BSTA: Didier Suarez. (Patreon)

(photos sourced from Didier's Instagram) 

Didier - I never want to be a shop that’s proud of the stuff we don’t do. It’s ok for people to come and not know how to do everything, but sometimes it feels like they don’t want to learn how to do those things. Yeah, you don’t make many mistakes, but you aren’t trying to advance, you never apply. Who wants to be proud of all the stuff you don’t do?

Ari - Are we talking about things that work that perhaps are semi-dated - like we’ve had people come through who don’t do surface bars.

Didier - I was talking to someone about surface anchors and surface piercings, and she mentioned that people aren’t using surface bars. Even when we started with surface piercings there was a premise that came with the whole thing, like the protocol of consulting. We would tell people this is a surface that is different from say a flat piercing, this is the dangers of them, it can leave a scar, it’ll take longer to heal, this is what we do to prevent it, etc etc. When it helped introduce anchors it was the platform I brought along, but like anything else people forget the protocol. I busted out some older shit on a counter person the other day, I was working on the remodel and I overheard them say “I recommend” and I pulled them aside like we aren’t doctors, we don’t recommend anything, we suggest it. I ran into an old employee that used to work at the studios, he now manages a different studio, and I told him I had to bust out the old recommend vs suggest thing and he goes ah - got to pass it on down! Seems arbitrary but we used to not have any credibility - the APP taught us how to have credibility, how to be taken seriously. That was an old school APP thing - you’re not a doctor, you can’t say recommend. Surface piercings were a big deal, we had to tell people why not to use a curved barbell, how your skin works this way and the jewelry is working this way. People don’t like failing with anchors, don’t like failing with surface piercings, but there are some very basic things - if you had someone teach a class with someone who knows how to work around the pitfalls the classes would be really short because there are basic rules. It comes down to what you feel comfortable doing I guess.

Ari - For sure, you don’t want to make people do shit out of their comfort zone, but what I find is there are huge gaps in the logic. We had someone down to work, they did the whole I don’t do surface piercing because they’re so volatile, etc, but then watched them do a fucking snug piercing on just a random person without a lot of piercings. I was like you were better off doing the fucking surface bar! That thing is fucking impossible to heal, half the people don’t make it through the fucking heal. The absurdity of doing a quadruple forward helix on somebody and taking a picture of it fresh without even blinking but god forbid you should do a surface bar in a sternum because it might fail - give me a fucking break. When you say APP I’m curious as to your feelings on them. What I struggle a lot with is it is presented as a health and safety organization, but I’d like to know where the science for everything is. Take the seminars - now independently run, but they are things often presented at a conference and what have you - but if one person has a set of information that only comes from one studio. Your environment has a shit-ton to do with healing. Is it fair to give lessons on a data set from one environment to a group in a totally different environment? Now you’re disseminating information to people who will take it very literally and it may not be applicable there. There is no data set from thirty states spanning the country on navels seeing the results of salt vs saline vs whatever.

Didier - I feel like most of my success with piercing comes from things I’m looking to do and also not looking to do, and informing my client of this so they can pay attention to what's going on and know to follow up. Over the years doing guest spots I obtained a lot of information like what areas people swell more in Colorado, there’s a damper climate in Oregon so you watch out for this, Washing is similar to here with dry skin. When I would teach I would try to add these in to help give some balance and make it more well-rounded. What you’re saying is a good idea, that would be ideal, but you can tell people to look for those things. Paying attention to what you do is a big deal, that's how you learn and progress and not everyone does that.

Ari - You’re also from a time of watching a lot of trial and error rather than being told what does and doesn’t work. I think I probably harp on this too much but a big problem I have is people going around claiming things don’t work that they’ve never personally done, and so have no actual frame of reference for.

Didier - I mean the way I used to teach and the way I teach now are totally different. At the LBP seminar, I taught initial jewelry and the way I would’ve taught it 10-15 years ago would’ve been so different, or better yet twenty years ago because there were so many different options. I’ve forgotten half the shit I used to do because I don’t have the time to troubleshoot. I used to be able to follow up with people. Now we do the safest way to get it done and heal and then they can do whatever they want with that healed channel. We used to pierce with all these rings, try all these different placements, mostly different initial jewelry. Of course, you can put a ring in a rook initially, but will that work for most people? I don’t know how many helixes with rings I did over the years but now we won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole because we don’t to take the chance that maybe this person, this may be the only piercing they ever get, now they’ve got a bump on the back - which they can still get if they don’t downsize but we still choose to take the safest way possible. I haven’t pierced a nipple with a ring in so long. Some instructors still have it in their PowerPoint but you teach them the math and they can figure it out themselves. We didn’t use curved barbels in navels back when I started. I had to bend my own curved barbells over a receiving tube by hand before IS stopped using annealed stock for straight bars.

Ari - That must have been a trip. I came in later than that, but most of my start was with shit like Wildcat or Tombstone, and you weren’t fucking bending that by hand!

Didier - Yeah, Wildcat was one of the first places I remember seeing curved barbells, they had the giant cat-eye gems on the bottom, they hung down a quarter-inch or more. I saw that and what happened was I had taken out so many rings, trying to combat it sticking out from the body by using a 3/8th diameter, but they would come in with hypertrophic scarring around the ring. I was like oh, this is more skin than the ring can handle, so I would tell clients - I mean I’d take everybody back before they even signed up, mark them, lay them down and show them firsthand. I’d hold the ring sideways and give them a mirror to see. I’d say this is the ring you want, this is the biggest ring I can do, and this is how much your skin has stretched. It was telltale to grab my wrist to show people this is your skin now and this is your skin when you lay down. They saw it, it made sense, they processed, and so I could say see this curved barbell here, it would take a massive ring to match the curvature on this, and that made sense. I did it for years and years. Maybe four or five years before I didn’t have to convince people so badly. But I still do that trick with taking them in the back if I need help convincing someone. It’s the same song and dance now 27 years.

Ari - 27 years is fucking wild. Can we go back for a little bit?

