We don’t see a lot of scrotal branding, so when Naoise-Ryan Israel sent in the photos of his branding, I knew I had to share them. Samppa did the branding, but as you can see that isn’t the only modification he has. Check out Naoise-Ryan Israel’s Hard Bonus Gallery to check out the rest of his vast collection of modifications.
Keep on reading to see the whole photo.
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I had yet another brutal day at the hospital — it seems that’s the one part of my life I can never catch a break on, but my life is one of extremes, most of them good, so perhaps this is some sort of cosmic balance in action. Anyway, Paige sent me this picture which is very much brightening my day.
If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, well, have you ever seen one of those cheezy action-kung-fu movies where some Ricki-oh wannabe punches their opponent so hard through the chest that they can do the ol’ “proudly clutching the still-beating-heart Aztec sacrifice” trick on the way out? Anyway, in the story of Saiga Paige-Oh, Kev takes one hell of a penetrating blow to the nutsack — BAM! Quarter inch to the right, and he’d never be able to have kids. Half inch to the left, and his testicles would be on the moon right now.
Click to uncensor
Click to uncensor
But seriously, Kev’s transscrotal was originally cut to 7/16″ by Matt Vermillion in December of 2011 — Paige instantly remembered the date because it was the day after she had her own circles of tissue excised, a much less threatening pair of punched flats. Scrotums, whether it’s the whole thing or a piercing, are some of the stretchiest tissue on the body, and since healing it he’s stretched it up to about two inches in diameter. Perfect for all sorts of hilarious insertions!
As those of you who are BME members who’ve spent a lot of time exploring the saline injection galleries already know, one of the tricks that people figured out to make it more amusing is that you can add food colouring to the saline solution — and let me preemptively say that this is risky both because food colouring is not generally safe to inject, and because it compromises the sterile saline by adding a non-sterile component and thereby increases the risk of post-procedure infection. Anyway, when someone does this, it tints the inflated tissue quite evenly — the photo below shows it having been done in a penis. When the saline is absorbed by the body, is starts breaking down and removing the food colouring, and the tissue rapidly reverts to it’s normal tone.
Ever since seeing stained deep tissue from eyeball tattooing procedures (where the face becomes stained via ink leakage into subcutaneous tissue), I have been thinking that it’s likely that if instead of using food colouring one could use tattoo ink or India Ink — India Ink is generally more biocompatible and may be safer, but it’s a guess — to tint a large area all at once. Imagine being able for example to tattoo a penis solid black (or whatever) in a single relatively pain-free procedure. After all, we’re talking about a single pinprick rather than thousands. And of course saline isn’t just for wieners — we’ve all seen the so-called “bagelheads” where foreheads are inflated, but cheeks and lips and even the tongue can be done as well. Could one tint the face in a single pain-free procedure? What if different colors were added at different points? It’s quite likely that they would blend and combine in ways impossible to achieve with traditional tattooing. It’s also possible that because subcutaneous tissue is being tinted that appearance impossible to achieve with a tattoo machine could be done.
Of course it’s also possible that because of the way the ink is introduced, and the way the body needs to deal with it, that there are significant and perhaps even deadly side-effects. I do think this technique merits further exploration — and to the best of my knowledge this is the first serious proposal of this method — but I hope that if someone does go ahead with it, and not just research the risks, but they start on a very small scale to explore the results carefully. I have to admit I’m half tempted to try it myself. If I end up with a bright blue scrotum to match my eyes, I’ll be sure to let y’all know. Please let me know if you try it as well.
“Rob” has an interesting take on a urethral reroute that I haven’t quite seen before, which is located at the base of the penis. The procedure was performed by Mac “Doctor-Evil” Mccarthy. I recently had a chat with “Rob” to discuss the process he went through, and why he decided to get such a modification. Continue reading after the break for more (NSFW!).
