My Cock Piercing

There were two things I thought I was prepared for: the blood and the pain. I’d done my reading to prep myself. But reading can only tell you so much.
By Rob Roberge
Illustration by Jon Proctor

You poke a hole through the urethra, well, hell, you’re going to see some blood. Any idiot could have guessed that. And the pain? If I may use a fourth-grade rhetorical term, duh! Put a hole in your cock, it’s going to hurt. Rule of life, the price of the ticket, and all that. And I don’t regret it for a moment, though I do wonder about my generation’s old folks’ homes. I’m picturing room after room of pierced, branded, and tattooed octogenarians, making just about any institution look like a retirement home for carnies.

I won’t detail why I (and my wife) decided driving steel through my dick was a fabulous idea. I think of it as a horny man’s version of those bowerbirds that build their nests of tinsel and shiny candy wrappers to attract a mate: “See this, baby? This is the nest you want.”

Our body-modification gal was frighteningly young. She was also tattooed, bejeweled, and studded, a cute-skulled, shaved-headed woman for whom it seemed altogether normal and commonplace—which for her, of course, it was—to stick needles through the tips of strange men’s cocks.

I lay back, naked from the waist down, while it happened. I was prepared for a mind-blowing, white-light pain. I’ve had seven concussions, mostly the result of a basketball-filled misspent youth and a car-accident- and bar-fight-laden, drug-addled young adulthood. I thought I knew pain. My wife, Gayle, was holding my hand, but at enough of a distance that she could see what I couldn’t—the whole gory deal. Her interest in my decorative pain was both intellectual and primal—and altogether hot.

The piercer said, “Your penis is perfectly symmetrical.”

Not, “Wow, your cock is enormous. I’ve never seen such a specimen. My life is cock, and I’ve never seen one this big.” But not, “Jesus, we’ll have to send out for a bird surgeon to get needles small enough to do this job,” either. So I said what felt awkwardly appropriate for the moment: “Thanks.”

“Seriously,” she said, “it’s bizarre how it’s perfectly seamed down the middle.”

And now I started to worry about how something at first perceived to be good can, in fact, be bad. About how perfection and symmetry are the characteristics of unfeeling machines, not the territory of we messy, altogether asymmetrical humans. Like, maybe this was a sign that I wasn’t right in some cock-based way—a phallic version of the kids who can draw perfect circles despite being damaged beyond all repair in other ways. But I figured she didn’t need my neurosis, so I just said, “Hmmm.”

“Don’t see this much. Can I have a picture when we’re done?”

And so, after I agreed to a photo, the piercer asked if I was ready, and I lied and said I was. Then I felt a shock of pain that was not as bad as I’d imagined. And I was reminded, as I am frequently (though I wonder how he would feel about being referenced in this situation), of Mark Twain saying, “I’ve had a great many difficulties in life. Fortunately, most of them never occurred.”

It was over quickly. It seemed to go well. Our piercer said, “Oh, great, there’s no blood at all. This never happens. Stay still, and I’ll get a picture.” Gayle smiled down at me. The only problem was, the piercer’s camera was out of film, so she went to get some. I was feeling relaxed, and amazed at how easily it had all gone.

“How is it?” I asked Gayle.

“Beautiful,” she said.

I sat up to take a look…and that’s when the blood came. And while I had, as I said, read up and done my research, I only ever pictured blood coming out the hole that had been pierced in my flesh—not for a moment thinking it would gush, all East of Eden, out the head of my cock. It was like pissing blood, and I had no control over it. This was news. “Fuck,” I said, flopping back down.

Our piercer walked into the room, saw the tremendous amount of blood, and said, “Oh, you sat up,” in a tone that reeked of disappointment at how stupid people can be.

Eventually, she wiped off enough blood to get a good picture. Then, after wrapping my cock in gauze and doing some cool flipflop thing with a latex glove turned inside out, she sent me home. Later, after putting it off for a long time, I went to the bathroom. I’d read that peeing for the first time would hurt like hell. But, slowly, gently, bloodily, that went pretty well, too, and I thought I was past the worst of it.

Two days later, I came for the first time with my new jewelry in, and this is where, again, my preparation let me down. As I said, I have known pain, and some of it I have liked a great deal—but I am not a tough guy. I tore my knee in three places at once. I also once threw a drunken punch at a guy who ducked; my amateur haymaker landed, instead, in the broken glass of a parking meter, my trapped, torn, and broken hand stuck in said glass while he kicked me till three of my ribs broke. I pissed and shat blood for a week. I have—and I hope it’s obvious that this is pain in an entirely different context—been whipped, cropped, and caned to the point of joyous blood. And I will tell you in all honesty: I have never in my life felt pain like the white-hot pain of that post-piercing orgasm. I bounced off the bed, retreated to the bathroom, and rolled around on the floor—pathetic and fetal—for an embarrassingly long time while Gayle soothed me and apologized. I eventually got my legs under me and told her that no one should ever apologize for giving someone an orgasm, even one with such unanticipated repercussions.

But, as I have now said several times, I thought I knew what to expect, and then even convinced myself that I’d dodged the bullets. And what that taught me was, you can think you’re prepared, but the blood and the pain are always there to surprise you—even when you think you’ve seen the worst of it. Even when you think enough time has passed, and you’re in the clear.