Didier - Yeah, but fair warning, I thought my memory was really good but turns out nah - I was talking with someone in the last year and they brought up a bunch of stuff from my apprenticeship that I had totally forgotten, blew my mind. I apprenticed before Mastodon was even a studio. I used to get tattooed at Avalon by Patty Kelley, she told me there was a guy next door that pierced. I had already been pierced at this point - Elayne (Angel) had done my nipples, and there was a guy named Aaron downtown here and he did my tragus piercings and my PA. Gadhi did my labret, he was working next door to the tattoo shop in a little room he was renting in the back. She was like he’s professionally trained because he had gone to the Fakir intensives. I think he had worked Sales for Good Art in Santa Monica too. This may have been 1992? We met and he pierced me, he had an apprentice at the time. I felt I’d blown it with Patty, I worked the counter for her and I used to draw and she was like hey did you ever think of tattooing? But I was like no, I don’t think so. When Gadhi mentioned apprentice though I perked up, I was like hey if you ever need an apprentice you let me know! I was playing in a band and we did a US tour, and I was on my way back when our van broke down in St Louis. We flew back prematurely and he had called, so I went in and he said his apprentice was going to Spain for a trip and he needed an apprentice and I jumped on in. I started out doing his tools, then setting up for him, eventually marking.

Ari - Do you have any idea how long he’d been piercing for at this point?

Didier - Not very long, probably a couple of years. Jef Saunders had reminded me that Gahdi was the piercer on the first Lollapalooza, or did the training for it. There was a woman who’s name I can’t remember, that was who he did it with, and ended up back in San Diego where he was renting a room in the back of a hair salon. We got moved to another hair salon and I told him hey, we’re telling people we’re the best in town - at this point, there was a piercer named Trish Curly who was working at a leather shop type spot in Hillcrest, and the Aaron I mentioned who was next door to a clothing store named Catwalk - it turned into the Claw. Down the street was a guy who sold bondage gear and was kind of freaky in some second-story one-room building, I think his name was Anthony. Arturo, who owns Church of Steel, was piercing out of a tattoo shop. Art had maybe been doing it a couple of years at this point. I was working part-time at a college bookstore and working with Gadhi. One day someone came in and told me about Art, and Art had been coming in to get stretched by Gadhi but hadn’t told us he was a piercer. A lot of it was more deeply rooted than Gadhi though - he was an LA guy who’s family had moved here. Because of the Fakir Intensives and who he wanted to be it was much more of that transcendent experience breathing technique type than the typical fetish-y stuff. I personally never took the Fakir seminars but I read the handbook all the time, and that was the way I was taught and still use it. I ran into someone in the last year who I hadn’t seen in decades and their friend had mentioned me - apparently, he was like, “he makes you do this breathing thing!” I didn’t even think about it, It’s not like a show I put it, I’m trying to calm people down and make it easier for them! It’s almost cognitive therapy. I still do it the way I was taught. Anyway, we’re at the second hair salon and I’m like you need to open a shop, let’s actually be the best. I don’t think he was really sold on body piercing, he was a little bit older than me and was maybe concerned it wouldn’t cut it or be a viable thing for a guy his age to be opening up a body piercing studio. He wanted to try and do a bookstore as well because books interested him. He found a space and my brother and I helped build it. Instead of building traditional walls, he built these bookcase walls for the piercing rooms, very minimal money-wise, he didn’t have much to put into it. Originally it was called Mastodon Body and Book. If you look at the first Point article there’s a Blake article called Bob’s Burritos and Bikes Body Piercing and he’s totally taking a jab at him.

Ari - As you’re opening this studio, are still an apprentice or have you finished?

Didier - I’m already piercing at this point. The apprenticeship was under a year in total. When you’re younger everything feels like it takes forever. I think when we opened Mastodon I could pierce people but when he was there he would have first dibs, but if I brought people in I got to pierce them. I know I did my apprentice piercings at the other spots. Mastodon was just us two when we opened. I found an old business card he had made where it said Gadhi and Didier - we didn’t even have our own cards! People are so spoiled now! A little bit later the other apprentice, Francisco, I’m not sure how much later it was when he came back, but he returned and I felt like I had put in all this time working for free and building his shop, stuff I wouldn’t make someone do for me.

Ari - Were you able to make a living from piercing by itself once Mastodon opened?

Didier - I’m trying to think if I was still working at the Mesa college bookstore. I had weaseled my way into shipping and receiving there. I can’t quite remember at what point I left. But Mastodon had a good reputation for sterilization, good jewelry - I’ve never worked in a shop with externally threaded jewelry. We had a whole spiel down on annealing, polish, etc. We took more time with people, a nicer environment than a tattoo shop, or eventually any place that did other things. Even with us having books it was aesthetically pleasing. It had all the ReSearch books and Body Play, I don’t think we carried PFIQ. Some guy had come in and offered to sell an entire PFIQ set so I snapped that up. The close-pin Guiche! The wood q-tip PA. Those were the rock stars of the time - if you got to meet one of those people, oh man, it was cool. Not everybody looked like that, it was daring and exciting.

Ari - Were you considered intense looking at this time for where you were at?

Didier - I guess. I’ve had multiple ear piercings since I was 19, and a nose piercing. I got tattooed on my 18th birthday and was a punk rock kid. San Diego is pretty conservative so most stuff stuck on at this time. I had weird colored hair from being around all the hairdressers. I had even pierced my own tragi before I had someone else do it - I use a sewing needle. I got my ear pierced at 12, and my friend and I decided we could do it ourselves. We figured we’d just pierce it with a sewing needle and leave it in for a while since there were no piercing needles available back then. They were sorta shallow. I actually bought piercing studs and tried to shove them through after I took the sewing needle out. I remember doing the Curly shuffle, spinning around on my bed on my side trying to push in the stud. The nose piercing was just my finger up my nose trying to transfer the stud after pulling the sewing needle out. Gadhi had a definitive thing of. we’re doing this Fakir method, almost the tribal aesthetic, you’ve got origins of piercing and people borrowing from that and keeping it within those parameters, and what he was called punk rock. Gauntlet was Fetish, Fakir was spiritual. We all know the difference between the two. I’m sure I opened my big dumb twenty-year-old mouth about that a few times back in the day.

