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One thing Fakir is adamant about is keeping things aboveboard. "I run the only school in the country that teaches body piercers. We've been running the school for 24 years," he says. "We had to go through quite a few hoops." He cites California law AB 300, which governs tattooing, body piercing, and permanent makeup. "We were bringing in people from all over the world and training them. As part of their training, we have competency testing. We're not going to let them go out in the world and not be sure they know what the hell they're doing," he says. Even more stringent licensing requirements have made it difficult to train new people in states such as Oregon, where it's now nearly impossible to hold a hook-pull.
In a way, regulations placed on ritual pulling, borne of caution from the AIDS crisis years, have almost come full circle. Whether stamping out indigenous practices because the shamans represented a threat to the Christian order, or adjudicating consensual adults' non-procreative sexual proclivities, the state has always been suspicious. And that's a shame, especially as the scene I participated in pales next to some of the more elaborate practices. Fakir has undergone "fasting and severe preparations" for ceremonies that involve being suspended by hooks for hours, and he claims to have had three transformative experiences. He once met his God-self — who told him, "I'm as close to God as you're ever going to be" — and on another occasion, in Sundance, Wyo., says he "not only met my higher self but went out to the cosmos to meet all the bright lights and great energy that run and govern and control the universe."
Back down on earth, in the Alchemy dungeon, the piercing is fairly simple. My chest is disinfected and two stainless steel autoclave hooks are inserted into the pectorals, just below the skin. They are brought back out again, corked for safety and stability, and connected by rope. Because there is a little blood and serosanguineous fluid — or a lot, in my case — no one is supposed to touch the actual hooks, only the rope. (The piercers place a high priority on initial sterilization and on avoiding any possible contamination afterward, and make a point of inculcating this in newbies' heads.) The 11-gauge hooks are about the size used in an average septum piercing, or about one-tenth of an inch in diameter. Although treated with reverence, the hooks are actually basic fishing gear, manufactured by a now-defunct company in Elko, Nev., and later cleaned up and made very smooth.
When the hook pierces my skin, it hurts a bit more than my septum ring did. But by remaining calm and breathing exactly as I am told, it's bearable. My boyfriend is holding my hand, and another friend's head is steadying my knee — possibly unnecessarily, but it's a sweet gesture. During the process, I grimace and perspire, but I'm proud to say that I neither yelp nor flinch. (Again, my real anxiety was chickening out halfway through.) I'm relieved when the second hook doesn't hurt any more than the first. For good measure, I get a Third Eye — a thin needle inserted vertically through my lower forehead. Yossie (a Fakir protégé who prefers not to share his surname) says it adds "just a bit of sparkle around the edges," and at that point I figure one more piercing makes almost no difference. I have four permanent piercings already; for a couple of hours, I will have seven.
After a few manic minutes of grinning and preening in front of a mirror as if I've just gotten a dramatic hairstyle change, I signal to my eager boyfriend that it's okay for him to start tugging at me. The initial sensitivity decreases quickly, but even the tiniest change in pressure is palpable — so much so that even when relaxing his pull, he has to do it very slowly because the sensation is overwhelming. Within 10 minutes, I am completely lost in it.
Even the passive act of standing in place getting pulled is exceptional. Lying on a bench with a makeshift blindfold over my eyes for some sensory deprivation is even better. Someone shows me a technique for guiding myself around the room by my own rope, which confuses the nervous system into making you wonder whether you're leading or following. You become like a possessed Ouija planchette moving of its own accord.
Given the surroundings, it is undeniably a sexual experience, but few men, if any, appear to be aroused. Some of the veteran players are engaged in more advanced techniques, sitting opposite one another on the floor with the soles of their feet touching, and pulling each other's ropes. I don't consider myself a spiritual person, but I like new experiences as much as anyone, and the difference between people's approaches to the universe often comes down to a matter of vocabulary. I don't see God or leave my body behind, but I do go on a trip. Since comparisons between subjective experiences are more or less impossible, one person's spiritual transcendence is going to be another's momentary ecstasy in the here and now, and that's all right.
"It's a chance to go within," Mark Galipeau, one of my fellow participants, later tells me. "I don't use drugs as a gateway to spirituality, so I think the hook-pull takes me to a deep spiritual place. I don't do a lot of deep, reflective meditative practice in my daily life, and I find these moments give me a chance to go with an intention and be open to spirit and clarity, and find some answers to whatever it is I'm working on."
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