Two Prongs and a Dream: My Accidental Dive into Body Mods

Frostbite & Floorplans

Imagine this: the year is 2000 and Duluth, Minnesota has us in a chokehold. Winter was so brutal that your snot would freeze the moment you cracked open the front door. The air wasn’t just cold—it felt targeted, like it had beef with you. Snowbanks piled up like icy middle fingers, sidewalks crunched with salt, and the pothole-riddled roads were a nightmare. Somewhere in all that frostbitten drama, I finally got my own room—sort of, and the accidental encounter with body mods.

Our childhood home was practically a suburban castle: four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and down in the depths of that dank, often-wet basement were two full-bedroom-sized spaces. One housed my uncle when he was sober and trying, and the other was for his son, my cousin, who'd lived with us since he was twelve due to some hard circumstances. He was nine years older and confidently snagged the best room, which felt like a cozy studio. Who wouldn't want that kind of setup?

Meanwhile, upstairs? My brother had a room with a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, my sister's room used to be shared by both of us until she kicked me out, and my parents had theirs at the top of the stairs. Me? I didn't have one. Well, there was a room we called the backroom—not to be confused with the "backrooms," though the vibes were similar. It had a built-in bed and was technically a bedroom, but we used it as a second living room. It overlooked the creepy apple tree and our neighbor, a teenage Peeping Tom I once caught with binoculars staring in when I was getting dressed.

This room became a haven, a refuge where friends found solace from their own family turbulence, whether for a week or a few months. It boasted my brother’s mammoth, untouchable stereo, and an old box TV teetering on a footstool, alongside my historical collection of gum underneath. Adding to the charm was my mom’s retired sewing stash, once the lifeblood of our handmade childhood wardrobes.

I couldn't sleep in the backroom because my brother had already claimed it as his birthright, like everything else he wanted for himself. Every night, I dragged an old mattress into the living room. During the day, the thin and curiously heavy mattress was everyone's couch for chilling and watching TV or playing video games, but at night it became my bed.

This is me in 8th grade getting attacked by our dog Skeeter, and just there; you can see my mattress.

Then, a miracle happened: my cousin moved out.

A Room of One’s Own (Sort Of)

I claimed that haunted basement as mine. I hauled my heavy mattress into the Kodiak-chew-and-mildew-laced cave and didn’t look back. The leftover TV, so big and heavy it would take five grown CrossFit men to move? Mine. The ripped-up couch? Mine. The ghosts? Also, mine. I didn’t care that half of the things in that room were technically my cousin’s. I had walls now and freedom. That was the first time I felt like I had something that was just for me in a very long time.

Of course, it didn’t last. My cousin came back only a few months later, but by then, my mom was either annoyed with that obnoxious mattress in the living room every night, or she saw how hard I was trying to carve out a little corner of the world for myself. She gave me her bedroom. My dad was a long-haul trucker and rarely home, so that meant she gave up her sanctuary so I could stop dragging a mattress around like a hermit crab.

So here I am, in my new (still slightly haunted) basement room. I'm drawing on the damn walls like a child who found a crayon, mostly band names because I didn't have any posters.

I thought I was so cool, and I never said the drawings on the wall were good by any means. It says Blink-182 in the background

I swear, by the time I got my mom's room, I had saved all the posters and pages from “AP magazine” of bands to grace my neon orange-colored walls.

Boybands, Blood, and BMEzine

I'm watching MTV, and Incubus comes on. Brandon Boyd is there, ears stretched and probably shirtless. Then Davey Havok from AFI appears with his out-of-place lip ring. I was hypnotized. Until then, I thought body modification was just extreme stuff. Blame it on my unhinged late 90s and early 2000s internet search history, which included, among other should-be-banned sites, “BMEzine”. Don’t judge me—I was handed too much freedom with dial-up!

Seeing them, something clicked on a more personal level. It wasn't about suspension hooks, people cutting parts of themselves off in front of a camera, elf-like ears, or tongue splitting. It was just stretched ears and a lip ring. It seemed like a rebellion and a little statement that felt attainable. I wanted my ears to look like Brandon Boyd's and I wanted that dang lip piercing.

I figured, how hard could it be to get my ears that way? Lurking around BME forums I learned about ear stretching in the kind of way only an unsupervised tween on dial-up could. I didn’t have access to fancy tapers, plugs, or have the money for them, so I scanned the room with urgency and excitement. That’s when I saw it: the hair pick I used every morning. I found some scissors and proceeded to cut two of the plastic prongs off. I slathered them in lotion and shoved them straight into my lobes with the confidence of a professional.