Ari - I think a lot of people shared that sentiment at the time. Punk rock sentiment doesn’t favor anything corporate - that’s not knocking Gauntlet, that’s just the nature of that culture, that mindset.

Didier - I had tried piercing my own nipple myself but after 15 minutes of trying and almost coming out the tip, I said “fuck this” and decided to go to Gauntlet. My girlfriend made an appointment, took like two weeks to get in. It was hopping there, it looked as busy as our shop is on some days. Three counter staff and Elayne was just going bam bam bam. She was wearing a leather cap and outfit, it seemed real clinical, way more than I had seen at that point. She pierced my nipple and I go fuck! She goes what was that for and I said that was just how long it hurt. She was a wizard, used a fixed bead ring, she pierces me with the ring in and closed so fast. It was the first location that was downstairs. Some people in that store I recognized from the PFIQ issues, it was like sensory overload.

Ari - Alright, so Mastodon is going and picking up. Is Gadhi’s involvement in the APP what brings you in as well?

Didier - Let’s actually go back a bit. Gadhi was still in contact with Eric Dakota, who was teaching at this point. Eric and Cricket came down at one point to show us how to do daiths and rooks using hemos, which was helpful since some days we were so busy I’d run out of receiving tubes. I don’t know who else he was talking to but one day he told me he was going up to this piercer meeting - I don’t think he was at the first one but I believe it was the second one. He came back and told me they’re trying to do this organization to help with regulation so we can control the laws and whatnot, make sure it stays legal, and stays on the right path. I just remember is not being a, “bring everyone together” type deal, much more of a “we’re doing this to set us apart so people come to us”. Less inclusive for our area but more-so for us to get all the clients in our area. Most early members wanted to keep others from joining as a leg-up so they could keep that advantage. I was still a kid at this point and I wanted community.

Ari - Was there any camaraderie between you and the other piecers nearby at this point?

Didier - We kind of thought we were better than everyone at this time. Outside of the shop I knew pierced people and met a girl who was managing a competitor’s shop that was run by some yahoo who ran tv ads and shit, but he was busy as hell, it worked for sure. Maybe he was more social. They were super busy and did 2-3x more piercings than we did a day but they didn’t do things the way we did so we didn’t respect that. They sold beanbags and paraphernalia and silver jewelry.

Ari - Oh classic! I mean that’s my earnest memories of piercing - headshops that also do piercings in the back.

Didier - Right, he was just a businessman, he wanted to make money. For me, it was about the piercing. The APP started to legitimize it - that first conference in Vegas was crazy, all these people came together from all over. People I met at that conference I’m still friends with today like Steve Joyner, Jason King, Brian Skellie, Tod Almighty, etc. I remember Adam from Pleasurable. There was an infamous fight at the end of the open meeting between Pleasurable and everybody else about external vs internal - it was epic! I’d never seen anything like that before. I got to see how big it was! Allen Falkner was there. They even had a piercer party in his room where they were cutting frenulums and pierced Kent Fazekas' nipples. I’m sitting there watching who supposedly knows so much more than me, but instead of remarking his nipples they put a box above and were like ok, pierce here on the box! It looked like a football play on his chest! I was maybe piercing two years and I’m like ok, I must be doing ok if this is what the big people are doing! They were still great piercers, it just helped show me how new it was to everyone. I think maybe I already knew the folks from Good Art - Gadhi had worked there and we carried a bunch of their jewelry in the studio. I remember going to pick up our Industrial Strength orders from JD at a gas station that was halfway between the studio and his first workshop. I hung out all night with a piercer named Drew from DC at a place called Perforations - I don’t think that's Luis’ (Garcia) first shop but I know he worked there early on. We stayed up all night drinking and playing blackjack - to date still the longest I’ve ever lasted at a Blackjack table. When I met Joyner and King we had already been out all night and they were coming in for the breakfast buffet. It’s the same feeling you get when someone comes for a guest spot and you’re both on the same page. The APP helped create that format, that universal understanding. Mastodon was an awesome place to learn and I got so much from it. Being a kid I didn’t really understand where Gadhi was coming from until I was a father and needed to provide for my family. It helped me understand. But he was a character for sure. Corey Lolley, who runs Maya, she worked there after me. He sold it and Angie from Black Hole bought it originally, and then sold it to a guy from Tuscon which is why there is a Mastodon in Tuscon as well, it may be closed by now, but that guy had a shop and just changed the name so they were both Mastodon. I think around this time they also introduced tattooing. I left early though, I was there for the first three years and met a girl who managed the other shop. I felt like Gadhi was sort of more into the money than anything at this time, maybe later he got more energized or rejuvenated by it when he became APP president but at the time for me, it seemed weird so I took a job at the other spot. I told them I wanted my own room because I was really particular of how clean things needed to be, I wanted to avoid potential cross-contamination. I was a prima donna for a while. It’s the business that actually became Apogee. I went over there and we routinely did twenty piercings a day there, which for the time was really busy. It was a big change for me because before I thought seven was a good day, breaking ten was crazy! We spent so much time having people breathe and whatnot. I had to adjust things and make it more relatable once I moved - at first, I scared some people because I was doing the breathing stuff with them and I think they thought I was going to snatch their heart out or something. Now I just tell people it’s a physical act and not a mental act so thinking about it is the wrong tool. Focus on your breathing and you’ll be in your body and not your head. I’ve taught grounding and bedside manner at APP and LBP - if you explain things in real-time you’re keeping them in the moment and present instead of letting them get to the end while we’re still at the beginning. If you give them too much information too soon they revert back to anxiety.

Ari - People respond so well to proper communication. Establishing you’re going to walk them through every step and not sneak attack them builds trust right away.

Didier - I tell people all I’m going to do in pinch you - the problem is none of us know how to get pinched. They say humans don't have instincts but we all have and do the same thing when we get pinched - we tense up and hold our breath. You stop time in your head.

Ari - Ok, we’re at pre-Apogee. What’s the next segue?