Originally he wanted a placement I would consider to be more common for a reroute, behind the testicles and scrotum exiting through the perineum, but the artist suggested a slightly higher placement so healing would be easier, and it would be easier to flush out the area of the urethra that would no longer be in use. After a great deal of thought inspired by his relationship at the time and mishaps sitting down to use the washroom, he felt this modification was perfect for him.
“Now the one thing that I totally admire about the guy who was about to work on me, was his attention to detail. The meticulous detail that he went through, to make sure everything was in the right place and ready, was fascinating to watch. It filled me with confidence and put my mind at rest.”
The incision itself was cut and sutured with the help of a sound placed in the urethra during the procedure. “Rob” says he could feel every cut more and more as the artist went deeper. The healing process was pretty uneventful and trouble-free, after a couple stitches pulling through the first night. After a number of months, he decided to start wearing jewellery through the incision and the unused part of the urethra. He says it feels great, and having sex isn’t even as difficult as some may think. “Rob” has many more future genital modification plans, but in the end he desires a full penectomy and eventually wishes to be castrated as well.
One of the Holy Grails of body modification is a difficult procedure called the bipedicle flap, first popularized by Erl Van Aken — a fascinatingly eccentric bodmod pioneer, who in addition to “inventing” the bridge piercing (if you’ve ever heard someone call it an “Erl”, he’s why), helped build the Lunar Rover for NASA that was used in the Apollo moon missions — who wore a large one on his belly. It’s essentially a hefty “handle” made out of flesh (“bi-pedicle” as in “two feet”), and requires the skills of a reconstructive surgeon to do it. Flap procedures are regularly used by reconstructive surgeons for a wide variety of procedure in a wide variety of styles for different purposes — if you do some googling you’ll find some fun things, like a guy who had to have his cock temporarily attached to the bottom of his scrotum after a cock ring betrayed him — but bipedicle flaps are the only one used in body modification procedures in our subculture. I don’t know if we’re moving too far into medical territory if we move beyond that, but in terms of treating the human body like lego and rearranging its parts, this class of surgery opens a lot of very interesting doors!
Procedurally I’ve tried to explain how it’s done — very roughly — in the little animation at the top of the entry. I hope you can appreciate how incredibly tricky this is to do! There are very few practitioners capable of doing this procedure, and even among them, the success rate is not perfect. This is one of the best I’ve seen to date, and it should come as little surprise that it was pulled off by Brian Decker (purebodyarts.com) — the only other people I can think of as I write this to have tackled the procedure properly are Jon Cobb and Howie/LunaCobra (although I’m sure there are others). This one though I can show you solid healed pictures of, and in addition, Brian has been kind enough to include comprehensive pictures throughout the healing process — it sure looked touch-and-go for a while, didn’t it? Click on any of the pictures to zoom in.
Fresh the procedure looks happy and clean. If all you saw was the fresh picture and the healed picture, you would have a very different idea of the healing process than actually happened. On day one the whole area is inflamed with a fresh bruise and what looks like a blister of lymph and intracellular fluids collecting on the flap. By day two the redness is more specific along the tube of the flap — which must have made them think the procedure was about to fail — and you can see an interesting “halo” of bruises around the procedure. The reason that the bruises are in a halo pattern is because on the central section there is more pressure from how the skin has been pulled tight to fill the open hole (see the animation), and this pressure is enough to “squeeze” any stagnant blood out of the tissue stopping it from bruising there.
Day three and four are also quite worrying, and although the blistered tissue has receded significantly, and the flap is still very red. However, the sutures and footing looks healthy which is a good sign. By week’s end, the blister is fully dry and the redness has reduced dramatically. Everything is holding together nicely with no separation, but the tube is still fairly swollen.
By the end of the second week, the tube is significantly less swollen and while still centrally red and irritated, is looking better every day. By the end of the second week, the tube is no longer swollen at all, and only minor skin irritation remains. At two months, the procedure is completely healed and is able to support heavy weight.
I’d say this is a good result on a remarkable and challenging procedure that offers anatomical alteration options beyond what can be done with piercing. Congratulations to both Brian Decker and the client for pulling this off.
