Another spike of metal pulled out of my face. Another bright steam of blood stripes my cheek. I watch until the blood floods my eye, and then wait blind and hungry for the next one to go in.
I do this to myself. And I’ll do it again.
I’m not a self-harmer. I don’t do this because I deserve it, because I’m a bad person, because it gives me something to focus on or even because I’m bored. I do it because I like it and it makes me feel good. Because it makes me feel brave and strong. Because it’s cheaper than drugs and less complicated than sex.
So every couple of weeks, I go visit a friend of mine with a split tongue and William Morris floral patterns carved into his arms. He puts on latex gloves and swabs my skin with alcohol (infections ain’t so much fun), and slides needle after needle into my flesh.
The skin is just as receptive to touch and stimulation underneath as it is on top: more so, in fact, because the cells under the skin are still living. The skin you usually see, that your lover runs their hands across, is already dead. The needle under the skin pierces through to new skin and new sensation. It feels like nothing else to access the space inside. Sure, there’s penetration and endorphin flood in common with sex, but it’s the higher brain functions and not the animal libido calling the shots.
And sure it hurts when it breaks the skin, but not so much as you probably think. Pain comes from the mind – a thousand placebo trials, fire-walkers, fakirs and mothers lifting cars to free their children show us that. A 22 gauge needle is 0.8mm wide and barely feels like anything; a sting, a flick on the forearm, and it’s over. Further up though, extra-long 20 gauge, 100mm by 1mm, requires an effort of will not to spasm away. I stay to see what I can take. To push myself.
Wearing rows of them in my many fleshy places, raised ribs of steel are faintly visible under my sun-deprived skin. Raised still more with other needles woven under the first. Still more when that playfully sadistic bastard twists them, eases them in and out, and laughs with me as I squirm and whimper. Long needles interpenetrating my skin more than once; needles laced to needles, flesh corseting flesh.
More delicate regions like the face and genitals require more care. There’s more wiring under there. More muscles to impede, more blood vessels to puncture, more nerves to hit; but still less than you’ve probably been led to believe. The body is a wonderful machine but in the end it is a machine; if it was that temperamental it wouldn’t last as long as it has, would it?
Rows of needles through the forehead distort the face closer to the last ice age. The sharp points assimilate into my field of view like just another row of eyelashes, though the tension and restriction of the facial muscles make it harder to forget them. When they come out, they come out as easy as butter; almost too easy. The only way to know they were ever there is sudden warmth and the perfect red stripes. Two hours later, just some small red dots.
You can pierce your cheeks, have a mouth that you can’t shut because it’s full of needles, can’t open enough to talk. Breathe hard and air escapes through your cheeks with a sound like a puncture. Then they slide out so neatly, so sweetly, and a mouthful of blood later your mouth is airtight again. Two hours later, you wouldn’t know it’s not acne scars.
The body can take it. You can take it. Despite what religion, law, and primitive instinct say, you own your body. Who else could?
The pain is just your body saying ‘You’re not dead yet. So live.’ And I’m just getting started.