Didier - I was always insisting on things being done a certain way, which in my mind was validated because I thought it made the place better. I kept pushing the shop to follow APP ideas and whatnot. I think I’ve only ever missed two conferences to date since the very first one. One was the Orlando one, the other was year I was supposed to teach but it landed on the first summer week I had visitation with my kids so I had to cancel. I took classes and notes and tried to stay up to date even though I had left Mastodon - I was still passionate about it. My girlfriend and I decided we were going to go and open up our own shop but somehow the owner found out about it, so he fired her and kept me! I got married to someone different, had a kid, and Georg actually came to town to do a guest spot while my son was being born. Georg was the Bernie Sanders of body piercing, going around talking about his co-op in Oregon, free the piercers from oppression! I had met him and Josh doing Inkslingers Ball. Georg really pushed for me to open my own shop too. I got a spot that I think he actually was looking at - it was beside a tattoo shop right by the beach. I talked to the owner of the tattoo shop and subleased the spot and opened in January of 2000. That first shop took us two or three months to build, as opposed to later when our Adams location took us less than a month. I can usually bust stuff out quickly. The shop was originally called Stigma - it was myself and my partner, and eventually one of the counter guys from my last shop came over. He became my apprentice, and then we hired John Durante. I had done some guest spots at Puncture while he was working there. I had been doing large gauge piercing with needles since Mastodon. I remember telling Kristian (White) how Blake had done my conches at a 4g and used a 6g needle, and he goes “Oh he must've liked you!” He pierced them with Silver Anchor barbells. I don’t know if I have those, but I remember the first pair of rings I bought where JD had been working with some goth store called Gamma Gamma, and I got a pair of 10g captive bead rings for under $20. I stretched my ears with toothpicks and got those in - I think I had Gadhi put the beads in because I couldn’t get them in. At one point I was wearing like purple 4g 5/8 captives in my ears because it was all I could find. I started buying pine dowels from home depot and using a stone wheel to grind them into a tapered plug, and to make them black I’d put them on the side of the stone wheel and burn them. I still have those somewhere. Gadhi came back from San Francisco one time after having his conches punched in tandem, and he was in so much pain - they had initially put wood plugs in. There was no glass jewelry at this point. It was gnarly. With my conches one of my coworkers owned a body jewelry company called Steel Body Jewelry, they had a workshop two blocks from the studio, so I had them lathe acrylic tapered conch pieces by the mm so I’d just power stretch until I got to 7/16th or so. For numerous reasons I had a ring of scar tissue around the top and had my coworkers scalpel off the whole ring. One year at APP the first glass guy to come to APP and talk, called Joné glass, he did a class with Erica Skadson where they talked about glass and wood and organics. I remember getting a pair of 7/16” glass from him and I had never worn anything so comfortable in my life. Soon after I met Ryan from Glasswear at Inkslinger’s Ball, I don’t remember if Georg brought him or not. Glass was certainly the savior for large gauge initial piercings. Durante was the first person to bring punches and scalpeling and stuff into the shop - I had fooled around a bit with redirecting ears. Unilateral motivating - do they still use that term up by you? My business partner actually did transdermals back in the day, back when people were using steel for them, and since he had the experience of jewelry making he would make those implants to insert. Our friend Eddie was skateboarding and had some Steve Haworth barbells on the tops of his hands and totally scraped his hand on the surface and you could see the bar poking out the top! There was no silicone at this point. When we opened up Stigma we called it a body modification studio because we offered those different services. I don’t remember us doing branding and scarring during regular business hours though because it took a while longer. Tony Snow was introduced to me as one of John’s clients from Vegas, and came up one time to get his tongue split and his apadravya done. At this time John’s method wasn’t to suture, but the brand with the scalpel, you know, you stick it in a blowtorch. We’re all there, he does the split in like three strikes - super brutal. We had co-workers who tried to dental floss method but it was grueling. Back at Mastodon, I remember we heard a rumor that Gauntlet advised people to deal with scar tissue by tying dental floss around the base of it until it just cut off the circulation. Anything like that will either work or make it way worse.

Ari - Great options. It works, but you have PTSD or it backfires and now shit is worse than ever!

Didier - In 2000 it was the age of the chamomile teabags, which seems to be making a comeback. At Mastodon it was tea tree oil.

Ari - I’m a pastor in the church of Chamomile. I’ve been recommending that since 2003.

Didier - Anything that soothes is good for it. The Tea Tree thing, even back at Mastodon, i saw how badly it caused blow-ups and whatnot so I knew not to go down that rabbit hole. All the navels at Mastodon that would come back with the exploding tissue I learned to just cut off with a large gauge needle.

Ari - I think it just goes again to prove that for anything inside the piercing realm, not modification, we aren’t doing anything that serious. It’s a subcutaneous field - you can do things wrong and still have it heal most of the time. I grew up with external jewelry, moved into internal shops, and actually had a period of time back in external when I was flipping over a shop upgrading their selection. Things work out most of the time, even if it takes longer than people would like.

Didier - Right but in this day and age your information needs to be consistent and reliable. Your product has to be consistent. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Ari - At what point though do we acknowledge that this is a consenting adult? That sometimes people want what they want and can’t be persuaded otherwise?

Didier - These people are trusting us. They always say, “well you’re the professional.” They’re trusting you aren’t going to use a piece of jewelry that doesn’t fit in their body.

Ari - Oh, I mean that’s for sure, but what about say a person who doesn’t have a good navel to pierce? You tell them the risks, you offer solutions, but they say no this is what I want.

Didier - Ok, well I think the approach matters here. If you just come out and say “Oh, your navel isn’t right for this” they are going to leave, go down the street, and find someone who will tell them what they want to hear. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won’t, but your idea didn’t come across. What I do is I take them in the back and mark them to let them inside my head. They’re standing and I mark to define inside and outside of their navel, and a line to show the lowest point I need to pierce before going outside the navel itself and becomes a surface piercing. Then you lay them down and they watch how much more tissue is involved. If they still don’t want my answer at least I’ve done everything I can to educate them at this point. We carry up to 5/8” plain bars, maybe longer. I take one of those and show them how once if it's possible they can do a longer bar with just a gem on top, downsize it as the fistula forms, and if I can make it work I will. I often don’t work with people who know or understand that and try not to be frustrated by that.

