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“Behold I do not give lectures or a little
charity.
When I give, I give myself.”
Before I begin, let me apologize for not having introduced BME’s
new staff members more promptly. As you may know, at the end of 2004, I
ran an “intern search”, looking for a writer to take over many of
the duties here in BME/News which were lagging under my workload. The
conclusion of the search was a tie, with both Jordan
Ginsberg and Gillian
Hyde joining the team, as well as Clive Mathias stepping in
to handle BME’s new (actually, “reborn”) video division — you know him
both as a long-time member of the suspension group iWasCured and
part of the core team filming and producing Uvatiarru.
All of these three are currently telecommuting from BME’s “vacation
offices” in Mexico where they met both me and each other for the first
time. Part of working for BME means having access to highly sensitive
information about things that people are doing behind closed doors, and
thus signing a non-disclosure agreement was part of the hiring process.
Jokingly I suggested that to really show they wanted the job, they’d have
to lop off their little fingers as well. Obviously this didn’t happen, and
I would never make such a requirement!
Gillian and Clive shortly after arriving in
Mexico
I think to everyone’s surprise — including theirs — a
whirlwind romance quickly brewed between Gillian and Clive, as some of you
may have noticed on their IAM pages (judging by the spike in hits on both
their pages ( typealice and rookie), I’d say more than a
few people have been vicariously reading those journals). What happened
next came as a surprise even to me. Looking rather sheepish, they came
into my office, holding hands, and began, “ remember that thing you said
about cutting our fingers off...?”
They’d asked to keep their story private at first but have agreed to
let me interview them here about what happened next and share a few of
their photos publicly (the full video will go up on the new video site as
soon as it’s launched, and a few more photos are scheduled for the next
BME/extreme update as well).
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***
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SHANNON/BME:
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You know I was just joking about the finger chopping,
right?
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GILLIAN:
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Yeah, for sure; it doesn’t have anything to do with
you... I think that comment just planted the seed. At first, I
thought it was a stupid idea, but the more I went over it in my
head, the more I liked it.
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BME:
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What made you actually start thinking about the idea
seriously?
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GILLIAN:
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I think we wanted to really just experience this
important event in our lives fully, and as Clive is fairly
knowledgeable about amputations, certainly more than I am, I trusted
him. I think I knew the first day we spent together that we were
meant for each other, as corny as it sounds. Dipping my feet in the
Pacific for the first time with him was really, really special, and
I think that’s when it hit us: we were falling in love. We wanted to
mark it with something really big.
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CLIVE:
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If you love someone, you want to give something of
yourself to them. I don’t think people take that seriously enough, I
mean, they say it, but it’s just words... I wanted to show Gillian
that I really meant it and it wasn’t just something I’d read on a
Hallmark card. Go big or go home you know?
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BME:
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Why not just give her a promise ring or
something?
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GILLIAN:
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I’m not dating a ring, and I don’t want a ring. I’m
dating flesh, and I want flesh to make a commitment to me. What good
is a ring to me? It doesn’t really mean anything. I’ve been engaged
before — and look where that took me: Nowhere. I wanted this
time to be different. Plus, he’s been previously married, and I
wanted to make sure that it wasn’t a repeat of that relationship. I
told him if he was serious about this, he had to prove it — and that
I was willing to do the same.
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BME:
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That sounds like a threat?
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CLIVE:
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It wasn’t like that, we were just talking and it felt
right.
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BME:
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How did you decide what exactly to cut
off?
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GILLIAN:
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That was obvious — it had to be our ring fingers. We
were both just out of rough relationships, and wanted to both
reclaim and be rid of those fingers... this has a permanence to it
as well. You can take a ring off your ring finger, but you can never
put your ring finger back on once you take it off. It’s something
that will last forever — it’s a physical testament to how much I
actually do love him.
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CLIVE:
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And if we ever break up we’ll just tell people it’s a
permanent shocker.
Think about it...
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GILLIAN:
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Shut up.
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BME:
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Did either of you have an interest in amputation
before this?
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GILLIAN:
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No, and to be honest I never thought I would do one,
but I think it’s one of those things that’s hard to understand until
you feel it. It just sort of happened, and it feels
right.
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CLIVE:
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Like our love.
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GILLIAN:
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Shut up.
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BME:
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I’ve got to say, the procedure you guys used is,
well, pretty unusual. Do you mind walking me through it, start to
finish?
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GILLIAN:
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We started by putting elastic bands around the base
of the fingers and wrapping them tight so there wouldn’t be too much
bleeding. Because we didn’t have any anesthetics on hand — I’m
definitely not into that much pain — we soaked our hands in
ice water for about half an hour until they were totally numb. We
poked them with a needle to make sure we couldn’t feel
anything.
