The wisdom of body piercings: ritual, renewal
Watching from my porch this week as mobs of freshmen criss-crossed the streets in search of parties, I felt relieved to be past that particular stage of my college life.
At Northwestern, New Student Week is a sort of ritual, a boot camp for college social life. Watching, I wondered if rituals like this one are really worth it. Are they as important or life-changing as they seem at the time?
A visit to the Chicago Tattooing and Piercing Co. on West Belmont helped point me in the right direction.
Hank Bangcock, a sturdy man with a smile that stretched as far as his multi-gauged pierced ears, stood beside the rack of tattoo designs — a wall of modern hieroglyphics — in the lobby of the shop. He projected an air of calmness and happiness that was welcomed by the sweaty-palmed customers waiting there. Wearing a black skullcap, dark beard and black shirt, he resembled a macabre but still warm and jolly Santa Claus. When he addressed a customer, he talked slowly and deliberately, taking the tone of an expert lecturer as he delivered instructions on taking care of the newly poked holes.
“I never give a piercing that I don’t have myself,” Hank said reassuringly.
He has a reverence for his craft. Hank feels that piercings change people, allow them to get past cultural taboos and, in effect, challenge conventional thinking. When Hank finishes with the needle, customers have solid evidence that a ritual has been completed, proof that they have entered a different stage of life.
Although he would admit that the profession has become much more ascetically based in the last decade, he still feels his job has a quasi-mystical property.
“In any other age, we would be considered priests in a temple,” Bangcock said. “I feel a kinship with guys in caves who were poking people with sticks.”
Bangcock’s mother always wanted him to be a priest — and he even studied religion at NU in the early ’90s — but his path led to this alternative priesthood. He left NU and eventually hooked up with a group of bikers who taught him how to piercer.
Hank discovered the finer points of piercing on a personal level. In all, Hank has 11 piercings on his body, including in his nipples, ears, tongue and earl (through his nose level to his eyes), and has all the appearance of one of the initiated. In fact, his demeanor, that of an outgoing, generous man, seems to fall right in line with his theory that people are freed from some of the constraints of society after being pierced.
After we talked about the pain he suffered during some of the more difficult piercings he underwent, he began to discuss how nearly a decade’s worth of performing and undergoing piercings had changed his outlook on life.
“Do what you want in life,” he said. “That’s the path to true greatness.”
Hank had found his ritual and it had set him free. It wasn’t always pretty — at times it was downright ugly (try asking him about the time he pierced a man’s uvula and got vomited on) — and I wouldn’t want to walk too far in his shoes, but I can appreciate the value of the ritual.
The same can be said about New Student Week. I’m glad I’m not a freshman, but I can appreciate importance of the ritual.
Pat Sisson is a Medill junior. He can be reached at [email protected].
