Back when I was a young 21 year old dot-com worker I attempted to get my eyebrow pierced. I wanted to be one of the cool kids and stand out from the crowd. I wasn’t going to be one of those normal looking, corporate types. No! It was a new era where rebels ruled the dot-com future. I was a rebel, and rebels have to have their eyebrow pierced.
I visited The Alley, a store on Chicago’s North Side that is known for selling eclectic items, blue hair dye, skater shoes and gargoyles. I walked in and quickly made a choice on a normal, silver hoop ring, paid the fee and signed the waiver. About 15 minutes later, the “surgeon” walked out. He was covered in tattoos and had almost every inch of his body pierced. Most people would have probably ran away at this point. Not me. For some reason I wanted to be like this guy. For I was a rebel like him. Why wouldn’t I let him stick a needle through my eyebrow?
We went into the piercing room and I laid down. The room was quite clean. I was impressed by how medical it was. My surgeon washed up and got everything prepared. Before getting started though, he felt the need to tell me how if he fucked this up I could have damaged nerves around my eye forever. At that point I felt like running, but I already paid for the piercing, so there was no turning back now.
After rubbing the area with alcohol or whatever else they use to prep, the guy put on his rubber gloves and out came the needle. Into my eyebrow it went. I remember hearing the sound as the needle pierced my skin. It sounded like an exploding grapefruit. It didn’t hurt though, and I felt a calm over having gotten through the rough part. That is, until I looked up at my surgeon’s face. His mouth was wide open and he was speechless. After a few seconds he said “OK… Dude! Don’t move!”
Great! What could be wrong? I immediately thought he hit some type of nerve and damaged my eye forever. I panicked and started to scream, asking “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?!?!” In a gentle voice he says “OK, dude? The needle took part of my rubber glove with it and it’s lodged into your eyebrow!”
I remember thinking “This is what you get for trying to be something you’re not!” as I laid there with a needle and a piece of rubber glove lodged into my eyebrow. My surgeon then says “Wow, you are healing really fast and it’s going to make this really difficult.” My eyebrow was healing over where the piece to the rubber glove was lodged. So what had to be done?
I had to lay there, while he used another needle to pick and pry at the piercing hole to try to dig the rubber glove out. While the initial piercing didn’t hurt, having a guy dig away at the area with a needle fucking hurts. This process took about 30 minutes, but it seemed like 2 hours. The guy claimed to have removed the rubber, but who knows, I could have an entire rubber glove lodged in my eyebrow today now for all I know.
I was then told it would be a bad idea for me to keep an eyebrow ring in that hole. The area was traumatized and could get badly infected. So I was refunded my money and sent home where I spent my evening keeping ice on my eyebrow.
The next day I woke up and looked in the mirror to find that the entire area around my left eye was purple and swollen to about half the size of a golf ball. I called in sick at work for 3 days. I couldn’t face other people and tell them what I had done. How fucking dorky people would think I was I told people the story? Luckily it healed over the weekend, and the scab near the pierced hole was gone. I could then get away with telling people I got hit in the eye with a tennis ball.
So much for rebel Mitch!