Holy shit. I just did possibly the most intense thing in my life today. So Sam calls me up at 10am this morning.
"Hello?" I mumbles.
"Hey Ren! What are you doing today?" he chirps, all sunshine and bushy-tailed Samness.
"Ruhhngr."
"Are you still asleep?"
How do I answer this? Technically I can't still be asleep if I can pick up the phone, but I can't say I'm not asleep either.
He carries on, "Well, I'm going to this suspension piercing workshop about an hour outside of London. There's a train leaving London Bridge at 11:15 if you want to meet us there. I'm going with this really cool girl, S, and it's at this house in Robertsbridge. Do you want to go?"
"Arrrnguh."
"Okay, well, why don't you lay there for about 20 minutes and think about it? If you want to go, come meet us there."
So I thought about it. Did I even want to see this? Blood, pain, and extreme body modification has never been my bag. Could I live with myself if I didn't go? I'd already missed NoWhere for work for crying out loud. Could I afford to lame out on this too?
So I got up and took the tube to London Bridge. I dashed to the NR platform 2 minutes before the train arrived. S, Sam's friend is supercool. She'd just completed a Fakir workshop a few weeks back and was coming off a 3 week high from it. She could not wait to go back.
By the time the train journey was over, I was sold.
However, arriving at the community was a different thing. There were about a dozen people together, and most had done suspension or at least hooks before. Alex was the ringleader here. He lost count after 46 suspensions.
"But what about the pain?" I kept asking. "Doesn't it hurt? What do you get out of it?"
To make a long story short, Alex put two meat hooks through my chest and attached me to a tree. I didn't suspend, but I did pull against S, and against the tree. It was intense. I seem to have fainted for about 3 seconds from the intensity of it.
It's not so much the pain. That is one second of pain and two seconds of this really strange "thick" feeling while the hooks are being pulled through you. It's just really surreal to look down and see large stainless steel meat hooks in your chest. When I looked down, it was too much. But when I closed my eyes and just felt it, it was...well, there is no one word for it. When the hooks pull at you, you feel a tightening in your chest. The volume of your chest and your body is the same, but there is less skin so you feel tighter. It's really strange. If you just let go, you can push yourself a lot further.
Also, it's amazing how strong flesh is. It's living, breathing, supple leather. Normal pulling and suspension will not tear your skin. Someone quoted the skin as needing 93 lbs of pressure per square inch to tear it.
Some people were hard core. Full suspensions, big fat meat hooks, blood, the whole deal. Sam and this guy Tom had 4 hooks apiece in their back and played tug of war. I felt like kind of a wimp. I pulled a bit, I fainted, I let Sam pull at the hooks.
It really sounds like everyone gets something different out of this. For some, it's about controlling your body; some people get into a meditative trance while being suspended; Sam loves to put himself into intense situations. For me, it was about facing my terror of pain and to try something outside of my box. I went home an ecstatic customer.