaned over me and suddenly said.

“And I am so sorry-“

And panic flooded me taking me out of my warm haze, wondering what happened, was I paralyzed, did he do it wrong, did-

“-if my breath is kicking, because I was just eating some pizza and I’m leaning right over you right now.”

Jesus Christ.

As I got up he told me it had a 50% chance of rejecting, like any piercing, but especially with these “weirder” ones. I thanked them, got my picture taken and left. Once we hit the January air my ear made itself known to me. It hasn’t stopped hurting since.

Getting it pierced was the least painful thing about having my snug. It hurt for three days straight unlike any pain I’ve ever felt from a piercing, it was like a toothache, constant and hot and throbbing. That gradually faded by degrees, however, I’ve yet to have a day where I’m not reminded it’s there.

Now before I start about my woes, let me just say, I love my snug, I love it. I also don’t give up on things, if I commit to something, I’m there. I knew going into it I wouldn’t take this piercing out, unless it started to reject or migrate all the way down my face or something. And now looking at that picture I have had to accept that it has migrated, but not badly, it is also lower than most snugs. I’m okay with that, I don’t think my ridge would have been thick enough up top to put it where it’s “supposed” to be.I knew vaguely that it would hurt, if I had known how much I never would have gotten it done. I also take care of the damn thing. I sprayed it twice a day for four months with the actual spray they give you at the tattoo shop (and they sell much bigger and cheaper cans of at Hot Topic). I stopped doing that because I was afraid to “over-clean” it. When it was particularly angry I would do a sea salt soak, I still do them. I don’t try to twist it, I don’t really touch it unless it’s stuck on something, and I clean it after every shower. What makes me angry is that I don’t even really have “the bumps.” If you’ve ever had a piercing you’ve probably encountered, “the bump” which is very different from a keloid.

It’s also interesting the amount of voluntary pain one is willing to put themselves through. I have completely altered a lot of my daily habits to make room for this pain. This is especially fascinating because I get migraines and have at the very least a low grade headache at least three days a week. Yet here I am, making the things attached to my head hurt more, and making me tense my neck, where my headaches localize, in anticipation of bumping it on something.

-I didn’t wear headphones in my right ear for 6 months

-I made a fort of pillows to “trap” myself from rolling over in my sleep for months

-I take twice as long to put on anything that goes over my head to keep it from touching my ear

-I no longer wear hoods, hats, or lean the phone against my ear

-I put off going to my hair dresser who has ripped my earrings out in the past

-I pull my hair out before putting it behind my ears so it doesn’t get caught

-I have an entirely new routine for towel drying my hair

-It hurts to flex my ear, I’m sure most of you aren’t aware you can flex your ears

And maybe most importantly, I’ve changed the way I hug people. People tend to smush the side of their face against your face when they hug you. This is dizzyingly painful for me still. For a while I tried going in from the left, but people don’t do that, it’s like trying to shake with your left hand. Now I just yank my head way out to the side while I hug. I also flinch when hands get near my face, I don’t trust them, and they don’t notice the giant hunk of metal sticking out of my ear. I appreciate the long bar, but mine never swelled so I have a lot of jewelry that just sort of hangs, I also still have lymph, which means the bar is getting crusted in a specific place so if I put my head down and it scabbed over, I’m jolting it through all that and getting all kinds of gunk “in” the actual piercing. The worst part is that this is normal. This is what a snug piercing does. I was wrong about the anti-tragus, THIS is one of the thickest areas of cartilage, which means it gets very little blood-flow, which means it heals very slowly. Average healing times for snug piercings are a year, I’m okay with this, not as okay with this as I was 3 months ago, but I can deal. My fear is that I’m going to get to the end of January and get really angry because my snug hasn’t magically decided to stop being sore and oozing for no reason.

Alright so in closing, I love snug piercings, they’re awesome looking, they’re unique, I’m glad I got mine done. I guess you could call this a body project, my snug and I. I’ve learned a lot about myself and the way I move in the world, I’ve also gained a major appreciation for other types of piercings. And just when I’m really getting fed up I’ll get a random compliment on it, or turn my head and horrify someone as they realize that it goes all the way through my ear. Both are satisfying.  Now would I recommend them to anyone? Hell no. Don’t do that to yourself.

 “snug angry!”