Home Piercing Kits = Bad Idea
Back when I were a littler nipper, I was enjoying my first year at Exeter Uni reading Mechanical Engineering. There were four budding engineers out of 16 or so in the flat block we were in and we soon got a reputation as being the guys who were able to fix things.

The fact we were usually the ones breaking them in the first place was by the by.

Anyway, students being students, much beer was consumed each weekend, and evening, and the days rolled happily by. One guy below me, Pete, had a few piercings that he had had done over the years and was always looking for new things to do. One fateful day he came back with a DIY piercing kit.

For the unknowing, this consists of a needle like a fugging drainpipe about 3 inches long, a threaded bar, and the stud itself. The instructions say to screw the threaded bar into the back of the needle, pierce whatever part is needing a hole in it, unscrew the needle leaving the threaded bit sticking though and then attach the stud to complete the job. Simple!

10pm comes and goes when my door fair comes off its hinges with someone giving it some abuse. I open the door and come face to face with something like a scene from SAW. Pete is standing there, pale faced with blood covering his chin and dripping over his t shirt with this huge sipke of metal stuck through his face and mumbling gibberish at me.

His room mate, Little Will translated. It turned out he had got to the stick the needle through your face bit and was all set to attach the stud when he got a case of the spazhands and dropped the stud down the sink hole and could I find the time to help find it.

Well a friend in need is a friend indeed, or something. Anyways, down we go to Pete's room following the trail of spots like a demented Hanzel and Gretel. Look at the back of the sink and try to contain vom from rising in back of throat.

The sink was not in a pretty state back there. I'm not sure it had ever been seriously cleaned since man first walked upright and if that was the state on the outside, the inside of the pipes didn't seem promising. Still, with a twist and a squelch, the U-bend came off eventually and was upended on the floor to find the errant Stud.

It was like prodding in a road killed hobos brain matter. Just a mass of grey tangled hair and dead matter stinking to high heaven and my state of mind was not helped by Pete leaning over to see what I was doing and dripping blood into the mix either. A few seconds, (hours?), and the stud came loose like a mini excaliber from a nightmare.

Great! cries Pete, or at least I think that's what he said, before grabbing the stud and trying to screw it back onto the thread now sticking from his lip as he had removed the needle while I was plumbing. Little Will, showing great presence of mind grabs Petes hand before he earned himself a dose of septacemia and informs him that it might be an idea to sterilise it first.

Good point mumbles the bloody one before turning the tap on, thus soaking the floor as the U-bend was missing, wiping off the worst of the grut and then using a set of tweesers, sticking it in a lighter flame to sterilise it before trying to screw the now red hot and still horribly grimy stud onto his face.

How he managed to avoid any sort of poisoning I will never know but it remains one of the clearest memories of my time there.

Pete, we salute you!

Length? About three inches before started leaking out of his mouth.
(71 hour Ahmed wasn't working at, Tue 25 Jan 2011, 21:47, Reply)