But for the lucky few who happened to receive a response, the answer is something like: “I don’t know? How would I know?” I’ve gotten away from responding to this question altogether, especially when it’s the first thing someone says to me in a conversation. “How’s that tongue feel on a (fill in the blank)?” It’s usually just some deviation of one main question, and the hilarious part is, I really can’t answer it: It was right around the time I very prematurely came out to my parents, and I felt the need to reassure them that the piercing had nothing to do with sex (which I wouldn’t even have until I was nearly out of my teens) because I understood how prevalent this attitude was, and still is. I was 14 when I first got my tongue pierced, and I remember, even as a child, my attraction to it was purely aesthetic, but I already understood how oral body modifications are immediately sexualized. (See the July column I wrote a few months back on sexualizing and objectifying people with body mods.) Most of these comments do not come from people whom I’m about to be intimate with, but rather from pretty much complete strangers on dating apps. ![]() Honestly, I get pretty repulsed trying to recount the amount of questions I’ve received about my tongue in regard to sex, even when it was just a piercing. I don’t really have to think about it, and because my tongue was in one piece for a lot of my life, I find that in these more unconscious acts, they sort of act as one piece anyway, unless I’m using the right side to access the right corner of my lips or mouth, or vice versa (which is a bit more of a calculated muscular movement with any tongue). Mobility when eating is just as unconscious as any person controlling their own tongue while eating food: After healing, it’s involuntary. And yes, I can still taste everything the same. In fact, I was eating and talking essentially back-to-normal about two weeks after I split my tongue. My tongue was split and immediately sutured, so while the first week was a little more tiring and intense, it wasn’t a months-long process like oral piercings can sometimes be. People are surprised when I say that my split tongue was a quicker heal than any of my tongue piercings, but it’s true.Ī piercing with a professional needle is essentially making a space that wasn’t there before and then leaving the jewelry there, caretaking to the site, until your body essentially gives up on healing the new hole and works around it. I have retired three tongue piercings with each, I had a good week or so of a mostly-liquid diet, avoiding high-sodium and dairy foods, and ultimately finding if I overstepped that boundary and ate something that required too much mobility out of my healing tongue, I’d surely feel that soreness the following day. With any oral modification, your relationship and habits with food during the initial healing will shift significantly. I have to say, plainly, if oral modifications significantly altered a person’s ability to eat long term, I’m not sure that folks would truly pursue them in the numbers they are. ![]() “Is it easier or harder to get food out of your teeth?” “Can you still taste everything the same?” Many folks are curious how anything from a tongue piercing to tongue bifurcation would affect consuming food, one of life’s simple and essential pleasures. In the same vein as my tongue piercings of yesteryear, the mod typically prompts questions in line with the dueling themes of this issue: food and sex. I also don’t expect that to change a ton, as my tongue usually stays in my mouth in public, but I’ve already run into a fair amount of questions online from friends, strangers, and gross men on Grindr, mainly. There’s a continuous sense of relief in doing it during the pandemic in 2020: Most of my in-passing interactions with strangers are masked, so I have yet to field the plentiful questions and passing comments I often receive with my tattoos and piercings. I remember seeing the “Lizard Man” Erik Sprague in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not book I snagged at an elementary school book fair and being enthralled with the concept and look. ![]() Splitting my tongue was probably one of the most “long-time-coming” mods I’ve collected. I’ve lightly alluded to my most extreme body modification-over my tattooed hands and large-gauge, inner-cartilage piercings-in the columns preceding this one, and in this penultimate Mods column, I’m spilling just a little more.
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