Finita, la commedia

I was greatly saddened to learn of the death, over the weekend, of someone I greatly admired and respected - Shannon Larratt, founder of BME.  Coincidentally, it's almost exactly three years ago that I started off this blog with a short entry outlining some of the background to my involvement with BME and although I haven't been a contributor there since that time, I look back on those eleven years with nostalgic affection.

I was fortunate enough to have met Shannon in person one time when he visited the UK, and although I can't say we were close friends or anything, I flatter myself to think that he used to value my contributions to the site.  His encyclopaedic knowledge of Body Modification was equalled only by his ability to express it in a way which was always informative, interesting and captivating.  It's typical of him, I think, that he managed to write his own obituary so very eloquently: goodness alone knows how long it must've taken him to do it, wracked with the constant pain of such an increasingly degenerative condition.

I don't have any hesitation in saying that had it not been for his inspiration I'd never have become involved in the world of Body Modification to the extent that I did, and for that I owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude.

Requiescat in pace.

A year in the life.....

It's a year (plus a few days, but who's counting?) since I started writing this blog. So today I re-read my final entry on my BME/IAM page, which was more or less the catalyst for starting this one. I still have my tattoos and my piercings, and I'm proud of them. They're part of what I am and I wouldn't have missed the experience of being part of that special community for the world: I'm not sure I can properly describe the part it all played in my development as a person.

But a year later, I look back - with affection - and I move on. I don't want to go back and re-involve myself in it, any more than I want to go back and re-live any other aspect of my childhood or adult life. I take the things I learned, the things I enjoyed, the memories I have... and I treasure them. I say goodbye to the friends I left behind, some of whom had already moved on and found different directions in their lives even before I did. New members have already taken their place, and mine too. I wish them, and the site, well: if they're half as happy belonging to the community as I was, then their lives will be fuller and richer for it.

Boo-hoo, I lost my ball!

I made an unwelcome discovery on Monday: a ring glistening up at me from the bath! I knew straightaway that I'd lost a piercing, and also that I wasn't sure which one. It turned out to be my cartilage ring. The ball at some point must have worked loose or been caught on something, and - free to rotate - the ring had simply fallen out. I guessed it had happened some time over the weekend, and therefore there was still a chance of saving the piercing: I'd had it about eight years, and it had been a fairly painful, troublesome one to heal, so I didn't really want to lose it!

So on Tuesday morning I gathered up my free Centro travelpass and took the train into Birmingham. I headed straight over to Modern Body Art, fully prepared to have to go through the hassle of having it re-pierced or at least tapered open again. But no worries: a very friendly piercer (whose name I forgot to ask) sat me down on a bench, reinserted the ring without so much as a twinge of pain and secured it with a new ball in a matter of a couple of minutes.

Since I was wearing a sleeveless top, he spotted my BME tattoos, and we exchanged notes about how sadly the site had declined of late. Since I "left" almost two months ago towards the end of March, I've visited occasionally, but I'm afraid I've seen nothing to tempt me back. Shame, really, especially considering what it once was, but nothing lasts forever.

What price privacy?

I had my attention drawn over the weekend to this news article concerning an allegedly illegal surgical procedure carried out in what appeared to be a piercing/tattoo studio. One of the questions it raised in my mind straightaway was who the anonymous 'mole' was, and the same question has since stirred up something of a hornets' nest, as only a small handful of people would have had access to the original videotape.

Over the course of the last eleven years I've had somewhere in the region of a couple of dozen genital piercings performed, a few of which of which I still have, and because I had many of them done in the company of like-minded friends, I had pictures taken of them, and submitted them to BME. All except one I think are disembodied shots of male anatomy which could belong to anyone, but on one memorable occasion after I had a guiche done, the piercer grabbed the camera and took a shot of me with a huge grin on my face displaying his handiwork! I'm not going to re-post it here. Not because I'm ashamed of it, I'm not. Nor because it depicts anything illegal, it doesn't. It's simply that, taken out of context, at best it's just going to titillate and at worst possibly shock the unsuspecting viewer.

This brings me to my main concern. Whenever I've been photographed doing something incriminating - be it just potentially embarrassing (say if my employer had discovered it), or actually illegal (and I don't think there is anything that falls into that category) - I've taken a risk. In my case the risks were fairly minimal, but they're there all the same. My privacy, in terms of who can see what I get up to, is important to me and while whatever is posted on the Internet is always liable to be illicitly downloaded, copied and circulated for a purpose other than that for which it was intended, the principle of safeguarding hidden identity should be both paramount and sacrosanct.

Now... where was I?

Ah, I know... BME!

I remember back in 1999: I'd written a nipple piercing experience, taking care to omit anything that could possibly identify me, or give any sort of clue as to who I was. I submitted it for publication and I remember too the agonies of self-doubt I went through during the ten days while I waited to see if it had been accepted, wondering endlessly if I'd done the right thing. I had. During the eleven years that followed, as I became part of a thriving online community, I changed and developed in a way I'd never thought possible. I shed much of the shyness and timidity which had plagued me since my earliest boyhood, I lost my inhibitions, I grew in self-confidence and I enjoyed a decade of self-discovery. I shall treasure for the rest of my days the memories of all the happy hours I spent online (and occasionally in person) with some of the nicest people I've ever met.

Invevitably, though, nothing stays the same forever. I started to find that, bit by bit, many of the things I'd grown to know and love, and the people I'd become friends with, dwindled steadily until there was - sadly - little left of the enchantment or allure that I'd once felt so keenly. With a heavy heart and a tear or two in my eye, I decided it was time to cut the proverbial umbilical cord and call it a day.

But I've come too far to just retreat back into my shell as if none of it had ever happened. Back in November 2000 I'd started writing an online diary - the first diary of any description I'd ever kept. Steadily over the years, as my confidence grew and I started giving away more of my innermost thoughts, feelings and emotions, I found it almost by accident turning into a proper blog. As I charted my progress through life - unfolding before me all my achievements, triumphs, disappointments and disasters - I enjoyed doing it.

This is its successor.