Ari - Do you feel like people aren’t interested and that’s why it's difficult to relay that information?

Didier - I really don’t know. I’ve even wondered at times if I’m wrong.

Ari - I don’t think you’re wrong. I’ve done navels with 12g 3/4 curves before just to make it work. I feel like because I spent most of my early years working alone the make it work mentality was my only option - I didn't have people to call, and I couldn’t afford to just turn away 1/4 of my business because it wasn’t ideal conditions. Now I’m sort of a nihilist, which probably isn’t right either. But at least I feel like my brain is always working to problem-solve instead of just saying this situation falls outside a narrow parameter of what is right and I don’t ever have to push myself outside those boundaries. It may be easier that way but I don’t think it’s practical.

Didier - It’s so normal now to turn stuff away. If I stay away from the studio long enough I can see patterns in doing less of certain things like navels. I don’t want to ask people to pierce a minor they aren’t comfortable piercing - but it’s like hey, you started piercing when you were sixteen but you won’t pierce somebody who's sixteen? You can’t make that kind of stuff up. The same person was also afraid to downsize jewelry if it was a piercing they weren’t comfortable doing so he’d send them to the other location. I try not to be bitter or cynical but it’s watching someone stunt their own growth. I can only do so much.

Ari - There is a significant difference between someone going “Hey, I don’t know how to do this, can you help me learn?” and someone saying “Hey, I don’t know how to do this.” How could it not frustrate any employer? Why the fuck don’t you want to know more things about your job?

Didier - I feel like a broken record when I talk about this stuff. When we were piercing we wanted to learn everything, all the piercings - I learned enough about the piercings I was taught, the way the body is, and the way jewelry fits to take it from there. I wasn’t taught everything initially - but I had a foundation and use that to go forward. I loved things like daiths and rooks early on and would practice with both hands, and it was exciting to talk people into doing stuff other than standard outer cartilage. Learning how to use hemos instead of tubes really saved my ass. At Camp APP, Jef Saunders taught a class where people had yes or no signs, agree or disagree, and he would ask a question and you’d hold up your sign and he’d call on them based on their answer. One of them was, "do you think you should watch someone do a piercing before you do it yourself," or maybe it was, "would you let someone do a piercing they had never done before on you?" Elayne had just answered, and so I raised my hand was like. "I would let Elayne do something she’d never done before on me because she has all this practical knowledge of other piercings already. It’s all geometry and math, and the worst thing that’ll happen is you do it slow." Half the industry doesn’t care about going fast now anyway. Tissue manipulation and distortion don’t come up a lot apparently when people are going inside out or from the back forward. We’re trying to figure out which way the bevel is cutting, not worried about what position we’re putting the tissue in when we insert a piece of metal that's stronger than the tissue itself or what position will be best for healing or most comfortable. I try not to move the tissue when I’m piercing something - I try to keep it stationary. A lot of times the trauma afterward or bleeding afterward means I didn’t change it. When freehand piercing came in people - you know the old freehand way when you pinch the rook? It was like they were MMA-ing the ear, it was brutal, and the first freehand navels I had employees bragging to me how they had the tip of the needle poking through before they even told them to breathe because they were just resting and pushing it together. I’m not a farmer - I don’t plant the needle. I believe the piercing starts in your mind as soon as you feel the needle. So I pierce and bring the tissue together simultaneously, just one motion. It’s rare for me to touch the needle to anyone before I pierce them. I’m not saying that's good or bad, it’s just how I do it. But I don’t even know if this is something I need to talk about anymore, does it even really matter?

Ari - Well I think another big difference is needles. I wasn’t using coated needles when I started, but now I fart and the needle goes through the client and the wall beside them. You can pierce someone without them really even knowing whats necessarily happening, as opposed to your whole hand trembling behind a needle pusher.

Didier - There were plastic needle pushers for a bit when I was starting but honestly it never made sense to me. It’s a needle, not a steak knife, so I never was comfortable with them. I used Fakir needles, they had the little color code for the gauge inside the sterilized packet, and I never had a problem pushing those. When I was taught to pierce if you’re going to go you fucking go. You don’t stop - you just go. One time at Mastodon someone brought in Gauntlet needles and I’d never used them before so I was like ok, it’s Gauntlet, must be awesome! I tried it and dude it was rough - like not sharp. I don’t know if they were reselling cam needles or what, I still have a set of Gauntlet needles that someone brought in - another piercer had me do a conch industrial on them at Mastodon and brought me these 10g Gauntlet needles. I was like let me keep these and I’ll just use my regular needles! I was lucky to get those lessons early on to make my life easier. When Eric left Fakir and we didn’t have Fakir needles anymore I’m not sure if we used New Vision at all but we used Industrial Strength LLC. Those needles are fucking amazing. Their large gauge stuff is great. My manager tries to keep up with current stuff, and as soon as we tried some coated needles I’m like 14g don’t butt up with navel curves - I mean really, after 20+ years I’m having trouble with a navel transfer? One thing you used to be able to trust was needle consistency, now the wall sizes have changed. I don’t know if people discuss this but other people besides me have to notice.

Ari - My big issue with those coated needles is I bend my needles a lot for different things and coated needles don’t bend for shit.

Didier - From the start I was bending needles for things like tragus, daith and whatnot. I always bent them by hand but I just bought a masterkey to try out. It’s good for needle blanks and disposable tubes in the crackpipe shape.

Ari - Crackpipes are the only thing I’ll use for forward helixes, I cannot live without those things.

Didier - The way things have changed, for whatever time since Neometal has sort of become the standard, seven or ten years, but I didn’t necessarily jump on board right away. I wasn’t crazy about the polish until later on, but I know High Priestess always was big on them, especially anti-tragus work and ear project stuff.

Ari - Oh yeah, throwing those little curves under peoples eyes all day long!

Didier - It’s a Eugene staple! Georg has done how many years of MMA with them still in?

Ari - That’s my favorite thing to say, if you don’t like me doing that go complain to Georg.