The mainstream media just loves saline injection in the forehead, and because it’s so weird and rare — and most of all, photogenic — they just love printing it. It gives them permission to print human oddity freakshow photos without feeling exploitative. They don’t get to see it often, and thus every time they see it, they ignorantly and hilariously insist on calling it “the latest trend” — often “the latest Japanese trend” to be specific — and thanks to last night’s episode of National Geographic’s fun but clueless “Taboo” series, it’s all over the media, with sites like Jezebel running headlines about “Bagel Heads“. Here’s a screen cap from the show.
This story is so silly, and really, is ancient news. The short version of the history of “bagel heads” is that Montreal photographer Jerome Abramovitch (chapter9photography.com) created the concept for performance art and photographic purposes (and a little amusement), presumably after seeing fetish-scene saline inflation and artistically extrapolating the technique in new directions. He brought this to ModCon — many people first saw this on the cover of the ModCon book in fact (download a free copy here since it’s out of print) — and we later shot some fun footage of his doing it again for the still hibernating BME movie. Another good friend, journalist and charming body mod superenthusiast Ryoichi Keroppy Maeda, was here for all of that from Japan and brought the idea back home with him, where he walked many other people through it. For whatever reason — and Ryoichi deserves the credit for this I’m sure — it was much more popular in Japan, seeming to find a niche inside both the fetish and suspension worlds. Much of the footage floating around the net of forehead saline is from Ryoichi’s events in Japan, and you can actually see Ryoichi being interviewed about it in the clip above.
These pictures are from the ModBlog cover and Jerome’s video shoots with me.
In the photos on the right we’ve inflated his cheeks as well as just his forehead by the way. In the fetish community breast inflations (of both men and women), are also quite popular — as are the penis and scrotum, the clitoris, the anus, and the lips (both genital and facial). BME has massive galleries on this subject — literally hundreds of thousands of images, stories, and interviews, and my new book also covers it extensively. If you don’t have a BME membership yet, you can find some free saline content with the appropriate ModBlog search (although you’ll get some false positives talking about saline in other contexts), and this NSFW interview (a preview from the new book I just mentioned) also covers fetish-saline in depth: “Impgrin Inflated“
I probably should have started with this instead of mentioning it as a footnote, but for those that are unaware of what you’re seeing in these stories, it’s basically voluntarily induced pitting edema. Saline is dripped via a needle into the forehead (virtually any body part can be inflated), engorging the tissue dramatically until the body gradually reabsorbs it over about 24 hours. Like the medical condition pitting edema, while the tissue is full (of interstitial fluid in the case of an edema, saline in the case of an inflation), it is maleable and can be “sculpted” by pressing into it. Unlike a scrotum inflation, which is more of a “water balloon” when full, normal skin is more like a “sponge” than a “balloon”. Since the saline is held in place by the tissue and can’t flow freely, when you force it into a new shape, it holds that shape for a time. Assuming that proper sterile precautions are followed this is not particularly dangerous.
As to how it feels, well, few people would say it feels good. Most would say it’s mildly unpleasant, but not unpleasant in the way that suspension hurts and can lead to an altered state. More like unpleasant as in a headache. To be honest, it’s more of an “art trick” than a ritual experience. The sort of thing you do for great photos or curiosity, not the sort of thing that teaches you about yourself or gives you a high or all the wonderful things that people get out of suspension. Of course I’m generalizing and some people will get all of that, but overall this is just a cool looking trick that people have been doing for about fifteen years. It’s not new, and it’s certainly not a trend.
But all of this truth that I’ve just typed out is completely irrelevant to the media. Nothing I’ve said here is hard to find out with a minimum of research. But if I’ve learned anything in almost twenty years of first-hand dealings with the media, it’s that the truth is the very last thing they care about. The truth isn’t a virus. The truth is an irrelevancy. All that matters to anyone — be it trash media or be it fallen media aristocracy like National Geographic — is a dumbed down moment of meaningless amusement to sell advertising for garbage we’d be better off without.
