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ARTICLE: THE GLORY IN BODY MUTATION - Ugly Shyla

From a outsider's standpoint what people like me do is seen as "body mutation" and it is assumed that someone that participates in things like body modification must have something terribly wrong with them. It is also assumed by secretly perverse minds that people must do most hardcore body modification because they get something "sexual" out of it. I can say, speaking for myself of course and most of the people that I know that have done things like energy pulls and suspensions, that those assumptions are totally untrue. Unlike BD/SM and fetish play body modification isn't about sexual arousal. For myself it's more of almost spiritual and empowering thing, it's overcoming your own weak body, it's a realization that your body really isn't "you". I also see it as being about the beauty of the grotesque.

For most people it's something that is done for spiritual and aesthetic reasons and to also make you feel closer to your real self. Since it's also one of those things that is hard to explain since it's more of a feeling, experience, a journey. So to help you all understand it I will give a run down of the most recent body modification performance I was involved in with, an AMF show. Myself as well as Louis the founder of AMF, Machina and Barely Evil model Szandora all participated in the show.

First it started out that myself, Machina and Louis would all get our bodies painted in a sort of corpse like fashion.Then it was time for the hooks to be put in. Louis got his hooks put in first then I told Machina I'd go before her so she could see how bad it was. The hooks are put in by first piercing the skin with a piercing needle then putting the hook through by pushing the needle out. Much the same way any other piercing is done. The piercers were great they went really fast and didn't hurt at all. They laid us out on a table and prepped us then put our neck hooks in first then we'd turn over the get the back ones. The neck was allot less worse then I thought it was going to be. Machina got hers with no problems it was also a lot less worse then she thought it would be. We finished with all that and then got ready to go on stage. The stage it's self was decorated with real skinned Lamb heads, Cows feet, a drum which was being played by Louis' drummer Jay Jay and there was also a large silver bowl of Cows blood. We took our places on stage with signs that said Freedom is Slavery, Disobedience is Terrorism, Ignorance is Strength. Louis was holding blood in his mouth and spat it on his sign, then into his hand and smeared it onto myself and Machina's face. We then all proceeded to rip up our signs.

Next Louis attached a spring with the which had a microphone attached to it onto our necks hooks and started playing it with large meat hook. He'd like scrape along the spring with the hook and the microphone would pick up the noises. So you basically heard the sound of our pain.

Once we started pulling against the spring and Louis was scrubbing it with the hook and the drums were playing loudly I started to leave my body. I didn't totally black out I remember standing like on the side of myself, looking over my right shoulder. I went in and out for most of the show but for the most part I stayed out because I was engulfed in the experience of the show. The smell of animal flesh and blood, the sound of drums, the feeling of my body bleeding and in pain.

Szandora then came from near the front of the stage and Louis poured blood over her body. It looked amazing and once she started to come up to the stage to meet us I could see she was changing too. At one point Szandora was just glaring out at the audience with a evil look in her eye and she was drooling blood out of her mouth.

Then myself and machina went out in the crowd to baptize people in cows blood. I found it strange that so many people allowed us to do that to them. It's amazing to be on stage with Louis, he totally transforms. I remember when I did the show in Dallas with him. When the needles came out of his head and he started bleeding everywhere he started to look like a angel. Louis becomes beautiful and totally angelic when he is in the midst of a performance. While I was standing on stage with Machina and we are there the skin ripping in our backs, are covered in cold cow blood, smell like death and are in pain and I look out into the audience and they are just standing there staring at us in amazement and I think also some slight horror and just gawking. I thought my God this must have been what Jesus saw. This is so fucked up there are all theses people out there watching us suffer and it means something to us. Most of them likely don't even get it they are just watching the whole spectacle of it all. I'm sure the crucifixion was the exact same thing.

We did the neck pull and then got unhooked and went out into the crowd again to put cow blood on the audience.

We went back on stage and got our backs hooked to Louis to pull from the back. It was a really strange feeling to have the skin on my back pulled like that. It didn't hurt so much as feel like somebody was pinching my skin and pulling or like if somebody was pulling on a really tight bra strap. Louis stretched the spring totally out. He pulled so hard it was almost a straight wire by the time he was done. After the pull Machina and I walked hand in hand backwards still attached to Louis' back towards the rig they were stringing him up on.

They unhooked us so we could turn around and watch him.It was like watching somebody go into death throws. He looked really great up there. You could tell he was totally in another state of mind. His suspension rig was decorated with things like bones and feathers and he was covered in cow blood on his arms and face.

While Louis was suspended Machina and myself went to spread cow blood around for the last time. They then took Louis down and the crowd sort of spread out after they took him down. He then came and found me at the front of the stage and gave me a hug and we congratulated each other on a good show. I hope my journalistic piece on the beauty of body mutation has shed a little light on the subject for some of you out there.