Didier - I’ve just grown to where I wouldn’t even want to work anymore without all these disposable receiving tubes and disposable tapers and everything, they just make life so much easier. We have regular tapers and stuff for when you really need them but I still do most piercing from the outside in, easier to judge my angel and feels more comfortable, and when you’re using tapers all day they got tossed or accidentally put in the sharps or any number of things. There was no bevel theory talk when I was trying to work on going back to front and which way to place the bevel. I saw the needle drift, to use their words. But it’s whatever most comfortable for people - I mean that pretty much sums up almost all the APP classes. Just do what’s most comfortable for you. I’ve just about talked myself to death to my employees. We’re pretty good at staying on top of each other though, so if somethings consistently off we’ll bring it up, otherwise I give them the freedom to work how they want. I live a life of being really hard on myself so it’s probably tough on those around me too.

Ari - Well that seems to be an issue I see with piercing culture is people trying to pierce a certain way to fit in with what they think is normal or cool rather than thinking is this what’ll be best for the client? Because who gives a shit if you can figure out how to do something without any tools, if it’s less accurate and slower when you do it it’s not the optimal method. That person on the other side of the country doesn’t pay my electric bill, my fucking clients do. I always harp on this concept but I just feel like so often now I feel like people are making decisions based on what they’ve heard instead of what they’ve seen from doing it over and over again. It just seems like madness. Or at least people should be consistent - if you don’t want to do anything that’s difficult to heal, that’s stupid but ok sure, just do lips and earlobes and call it good. But to be like oh I don’t do X, Y, and Z because they’re hard to heal, but turn around a do a triple forward helix or ten gauge nostrils on someone is like what in the fuck are you doing? How are those ok but not a Neo curve under someone's eye? But then I realize how important Instagram is to people and it makes a little more sense. I know I brag a lot about HPP but the autonomy they give us is amazing, and at this age, I couldn’t handle it any other way. I would have a hard time finding a respectful tone if someone tried to tell me something I’d been doing successfully for however many years doesn’t work.

Didier - Piercing has changed for sure but I still love what I do, I still attack it with the same passion I had when I started. I’m just doing a lot of ear stuff, but I guess early on that’s what I was doing a lot of as well. Some of the biggest fights I’ve had is to try and not put their nostril piercing too far back or too high on their nose. I don’t try and put everyone in the same spot but I have a certain way to explain to help break it down. Something that accentuates their anatomy. Even the basics still require plenty of skill. Sometimes people get bored and try to reinvent the wheel, put things some fucked up place just to change it up. I don’t want to see a straight up and down eyebrow piercing just because you are sick of doing it the way they did in 1990.

Ari - I mean I think phases are natural for people. I know I went through a time, as many others have, where I was very much “I specialize in genital work, blah blah blah”, but once my focus switched to children I don’t miss piercing genitals at all. I don’t mind them, but I’m perfectly happy to not do any for long durations of time. First off it’s way harder to pierce three and four years olds than to do an apadravya, so I’m mentally more stimulated consistently, but also I don’t miss having someone cum on my hand. Those people whose dicks I destroyed - they don’t remember my name. But I bet you a grip of small children remember our time together, and that's cool as fuck.

Didier - I disagree with that comment! More dick guys will come up to you in public to be like, "hey, you pierced my dick!" then kids will be like. "hey, ten years ago you pierced my ears."

Ari - Fine, but no one ever brought me a hand-drawn card after I pierced their frenum ladder. Plus happy parents tip way better than freaky sex folks.

Didier - I got to pierce this girl’s ears when she was maybe under a year, and a few months ago her mom brought her back in and I did a second set of lobes on her. This was probably earlier on when I started piercing kids so I did what most people do which is pierce them a little higher so as the earlobes grow they move with them. But these piercings stayed high so it was cool because I ended up doing a stacked second set beneath them, looked really cool. I’m the only one in the shop that pierces infants, which I look at like I’m basically piercing the parents. I used to have a lot of deaf clients in my first couple of years and it’s kind of the same - you can’t get the breathing down and just go for it, just doing it as quick and easy as possible. Kids can heal anything, they heal so fast.

Ari - This brings up something I definitely wanted to delve into, which is the idea of kids developing metal sensitivities early on from poor jewelry.

Didier - When I was on the board and manning the booth at a medical conference a lot of the nurses would bring their kids, and we’d get into a conversation about their kids getting pierced with guns, and I’d do my best to educate them. There’s not a day that goes by where we don’t do a ton of ear piercings and I feel like it’s all my propaganda coming to a head. From year one the dangers of ear piercings was shooting out of my mouth - it happens a lot in the studios when you talk to people about when they got their ears pierced. It seems like the introduction at a younger stage to non-implant grade material has set this sensitivity in motion. I lay it out to the parents - the reason I do this is because I don’t want to tell you piercing guns can’t be sterilized, that the studs aren’t implant grade material are being forced through your tissue, that the person doing it hasn’t been trained in BBP - I don’t want to tell you, after telling you all this, that I won’t do it for you. That’s what got me started - that and piercing my daughter when she was an infant, then family, then close clients, and it took off from there.

Ari - We also pierce infants at the studio and I think it’s a really important thing. First off you can’t stop the culture - this anti-baby piercing sentiment is purely an American sentiment, the rest of the world is for it and embraces it. You can’t stop it from happening, so why not fucking help? It seems to me that if you campaign for safety but campaign against piercing babies you don’t actually give a shit. Because even if you aren’t comfortable piercing children, which is valid when your rhetoric actively moves against it you prevent a network of people who do from forming. Anyone who isn’t insulated, socially or in their employment or whatnot, doesn’t want to risk being a pariah. So you’re creating barriers from a network of reputable people preforming a valuable service from forming, and in turn, making it harder to get infant's ears safely pierced. I think more people do than they admit, they just don’t want to talk about it for fear of blowback. Why is it so hard to just say this isn’t in my wheelhouse then pull the fire and brimstone act? You haven’t talked anyone out of it - you’re simply driving people back to Claires when they took a chance to do something better.