The same exact one I had.

The pain was intense, but bearable. I heard some crackling, but chalked it up to being normal. It wasn’t. Blood started pooling at the corners of the prongs, and I quickly cleaned it up, hoping my mom wouldn’t walk in. As I sat in front of the mirror, that smile spread. In that moment, I had agency; I had purpose. And the pain? It felt like it meant something.

Threads of Regret

As my ears healed and my family's discussions grew softer, I found myself wishing for larger ears. Yet again, no money.  I was ready to size up and couldn’t afford the metal tapers locked in the Hot Topic display case, so I did what any desperate, haunted-basement-dwelling tween would do- I found screws. I have no clue what kind they were, but they were thicker than an 8-gauge, and that’s all I needed.

The very thought makes me shake my head now remembering how I walked around middle school with such pride wearing rusty screws for tapers. I recall finding them in our junk drawer of tools and miscellaneous bits. I pushed those suckers in and felt every twist, every sliver of rusted regret. My lobes were screaming, but I had officially leveled up in the world of "absolutely not knowing what the hell I was doing."

My mom was dumbfounded at my absurdity. She just stared at my lobes that were red, angry, and probably housing an incoming infection. She realized I wasn’t going to stop, and gave me money for proper jewelry. I immediately abused that gift and bought stretchers that were way too big: zero gauges. Ripped my ears immediately open like wet paper. Who would ever have thought going from a little over an 8-gauge to a zero would do that?

Chain-Smoke and Green Lights

As my abused lobes healed in the throbbing fashion I remember so clearly, there was one thing left to complete the dream: a lip ring. Of course, I’m a glutton for punishment and didn’t think that was enough, so I went to my dad. He was under his truck, chain-smoking and halfway inside an engine block when I thought this was the perfect time to ask him about something he would never understand or care about. I don’t think he was listening because he just grunted an answer: "Sure."

That was all I needed.

Spelled Wrong, Built Different

After begging my mom and her explaining to my dad that what I wanted wasn’t a normal ask for a 12-year-old, she caved. I hit the Yellow Pages, found the tattoo shop with the biggest ad, and called. They told me I just needed a birth certificate, a school ID, and a parent. Frantically searching for a birth certificate, I found it in my unfinished baby book. I looked at it, confused, and asked my mom why my middle name was spelled differently. She laughed and asked, “We’ve been spelling it wrong your whole life?!” I had been spelling it wrong for years and didn’t know. I’d like to think they spelled my middle name that way on purpose, but it was definitely a typo.

The Smell of Dettol and Destiny

The shop was on Superior Street, in the heart of Downtown Duluth. The front window was big—it made everything inside look like a fishbowl scene from a movie. I didn’t wait for my mom, there was no way. I was on a mission. Opening the door, I heard the little bell above jingling.  I entered my future, though I didn’t know it then.

The second I opened the door, the air hit me like a punch: Dettol and green soap. At the time, I had no clue those were the smells, but it was unforgettable. It was perfect. That smell settled in my bones, sterile, sharp, and somehow comforting. It felt like a fever dream from the back of a tattoo magazine brought to life.

I remember the shop guy handing us paperwork, and I overheard a client say he felt faint. I clearly remember the artist recounting the time this other dude, who watched a piercing happen and needed to sit down, walked towards the couch and crashed into the previous glass coffee table. I thought, Why would you replace it with the same kind of table? Idiots. My mom decided to wait in the lobby after hearing that.

I recall being guided back to the piercing area and being captivated by Deftones' "Change (In the House of Flies)" playing loudly around me. This song holds a special place in my heart. It reminds me of this moment in time, being too distracted by the art on the walls to listen to the instructions before the sting of Listerine. The piercing was quick and easy, far from painful, but yet again could only compare it to what I just did to my damn ears. 

That moment didn’t just pass through me—it resonated, creating something I couldn’t ignore. It wasn’t about simply getting a piercing; it was about being accepted, feeling like I belonged in some weird way, and meeting people who are into the same things as me. I lived in an environment where I wasn’t understood or was bothered to be asked why I did the things I did.

That moment transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary. It cracked something wide open, a space for self-expression that felt raw, rebellious, and real. In that tiny shop on Superior Street, I realized I wanted to live in a world where people could wear their identities boldly, where every mark and every piece of jewelry became a symbol of resilience, freedom, and meaning. It was a spark—a beginning of a dream in a place soaked in Dettol and teenage dreams.

The teen dreamer