BDSM Weblog

A few days ago, I had my first tattoo done, and I’d like to talk about that process from an SM/pain perspective. Being familiar with pain, I knew I could handle it; but it was still a new experience, so I was a little apprehensive.

In a nutshell, it wasn’t really that bad. There were only a couple of cringe-worthy moments in the 2.5-hour process, and those were fleeting.

A friend of mine described having a tattoo done as being similar to a very intense violet wand session. I can see the parallel, even more so due to the sound that the tattoo gun makes being somewhat like an electric crackle. Overall it felt like what it was: something very pointy being vibrated against my skin very fast. It didn’t really feel like it was actually piercing the flesh — probably because it was going past the epidermis, but just enough to get to the dermis.

There were also two types of needles/guns used. At some point in the process, I think during shading, he used a gun that sounded a lot different — quieter, and a more… “watery” sound, as if it were submerged. I asked about that, and he said it was a rotary tattoo gun. Doing a bit more research, I see that there are four different types of gun — rotary, coil, liner, and shader. I’m not sure which of these was used on me; it’s quite possible all four were, and some just sounded the same as others. The rotary gun had more of a pressure, “grinding” sort of feeling to it, with a hint of an abrasive feeling. I’d classify it as less painful than the other gun by just a bit.

Just as painful as the needle, if not more so (probably more so), was the nearly constant wiping-away that the artist did, to remove excess ink, and any blood that came up. The skin was already raw from the poking, so adding abrasion to that wasn’t terribly comfortable. And it was a different sort of pain, so it was difficult to keep in the headspace.

Being into BDSM definitely helped with the process. Specifically, it helped to practice pain processing such as breathing techniques and focusing. I even found myself going into brief bouts of headspace many times during the process. My girlfriend was there to lend support, but due to being in and out of headspace so much, I was pretty unresponsive. That, combined with the fact that I was looking off into space and hardly ever looked at her, made her think that I was angry with her for checking in — but we talked about it later and cleared that up. I’m definitely glad she was there, and checking in.

Overall it was a good experience, and I have a lifelong mark from it — how cool is that?

Filed under: Goings-On, Miscellaneous by Sammael