Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

I’ve always been fas­cin­ated by body modi­fic­a­tions ever since I can remember.

Since being dia­gnosed with Cereb­ral Palsy at just 18 months old, I have had a long, intense and endur­ing rela­tion­ship with the concept of using sharp imple­ments and a pleth­ora of metal to “modify” my body. Be it through drastic ortho­paedic sur­gery with parts of my body being broken, recon­figured and held together with titanium brack­ets or cart­ing about heavy, steel crutches, walking/standing frames and rolat­ors; metal has always been a key part of what it meant to have this body.

The image on the right? It is a scan of the plastic con­tainer that I was allowed to take home after my final stay at London’s renowned Great Ormond Street Children’s Hos­pital. That metal lived with me, in me (hold­ing my femur together) and was part of my body for two years. For two years, every time I rolled over onto my right side whilst in bed, I would feel the metal in my leg “dig­ging in” to me. Not in a way that hurt, it never hurt. It was just ever-present. A con­stant, reas­sur­ing reminder that not only was I “not alone” (I had my metal to keep me com­pany), but that my leg wasn’t going to be prone to fall­ing off any time soon. Which is always a plus.

I got quite attached to my metal (in more ways than one, if you look closely at that pic­ture you can see parts of my insides still lodged in the metal that hadn’t totally rot­ted off yet). I was upset that my sur­geon insisted on remov­ing it, not least because it meant more sur­gery, more rehab­il­it­a­tion and the reopen­ing of a not-unimpressive 8 inch scar that hadn’t even had chance to go from purple to red yet. The metal was mine, part of my body, why couldn’t I get to keep it? The con­tainer was, I sup­pose, some sort of com­prom­ise. It sits proudly dis­played on my shelf: my war medal to com­pensate for my now sil­ver­ing battle scars. But, there’s still no way of get­ting away from the fact that it feels as though I may as well have my toe in a plastic con­tainer on my shelf. Part of me has been removed and now every time I roll over onto my right side, there’s no “dig­ging in”, just 9 years of empty noth­ing­ness. And the tense, child-like expect­a­tion that my leg will immin­ently fall off.

My ‘research’ into more non-medical forms of modi­fic­a­tion began in sec­ond­ary school when I did a GCSE pro­ject on Body Art. Per­form­ance artist Leigh Bowery, ritu­al­istic scar­i­fic­a­tion, the his­tory of tat­toos and pier­cing were my inspir­a­tion. Modi­fic­a­tions that were inten­tional, spir­itual, cul­tural, col­our­ful, beau­ti­ful. Later, when study­ing for my Pho­to­graphy A Level, I con­tin­ued in this vein until my train of thought ended up return­ing to my med­ical “roots”: deform­ity, birth defects, limb defi­cits, sur­gical scar­ring. Unin­ten­tional, emo­tional, clin­ical, ugly.

My scars are some­thing I used to want to hide. Pho­to­graph­ing them made me see them in a more pos­it­ive light: they finally had a func­tion — and it wasn’t to mar me or make me look ugly. In fact, the fur­ther my pro­ject went and the more pho­tos I took, I actu­ally began to feel dis­ap­poin­ted at their mediocrity. I wished they were big­ger, more prom­in­ent, darker and not the neat sil­ver scores or mod­estly plump, puckered, hyper­trophic lumps — if only so they’d make for bet­ter pictures.

For a while, the pro­ject died with my A level course, but I’ve found that the more I’ve got­ten back “into” pho­to­graphy, the more these same themes have reared their heads and just won’t leave me alone. And so, I’ve found myself being thrown back into the cul­ture of body mods, as a res­ult of my research, and have begun crav­ing (again) for mods of my own. Whilst voluntary/“decorative” scar­i­fic­a­tion isn’t some­thing I would con­sider as a viable option (my con­di­tion means that I suf­fer with hyper­sens­it­iv­ity, have prob­lems heal­ing and am vul­ner­able to infec­tion), I have decided to (re)start my own mod­ding jour­ney; using pier­cing as my vice.

My past pier­cing exper­i­ences included get­ting my ear lobes gunned at the age of 8 whilst sat in a grubby desk chair down the tam­pon aisle of my local chem­ist. Fun­nily enough, that escapade ended in infec­tion, hyper­trophic scar­ring and me hav­ing to remove and retire the pier­cing in my left ear for about, oh, 16 years? Since that rather ill-advised adven­ture, I made a point of mak­ing more informed and edu­cated choices when it came to fur­ther pier­cings. My nos­tril pier­cing came some years later (when I was 16). It was gunned (again, I know — poor choice on my part — I chickened-out on the needle-front) at my local pier­cing stu­dio and home-stretched when I was about 19 using pina colada-flavoured lube and brute force. Rock on.

Last week, I was pierced again. This time, it was the first of a pos­sible 10 (or more) that will cul­min­ate to form my Ear Project(s) and was my first “proper”, free­hand, needle-piercing (cour­tesy of the lovely Mark at my local pier­cing stu­dio). Hav­ing suc­cess­fully stretched the sur­viv­ing “chemist-adventure” hole in my right ear from 0.8mm to 2.5mm using patience, warm mas­sage and sur­gical steel tapers, I craved new pier­cings to stretch. And, because I had gained a new con­fid­ence off the back of my suc­cess, I wanted all my sub­sequent pier­cings to be done prop­erly with future pro­gres­sion and stretch­ing in mind. Stretch­ing has been a very pos­it­ive, pleas­ur­able exper­i­ence and one I’d like to repeat; although I’m keen not to deform or elong­ate the nat­ural line of my lobe or stretch to a point that I can’t eas­ily hide, shrink or retire my pier­cings at a later date, should I need to/want to.

As a res­ult, the plan is to go for mul­tiple “baby” stretches and opposed to big, dangly, swinging, tri­bal ears. I relayed this all to Mark and we agreed on two new holes (one in each lobe) pierced at the slightly lar­ger gauge of 1.6mm (primed for stretch­ing), with the new hole in my right ear being spaced adequately to accom­mod­ate my cur­rent and planned stretches/expansion. Mark is a fel­low “stretcher” (who com­pli­men­ted me on my nice, slow, even stretch and my Steel Enigma Spiral) and we traded stor­ies, exper­i­ences and enthused about stretch­ing, how addict­ive it is and jewellery/gauge envy. (He’s cur­rently at 10mm, but the cus­tom flesh tun­nels he’s ordered have pushed him to go big­ger still.) He made me feel totally at ease, and pierced me free-hand with no drama get­ting the barbell(s) in at all.

It was such a com­fort­able (and enjoy­able) pier­cing exper­i­ence. These lobe pier­cings have been the com­plete oppos­ite com­pared to my chem­ist “gun­ning” exper­i­ence: When my ears were gunned, they were for­cibly punc­tured with a blunt object, they were hot, burn­ing, pound­ing in pain and viol­ently pinched by butterfly-backs in a way that made me want to cry. This time, my ears were pierced, cleanly with a sharp hol­low needle; no pain as such — just a warm, “thin”, almost “high-pitched” sen­sa­tion — that’s the only way I can describe it. To me, the sen­sa­tion of my lobes being pierced with a needle is near-identical to the sen­sa­tion of stretch­ing a lobe piercing.

And it didn’t make me want to cry, it made me want to have it done again. And again.

I think this is the begin­ning of a new phase in my body’s rela­tion­ship with metal mod­i­fi­ers and I’m excited about the pos­it­iv­ity it brings.