Words: Isis Graham
Photos: Jessica Wittman
Before you go assuming this article is going to be about self mutilation, consider how interesting scars are. Every scar tells a story, natural or self induced. Stretch marks on a woman’s belly can indicate a recent pregnancy, a long scar down your chest can indicate surviving a major heart surgery, an “x” on your knee can indicate a knee replacement, and small scars on your hands can mean, well anything: burn scars, car accidents, or that time that Bobby accidentally shot you with his BB gun in Jr. High. All of these things happen every day. We all run around downtown in our work clothes with secrets and scars and stories. Nobody in our society in the right mental state is going to look at the above mentioned scars with radical negative judgment. The type of cognitive interpretation that a person uses to recognize these as “normal” scars is the same type of judgment a person uses to analyze a tribal scar or judge a self-induced cutter’s scar.
Scarification and tattooing has been practiced by our species for (possibly) over 200,000 years for lack of better proof or research to take it back further. It is believed that the first forms of scarification were used as social markers - sort of how we have grade six, nine and twelve graduations. Men and women would be - and still are - subjected to painful scrapings, sewing, and cuttings of the skin; most of time with very primitive tools made out of rock or wood or in some cases, very old, very dirty metals or glass. Living through these trials and bearing these marks proves something for these people. For the boys it could be coming of age; for girls, it can show that she can survive the pain of going through childbirth. Some tribes in Nigeria use facial scarring and modification as a form of beautification like our North Americans use Botox. Older cultures would modify the bones of their dead which was believed to aid these people in the afterlife and leave evidence for those who came after of what was before.
Today, a person who cuts themselves for pleasure can be hospitalized for mental instability. If you subject yourself to being cut by someone else without painkillers in a tattoo shop or get tattoos or piercings, you can be seen as somewhat of a freak in our society. You are piled into the same social reject bin as alcoholics, drug addicts and white supremacist skin heads. For the next generation it seems that our society will be more relaxed. It has become not only acceptable, but popular to have piercings and tattoos; we have all seen the Miami and LA Ink TV shows where it takes only eight minutes to complete a full color sleeve on someone’s arm… YA RIGHT! Will scarification and body modifications be the next big thing, or will it remain an underground culture?
I am the fairly typical white-girl-living-in-North America type. I have one stylish tattoo and the same-as-everyone-else nose & ear piercings. I have tested my body’s pain tolerance with those few items, but have never contemplated cutting myself or having implants of any sort. Medical surgery was enough for me to understand that I don’t enjoy being cut. Let’s be honest: it hurts and most people are afraid of pain and try to avoid it. I find the thought of being cut open with a scalpel by someone without a medical degree and without pain medication to be a scary thought. When it was arranged that I would meet Dan at Sacred Balance to sit in on one of his scarification pieces on his customer Jeremy Kidney, I had no idea what I was in for. I knew there would be blood, which I am really curious about, so hey what the fuck - let’s do it!
Dan has been performing body modifications since 1997. He has no formal training other than his degree in Zoology from the U of O accompanied by years of intense personal interest and study in human anatomy. Dan can pierce you; install custom Teflon and steel items under your skin; split your tongue or perform scarification on you - all that while wearing jeans and a t-shirt that says “Fucking Classy” on it. Nonetheless, Dan has strict ideas about what types of things people can have done to their body.
“The problem with this industry is you have to direct people on what will work for them. You can’t always do what you’ve seen,” says Dan. “I refused to do something that I don’t think will work.”
He has tried everything he will do to you on himself - he will not give you any room for whining if it hurts. If you’re a baby, this ain’t for you princess. Dan is a tough ass, but he believes in a sanitary and safe practice to create the best work possible which is good news for his clients.
Jeremy, Dan’s client of the day, is at first sight, your grandmother’s worst nightmare. Draped in dark-themed attire and over six feet tall, he totes a green Mohawk and has upwards of 20 facial piercings. Tattoos cover both of his arms and legs. There are metal bars implanted into his forearms and he could probably crush your skull with his bare hands. When you talk to Jeremy, you learn that he is a computer science instructor at the University of Calgary currently working on his Masters. He is extremely intelligent, witty and interesting. Jeremy is a regular client of Dan’s and today he wants complimentary scars around one of his tribal sleeves.
The preparation for the scarification is a five minute sketching session with a sharpie marker. Dan draws the design on Jeremy’s arm, puts on his gloves, a mask, and sanitizes the whole area before he pulls out his disinfected tools which consist of a lot of paper towel and a #11 scalpel. I am getting anxious; I can’t stand getting a paper cut. Jeremy is calm; in fact, he doesn’t even break a sweat. Right before the first cut I was really hoping some super dramatic music would play and maybe some blood, gore and aliens would come spilling out of Jeremy’s arm. Instead, there is no blood after the first cut and something inside of me dies when this happens – all of the glamour is gone. What we are seeing here is a man getting sliced with a sharp knife, and then sliced over and over in the same spot to ensure the lines are the same thickness. BORING! Especially with Jeremy as the recipient who is like a stone. The cutting goes on for about an hour, and when it’s over, the cuts that were done at the beginning of the appointment have now widened to almost ¼ inch in some places on his arm. All that is left to do is abuse the scab. The thing that differs from scars and tattoos is that you want to be as cruel to the scar as possible to get the best effect. The care instructions include: scratch, pick, peel, scrub, irritate, put salt in it, pick, pick and more pick. For all you scab picking, sick bastards maybe this is the body mod you have been waiting for.
Nowadays, scarification is aesthetic or symbolic, or at least for a majority of Dan’s clients it is. He gets people of all ages, backgrounds, men and women coming in with their ideas. He believes that it takes a certain amount of mental strength to submit to one of these procedures and also believes that is one of the main reasons people do it. It is a personal test of strength or survival like our friends in Africa, or a mark of something tragic or life-altering like our friends 200,000 years ago (or something straight up glamorous and cool). Although scarification is very unlikely to become as popular as tattooing or piercing, there is a higher demand for it now than there ever has been. This leads local Tattoo and Piercing shops like Sacred Balance to bring in specialists like Dan to perform these types of body mods. If you have an idea that is a little out of the ordinary, or want to test your personal pain tolerance by modifying your body with rods, balls, scars or implants, you should stop by Dan’s shop to see how deep he can cut you.
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