I just got the coolest piercing and am now thinking about getting a tattoo. The whole experience was fun and I can’t wait to do it again.
A couple weeks ago, a dear friend of mine decided he needed a piercing. He had been talking about it for awhile but just never did it. He would describe to me exactly how he wanted it and where it was going to go and what he was going to wear with it. Finally he manifested the perfect opportunity, and he requested my presence.
I gladly went along because not only did I want to support him in his experience, but I also wanted to “experience” it myself, on some level. So, off we went. The whole thing was an event, because we didn’t just go to a mall where one can get a quick piercing with a smile… We went to a serious, famous tattoo parlor where all the serious body art artists and aficionados go to. Just being there was cool with all the art on the walls and all the sample artwork.
While my friend was filling out the “if we kill you by accident, it wasn’t our fault, it was your fault,” paperwork, I walked around the place and spent a few minutes watching a tattoo artist decorate, if you will, another man’s arm, while they talked about the guy’s girlfriend and how she just didn’t get why he wanted more tattoos. They let me watch and I let them do their thing until my friend was ready, and it was “show time.”
In this case, the person that was going to do the tattooing was a young female. She had more tattoos on her than you could count, namely because so many of them were hidden. She had this really rough personality, but deep down, I knew she was a sweetheart, and it was fun watching her put up a mean, no shit exterior. Good for her, she was really into it and it made the experience even more interesting. In fact, I told her that, at the end, when I asked her if I could take a picture with her.
Before you know it, she had her arm around me and a big smile. Damn, I don’t know what happened to the picture. Between our cell phones and two cameras that my friend brought for the documentation of this moment, we can’t find the picture.
But back to the piercing. When it was all over and my friend had his piercing, no sooner had the piercing happened that my friend announced he would be back soon to get a tattoo. And I could tell, he meant it. Cool.
The next words out of my friends mouth were, “Filippo, when are you going to get a piercing?”
“I just did,” I immediately responded.
“What do you mean?” asked my friend.
I explained to my friend, that though I didn’t physically feel the needle going through my body and though I won’t be wearing a piece of jewelry on my body, on some level I had the experience right along with him. If I am to believe and understand that “we are all one,” then on some level I have to believe that I got myself a piercing that day. After all, I couldn’t have been closer to it than to actually have had it done. It’s not like my friend went and had a piercing and then told me about it, or showed me. I was right there with him.
Okay, so when a woman has a baby and others are there to experience the delivery, I know for sure they don’t experience the same thing the Mother to be does, but in a sense, “they” had a baby. This is why I like it when couples say, “we’re pregnant,” because having the baby, though the woman is carrying the child, and though she experiences pain, discomfort and emotions of love like no man ever could, the process of having a baby, is very much part of his experience too. And he will never come close in this lifetime to knowing exactly what that whole experience is like from the woman’s perspective, but he is not supposed to. That is not how he came to experience life. He came to experience it, exactly as he came to experience it.
Though in the case of a piercing, I actually could physically have one, on some level, I had a piercing when my friend got one. I later explained to my friend, that he has lived many a time, vicariously through me. I have shared with him, many an experience that he could not or chooses not to do in this lifetime. And through that experience he has grown, changed, enjoyed, what have you.
And so, when “he” got a piercing, “we” got a piercing.
My friend told me he really liked my answer and I was really glad cause, I really didn’t want a piercing. 🙂