Unfortunately it’s rare for genital tattoos to really be masterpieces of tattooing, even with the best artistst holding the needle. Next to a scrotum, it’s about the worst skin to work on. But just because it’s not the best canvas, it’s hard to stop people — tattoo artists and enthusiasts included — from having fun when there’s a penis involved. Happened to see two tattooed members this morning — on the left is a “NO PAIN / NO GAIN” (I guess that means he’s into S&M and can only get hard if you’re pushing needles into his taint) piece by Veronique at Original Sin in Belgium, and on the right is a “firecracker in bed” and “red rocket” (I thought it was the “love bomb” but I was corrected) themed member care of Jon Gray and Chris Costa at Brass Monkey Tattoo. I’ll leave it to you to figure out who shoots the ink and who receives it. Anyway, if you want to see more, BME has built up a giant gallery of genital tattoos (both male and female) over the years that you can explore if you’re a member.
Jeez, twenty years later and Adam Richins (Warlocks Tattoo in Raleigh, NC) has blown every penny on tattoos and piercings and having things shoved through his scrotum, and has nothing left to go see the eye doctor about that unfortunate twitchy squint thing… someone help the guy out.
There’s a fascinating article up right now by Matt McGrath, a science reporter for the BBC — Paralympic athletes who harm themselves to perform better — which discusses the effects of injury and pain on sports performance. Apparently this is especially relevant to paralympic athletes because some of the normal feedback systems that their body would have to increase blood pressure and heart rate while competing could be damaged. The practice of self-harm in sports even has a name, “boosting”, and it’s actually banned by by the International Paralympics Committee (IPC) — and has been since 1994, the year BME was founded. It is believed that perhaps a third of all para-athletes have self-harmed to boost performance.
“There have been times where I would specifically give my leg or my toe a couple of really good electric shocks” says Brad Zdanivsky, a 36-year-old Canadian quadriplegic climber who has experimented with boosting in the gym.
“That would make my blood pressure jump up and I could do more weights and cycle harder — it is effective.”
Other athletes overfill their bladder, sometimes by will, or by clamping off their catheter if they wear one. Others sit on a tack, or tightly strap their legs, or twist their scrotum or otherwise do the sort of things that would get you a free membership and jerk-off-fans in BME/HARD. Still others go as far as taking out a hammer and shattering their toe. This interesting because even though they may not be able to feel the broken toe consciously due to being paraplegic, their body still responds to the injury in ways that cause a performance increase — they are inducing what’s medically called “autonomic dysreflexia and can be quite dangerous.
“I took it a notch further by using an electrical stimulus on my leg, my toe and even my testicles.”
But boosting comes at a price.
“You are getting a blood pressure spike that could quite easily blow a vessel behind your eye or cause a stroke in your brain,” says Zdanivsky.
“It can actually stop your heart. It’s very unpleasant, but the results are hard to deny. The saying is that winners always want the ball, so it doesn’t matter if it’s unpleasant, it gets results.”
In addition to causing an increase in athletic performance, according to spinal injury researcher Dr. Andrei Krassioukov at UBC, the increase in blood pressure can also have a mood effect. He puts it simply, pointing out that people “feel better with their blood pressure higher”. I’m sure that this — in addition to the endorphin high — relates to the people who cut themselves ritually or therapeutically as featured in BME’s self-harm galleries and stories (whether you think this is illness or valid is a secondary issue — right now I’m only talking about the underlying medical mechanics). Unlike blood doping or steroids, it is virtually impossible to test for “boosting”, and just because it’s banned doesn’t mean it can be stopped.
Well, I know this was a little removed from body modification proper, but I hope that it still gives some interesting insights into overlapping issues.
By the way, the background photo above that I’ve used to illustrate this entry is from an earlier ModBlog entry by Rob that’s a very fascinating story — apparently this client came in wanting to get a voluntary scarification that had the appearance of self-harm to avoid military service! Here’s the entry: Self Preservation or Self Harm? Another very interesting tale.