Didier - People come in to get their kids pierced and they sometimes don’t even know all the reasons why it’s better - the mindset is just oh I’d rather have it done here. We need to nurture that. Culturally we’re right next to Mexico - they do it right there in the hospital with sharpened studs. In South America, it’s a tradition for grandparents to pay for it. India. We have Indian mothers bringing their sons in as well. My manager was doing it when I wasn’t piercing as much, and he had more issues with the parents than the act of doing it. It’s so much easier for children to get pierced when they’re younger anyway - I’ve seen so many kids between five and ten have meltdowns, where it feels traumatic. A baby is fine after a minute and doesn’t even remember it, they stop crying before they even leave the room. The residual effects of a vaccination is worse than this.

Ari - Two to five is the fuckin sweet spot dude, I love that shit. They’re fun, it’s still exciting because they’re a little nervous, it’s interactive, they cry and a juicebox fixes everything. It’s seven to nine, that’s a difficult fuckin bracket. Those kids get riled up and sometimes you can’t get un-riled. I mean it’s whatever, if they want to leave with one there’s no judgment on my end, the parents are the ones who’re usually trying to argue them into doing a second one.

Didier - I call it the British Pop Star. Are you Rod Stewart? Billy Idol? Elton John? Evan calls them a pirate-like so whats your pirate name? The bribe phase has changed now. It used to be like oh I’ve got some candy, or you’ll get ice cream after this. Now it’s just like I’ll give you a dollar! You negotiate up to five bucks and that’ll do it. You just give them a glucose tab - call it the world's biggest SWEET TART. But babies are great, and the parents are so appreciative. I had a couple from Baltimore last month, I pierced them and my counter person was ringing them up and was like do you want to leave anything extra for Didier, and the husband is like yeah and the wife goes don’t tip him, he’s the owner! I thought it was funny. With all the remodeling work and a limited work schedule, I tend to have a little bit of a waitlist. It’s the only thing I take appointments for now. Once the second piercing room is finished I’ll be able to take more appointments for things though and take more time with them. In general, I need to be able to take more time because I explain what I’m doing and what they want. I don’t want to leave anything up to chance, whether it’s placement or downsizing or aftercare. I’m pretty adamant - I can hardly get my employees to follow my aftercare even though I’ve reasoned the shit out of them, they just want to go with what everybody else is saying. I don’t want to argue - I want to have a discussion. They were falling into that trap of people sleeping on their helixes being a problem - it’s downsizing. I told them I’ve been piercing over twenty years, all my clients to the best of my knowledge slept at night. Do you want to know how many years I pierced both of their tragi on the same day? People want to get them healed and have both. We used to make fun of people for not being symmetrical when I started piercing. You were in the Navy if you only got one nipple pierced. If you weren’t doing both sides it was weird to us, now we act like we’re trying to save the world and not do them together.

Ari - It feels like it’s overcomplicated. You just do the piercing, tell them not to touch it, and perform debris removal, and nothing else is really all that important.

Didier - My thought is if you were practicing hygiene with soap to clean your skin before then why would you stop using soap after? We’re not trying to get you to be a soap expert, we’re just saying lather it up and get the grease and dirt off your skin. If you can’t stick it in your eye don’t stick it in a fresh piercing. What’s around your eyes if you don’t wash your face for a few days, that irritates your eyes if it gets in them? Dirt and grease. Why would you stop washing a body part around it? It’s just clear, decisive sentences - clean around the piercing and do not move it. It worked for decades - why is it so hard now? We already went through a phase of people advising to dry heal, use Tegaderm, and not to clean the piercing. I had a guest artist who didn’t know that letting crust build up around the piercing is a way for hypertrophic scarring to start. That seems like a no-brainer to me.

Ari - Debris removal seems like day one aftercare information. We’re just trying to replicate basic wound care here.

Didier - To me it seems logical. When my client replies back to me “That makes sense” I say if it didn’t make sense I’d expect you to reply “bullshit!” It’s easier to not say anything, have a counter person with little experience convey that information. I remember I heard a counter person one time try to explain which piercings are easy to recover, like if it comes out to reinsert it, and I told them, “we don’t even know until we get a taper inside something what the deal is - that’s just your opinion.”

Ari - Well this is a good example of the subjective being played off as a rule of thumb. It’s the same as the people who’ve worked only in one area for x amount of time dispensing advice that is from a highly situational context. Someone who mistook tea tree oil as helping their piercing when really that piercing was probably just 11 months old and finally healed, but low and behold information is always easy to spread and not to undo. People fall into that trap - oh this worked here so this works in general.

Didier - We should give out fortune cookies with positive reinforcement. I remember there was a shop in Ohio telling people to just leave things alone. I saw a handful of people come into the shop and it worked. But as a rebuttal, my employees will tell me, “well if they’ve already healed a certain way to just do whatever they feel comfortable with.” Well after two decades of saline soaks it was hard for me to accept a spray, or that it would be more effective in irrigation, because for example, if you have a weepy eye and you're just spraying the outside and wiping it you’re only clearing away where things are coming out - if you want to get at the root of it you need to do an eyewash and flush it all out. I understand the variables of mixing your own saline, and the cost of buying a large amount of saline to do those soaks. It’s hard to break some old habits, especially if they work.

Ari - Do you still feel connected to the culture of things even though it’s drifted so far away from what you experienced yourself?

Didier - I still feel connected because I learned how to change, and adapted my theory and knowledge. If it’s still working for my clients and I, and it’s not hurting my clients and I and my business, it still feels good. But there have been adjustment periods that haven’t felt good. There are still really important, knowledgeable people out there educating and putting in the work - that gives me hope. There are a lot of younger people teaching and assuming board positions and I respect their views and have conversations with them. Brian Skellie is someone my whole career I could always call up and talk to, explaining why Epsom salt is high in magnesium, etc. Those little tidbits accumulate over the years. Every time I have a question he was always, and still makes himself, available. Teaching with him at LBP, we have a conversation and he never takes this moral high ground and just tells me I’m wrong. He listens to what I’m saying, doesn’t judge me, and is able to have a good approach about theory and what he thinks without getting too deep into right or wrong, just presenting the information that's at hand. You don’t get that with a lot of piercers nowadays, I feel like they’re just unwilling to have the conversation - it’s more an attitude of, “I don’t know why- it just works!” This year at Camp APP was my first time really spending some time sitting around newer piercers and talking about length about technique and theory. I tend to, at Conference, talk to the same people - even if it’s drifted more to bullshitting than talking shop. It’s not intentional but from the outside, it looks like a clique. That just comes from getting older. Now I talk more about employees and running the shop than I do the technical stuff. I wish younger piercers would discuss things more without the fear of judgment.

