Well, I'm 32, divorced, with a good job, a nice house and a car that runs. And I now have a pierced navel.

Yep, today was the day. Maria, a friend from work, came with me. Originally we were both going to get it done, but then she decided that she really couldn't afford it right now, but she'd come with me anyway. Which was good, since I wasn't too sure where the place was. And everyone said that the place to get any kind of body-mod work done, tattoos or piercings, was absolutely, without question, Jack&Diane's.

Okay, when twenty different people recommend a place, that's where you go.

From the outside it looks like any other hole-in-the-wall shop, but when I got inside I was instantly impressed. The place was spotless. White walls, clean chairs, and very reassuring. (Yeah, so I was a little nervous.) Of course the people who were working there were all a bit scary looking--piercings and tattoos galore--but then I realized that I'd much rather have someone who was intimately familiar with piercings to do it on me.

So, this moderately-scary-looking dude named Glenn took Maria and me into a back room and gave me a quickie explanation of what he was going to do. Then he asked me to tuck my shirt up under my bra, and to unzip my jeans about halfway and tuck them down. He may have looked scary, but he was incredibly polite; he actually looked away while I was doing the tucking.

Then he cleaned my navel for several minutes with betadine.

Next step, after the cleaning, was to mark with a pen where the needle was going to go. Glenn took his time with this, making sure it was centered. Then he took a surgical clamp and latched it onto the place he was going to pierce.

He had me lie down then, and made sure everything was still fine with the clamp. (The ends of the clamp were open triangles, so that the spot to be pierced was inside the clamps.)

And then it was time for the needle. It hurt right when he first put the needle through, in a suck-breath-through-the-teeth kinda way.

Glenn said, "That's as bad as it's gonna get." And he was right. It only took a few seconds for that sting to fade away. After making sure that everything was still centered right, he put the jewelry in, closed it up, and that was it. By the time he told me to sit up so that he could clean it off, it had stopped hurting. In fact, I was rather surprised at how little it hurt. Heck, it hurt more when I had my ears pierced.

But, of course, navels take a lot longer to heal than ears, and after I was all cleaned up, he had me sit down again and then lectured me for several minutes on how to clean it and take care of it. He told me that it would probably take six months for it to heal completely, and then gave me written instructions of what he'd just told me.

So there you have it. Maria took the pictures, and then we went out to lunch. My posture has been excellent all day, since slouching makes the ring press against the other side of my navel and causes it to sting a bit. But heck, the rejection I got from Realms of Fantasy today stung worse. ;-)