Most athletes who make it to the professional level have dedicated a large part of their life to the honing of their respective skills. It’s not unheard of for a twenty-something year old rookie to have played his sport for ten, twelve even fifteen years before he makes it to the big time. In fact, it’s basically a requirement. In that aspect, body piercer Rico Drum can relate: he has spent the past eleven years studying and perfecting the piercing techniques that he utilizes at Midnite Tattoos. The twenty-six year old master piercer ("I figure that if you spend eleven years as a piercer, you can put master in front of it," Rico said) has been poking holes in people since he was fifteen years old. "It’s a passion," the hefty Drum explained.
Born and raised in Germany (his mom married a soldier), Rico’s first customer was his little brother. "He wanted his ear pierced, and I stuck a needle through his ear... I was like, this is cool. Ever since, I’ve been hooked." He spent two years and fifteen hundred dollars learning the tricks of the trade, so to speak. "If you don’t pay for your skills, you’ll abuse them." He apprenticed under two different piercers: one taught him the basics of body piercing (nipple, tongue, eyebrow, etc.), while the other taught him more advanced techniques (such as tongue splittings, advanced genitalia, and scarification). The extra time devoted to learning the intricacies of his craft has given Rico a wealth of knowledge, something he’s more than happy to share. "I want everyone to know as much about the safety and history of body piercing as I do," he told me.
Not too many local piercers can make the claim that they’ve pierced people in three different countries: Rico can. In addition to piercing people in Germany and here in the states, the six years that he spent in the Army allowed him to ply his trade in Korea as well. (By the way, Rico is a trained aircraft electrician.) Not only has he pierced in three different countries, but he has also pierced in four different states. His resume includes working in two shops in Florida (he apprenticed in one), a stop in Alabama (his other apprenticeship), one in Kentucky, and one here in Clarksville, where he has been since January of this year. He also has experience performing the more exotic body modification styles, including brandings, scarification, and tongue splittings, amongst others (he has also seen a penis splitting, but we’re not going there). He also found the time to pierce his fellow Army buds in the barracks and his friends’ house. His experience combined with the amount of knowledge that he his accumulated over the past eleven years puts Rico in the upper echelon of piercers in the surrounding area.
"I love it when people come in and they get the piercing for the experience, not just ‘cause it’s something cool to do," Rico answered. What I asked him about what he likes about piercing. Rico himself has only a handful of piercings, with each holding a special meaning to him. Among the things that he doesn’t like are minors being pierced, shoddy work, and the lack of regulations in Tennessee concerning body piercing. "It may sound like I’m a traitor to my kind, but I’m not," Rico explained. "Anybody can stick anybody else with a needle. I’ve seen tongue piercings go through veins or nick them; I’ve seen them so crooked it’s pathetic... either know what you are doing, or stop." The best way you can find out if the piercer knows what he’s doing according to Rico is to ask questions. "If he or she can’t answer them, then they obviously don’t know what they’re doing."
A piercer who takes pride in doing his job is someone that I would send my kid to for his first piercing (if I had a kid). You have to trust the person holding the needle enough to let them poke a hole in you without worrying that they’ll screw it up. The one thing that hurts more than the piercing itself is having to pay someone else to fix it. In Rico’s case, he’s usually the one doing the fixing.