Ari - A lot of people glamorize the old BME forums but I don’t think we need anything remotely as intense as those used to be - just someplace to speak openly without a dog pile occurring.

Didier - I wish I enjoyed writing out paragraphs and stories on the internet, I would love to engage on that level because it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s just not appealing honestly. Half the time on the internet I’m thinking who gives a fuck about what I think? Which I think is a healthy internet presence.

Ari - I have for a very long time found myself thinking this isn’t my fucking problem, you all can sort this shit out on your own. It’s not worth the energy.

Didier - But it is on a one-on-one basis, or even a small group, that’s worth the energy. Face to face you don’t act like you do with a screen. You, hopefully, are more respectful and articulate yourself more carefully. I have times where I feel less than adequate, like when everyone started doing shit backward or outside in. I don’t pierce like that. But then I see really good piercers doing weird shit, like using Penningtons for nostril piercings, and it makes me feel better because it’s confidence in something going against the grain - it combats that feeling of “Should I keep doing this?” when I see all these people doing things the hardest way possible, and in my opinion, if you're trying to do it fast and painless, it didn’t seem like a viable option. Some of the stuff the math just didn’t work out - I had to swallow my pride and just do things the way I knew how, but that period of change can be tough because in your brain you think everybody is doing it that new way only.

Ari - Oh for sure. I love it when I see a well-known piercer throw a curved neo post in a fresh forward helix, or some shit that’s like “not supposed” to be done but is totally viable for certain anatomies.

Didier - I was going through my storage the other day and came upon some shit, I totally forgot I was doing forward helixes in the nineties. A picture fell out of a box of printed pictures so I set it aside, it was a forward helix with a curve and an IS cab. I was like holy shit, this was the mid-nineties. My girlfriend in the early nineties had a forward helix with a ring and I totally blocked that out, I forgot. But going back to feeling like you’re behind, doing the remodel of my shop helped somewhat too. I was thinking about how fast all the piercers at my shop must work, how they must not even sweat these busy days and all the inserts. But I’m remodeling the shop and I got to see how full the lobby would get, see them go days where they couldn’t sit down to eat, counter people too, and it helped to see that in a way to make me feel like I’m not too far behind.

Ari - You’ve talked about working consistently throughout your studios the whole time, which feels pretty rare for studio owners.

Didier - Sure, I mean there were times like when my ex-wife moved my kids out of state that took me out of the shop for 2-3 weeks at a time. I would come up to Eugene to work, or Deep Roots, Ryan would let me stay with them, and I also believe I was on the Board of Directors at that time. That period I pulled back but would still come back to work. When I quit the board I was a little bit disillusioned for a while and let my employees work. I came to the conclusion, I mean we had a really cohesive group, but a couple of people branched off in their own way to pursue their own interests, and some changes in the board took place, and the dynamic changed. I had been elected a second term but it didn’t have the same appeal and my really close friend died, it was multiple factors, and so I pulled back. The reason I gave myself was I’m out there doing this work, trying to help everybody with their studios, I’m doing it for the community, and I’m not necessarily focusing on my own studio and my city. I thought it was a good idea to redirect the focus to that instead. I got a call and was told I was being put on the imposter's list because I hadn’t sent in my video - I had supposedly been sent emails or calls, but I didn’t receive either. Before I quit the board one of my friends told me someone on the membership committee had it in for me, wanted to make an example of me. I didn’t think much of it, didn’t know who they were, and later at a conference when I found out I confronted them about it and she was like yeah, it was true, I did it, and that she purposely didn’t get a hold of me. At the time I was like oh ok, whatever, it’s cool, but it stewed with me afterward and I got irritated. It felt like I had just committed a few years of my life to the organization and felt I shouldn’t have been treated like that.

Ari - Look, I’m pretty vocal about my lack of support for the APP. I think they, like all organizations, have people who fall prey to power when it’s given to them, and there tends to overwhelmingly be a lack of accountability when they act out. I don’t think you’re wrong to feel slighted there. That’s not to shit on everyone involved, nor to say the newer members can’t change it, but knowing its history I’m just not a fan and prefer to stay away.

Didier - I had outted a couple of board members trying to keep Brian Skellie off the board, and they even called Ben and Georg and Paul, since they had the most members, to lobby against Brian. It was pretty sad to see that.

Ari - I have been annoying Ben for my entire time with the company to withdraw all the memberships. At this point I know they feel like for the time being it’s still worth it, but I still like to bring it up at least once a year. They’re so patient with me.

Didier - I don’t hate the APP, I’m still pro-APP, all I have is my practical experience but I don’t have all the work they’ve done, that members do, all the stuff they teach. I think they’ve brought a lot of helpful things to light, that they’ve done more good than bad, I’m grateful because I wouldn’t have found such a hefty group of people who care about what they’re doing if it wasn’t for them. I can see my work in it; I sacrificed my time, my money - shit, I coined “proud member” and “APP supporter”. I’ve learned to appreciate what I’ve got - I’ve got two shops, moderate success, I just want to let things go that aren’t my concern or business.

The content of oral history interviews is personal, experiential, and interpretive because, by its nature, it relies on the memories, perceptions, and opinions of individuals. While all reasonable attempts are made to avoid inaccuracy, the interviews are presented in good faith to be accurate and should not be understood as statements of fact or opinion endorsed by Ari Pimsler, Shawn Porter, or Sacred Debris. We welcome opposing viewpoints from individuals with first-hand knowledge of the people, places, and situations contained herein as well as corrections on spelling, timelines, or names. Email sacreddebris@gmail.com attn Shawn.