I’d Like a Hole
The piercer’s apartment was in Berlin’s Adlershof, somewhere in a sprawl of buildings I spent half an hour walking through in the cold. Snow falling. I’d fought my parents for weeks to get here—they’d actually signed permission, which felt momentous at fifteen or whatever I was. I was checking the address they’d given me, increasingly convinced it didn’t exist, or that I’d find myself in someone’s living room, the piercer working between kids and cats and kitchen tables.
When the door opened, the woman was exactly what I’d feared. Blonde, overdone makeup, early forties, moved like she’d already decided I wasn’t leaving. She pulled off my jacket before I’d said hello, had me leave my shoes by the door, lit incense. I followed her down the hallway without deciding to, some part of me waiting for the moment to cut and run. But there was no cat. No teenager doing homework. Just this woman and a hallway and me trying not to think about what I’d signed up for.
Her consultation room was a table and chair in the narrow hall. She ran through the risks—infection, keloids, all the things that sound worse when someone’s listing them like a grocery list—while I sat there realizing I hate needles more than I thought I did. Genuinely can’t look at them from across a room. So what was I doing here? She had my permission slip. I had maybe thirty seconds of courage left.
The actual room was off to the side, surprisingly clean, properly set up. My hands were shaking. I asked if she could numb it for like, two days straight. She laughed. I’m just going to shoot it through.
There was something about her refusal to perform anxiety that made it less scary. No coddling, no drama. She explained that working from an apartment saved money over renting a storefront—a good distraction. This’ll feel cold.
The numbing came, and then one small pop, and it was finished. Months of buildup bottled down to half a second.
Twenty years and I’m still happy with it. What got me wasn’t the piercer’s technical skill, though she had it. It was the way she cut through the panic by simply not participating in it. Sterile clinics have their place, but there’s a difference between clinical and comfortable, between a place that acknowledges fear and a person who refuses to.
I’m thinking about another one. Not the tragus again. Open to ideas.