The fear I get when stepping into a piercing parlor is second to none. I walk up to the door, terrified, feeling the bile rise in my throat and the trying to keep the feelings of foreboding at bay. And, in all honesty, my mind isn't made up until I'm sitting on the table with a needle through my flesh--when there is no going back. So needless to say when I decided to add another piercing to my collection I was, once again, faced with this insatiable feeling. What made this event all the more scary was the fact that the piercing parlor was German.
Being faced with my constantly changing mind as well as a language barrier (which I've been steadily working on) made what should have been a simple outing into something equivalent to walking on a tightrope above a lake of alligators. Terror is the only word to describe my state of being at the time.
By the time I was called in I don't think I could even utter a sentence in English, let alone running through the process of formulating a German one. All communication at that point on my end was head nods and smiles. My piercer clipped the clamps against my skin, flattening the curve of my ear. Then he proceeded to spray this icy liquid on my ear (something which we should start doing in the US) and the next thing I know there were four punctures in my cartilage with a bar running the length of the top of my ear.
I wasn't off the hook yet, because as I murmured a "Danke" to the septum-pierced man, he turned on me. Cornered I wanted to escape, but there was no where to go. What followed was a long winded lecture on speaking German more in public, to which I answered that I would try. I promised that I would try more. Seemingly satiated by my answer he let me out of the room, extracting another promise to return and visit him, speaking only German.
Despite the trepidation I felt throughout the two hour excursion, I am now the proud owner of an industrial piercing from a German piercing parlor.
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