I put my ring finger in Clive’s mouth and he put
his ring finger in my mouth with our teeth resting right on the last
joint. We looked in each other’s eyes, nodded, and bit down as hard
as we could. It was a little disappointing because we couldn’t
actually get all the way through, but we did pop the joint open and
tear it a little. We cut the rest, just some skin and the tendon,
the normal way.
  
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BME:
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That sounds like a recipe for infection. Did you do
anything to make it safer?
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GILLIAN:
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Well, of course we washed our hands first, and
gargled with rum to disinfect our mouths as much as
possible.
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CLIVE:
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Gargled? I drank it.
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GILLIAN:
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And that’s why you bled a lot more, it serves you
right.
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BME:
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Did you bleed a lot?
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CLIVE:
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No, not much, the elastics stopped most of it and
even after we took them off there wasn’t a lot of
blood.
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BME:
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And did it hurt?
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CLIVE:
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It was more of a numb pain, like a really deep ache.
To be honest, the ice water was the worst part.
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BME:
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Did you get out of it what you wanted?
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GILLIAN:
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Yes, absolutely, it was intense, especially because
we did it at the same time. I wasn’t sure if it was going to work
(because really, our front teeth aren’t that sharp), or if
the pain was going to make it just suck, but it was amazing. I’ve
never felt so close to someone. Seeing someone when they’re that
vulnerable is like peering into their soul. We tried to keep eye
contact the entire time, but Clive winced a lot.
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BME:
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What are you going to do with the finger joints? Are
you guys going to eat each other’s fingers or anything like
that?
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CLIVE:
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Right now they’re soaking in Bacardi 151 just
to preserve them, but when my hand is feeling a little better and I
can work with it again I’m going to skin them and make a pair of
amulets so we can each wear each other’s ring finger bones as
necklaces.
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BME:
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It’s been about a week now. How is the healing
going?
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GILLIAN:
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I’ve had a little skin retraction so a bit more bone
is exposed than seems right, but other than that it’s doing okay. We
didn’t do much as far as aftercare comes... just packed them with
[no-stick] gauze, left them alone, and kept them clean. We try to go
swimming in the ocean every day — I think the salt water helps keep
the wound flushed out.
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CLIVE:
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Mine is doing fine but I have a Wolverine-like mutant
healing factor. Yeah, I always heal well. Just look at my elbow, I
took the stiches out while at work and it healed so well you can
hardly see it anymore.
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BME:
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Would you recommend this to other
couples?
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GILLIAN:
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I don’t know if I’d recommend it, but it was
right for us and I don’t regret it at all. I’d do it
again.
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CLIVE:
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On our ten year anniversary we’re going to take off
the next joint, and then the whole finger on our
twentieth.
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BME:
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I apologize for asking this, but I have to... What if
you break up?
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GILLIAN:
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We can never break up, that’s the wonderful thing
about this.
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CLIVE:
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I don’t think that will happen anyway, especially
with a kid on the way. If it’s a boy we’re calling him Bob, and if
it’s a girl we’re calling her Chopper.
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GILLIAN:
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Shut up.
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CLIVE:
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But seriously, I have always wanted a child, and so
has she.
***
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BME:
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Finally, Jordan — I've got to ask, living with these
guys, what do you think of all this?
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JORDAN:
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Before I came down to Mexico, I was under strict
orders from my mother not to get romantically involved with anybody
I would be living or working with down here, and I was generally in
agreement with that. That said, I hadn’t ruled out the occasional
round of drunken grab-ass, but it became quite clear within the
first few days here that Clive and Gillian had a good thing going,
and I saw no reason to disrupt that.
Once they started
talking about this amputation business, I knew I had made the right
decision... my decision being, of course, to not touch that shit
with a ten-foot pole. Maybe I’m just cynical, but I haven’t even had
a relationship serious or long enough for a pregnancy scare, much
less one where dedication-through-nullification was a facet of it. I
mean, don’t get me wrong, I generally support just about everything,
but when Clive asked me to act as a witness to the “ceremony” — to
legitimize it in the eyes of the Lord, perhaps? — I just did my best
to claim conscientious objector status and keep my distance from the
whole sordid affair.
Couldn’t they have just gotten matching
tattoos like other shortsighted couples or something? I honestly
think it’s just some nasty sex thing — like I really need something
else to overhear and get the cold sweats from in the middle of the
night.
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GILLIAN:
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Shut up.
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“When you make a sacrifice in marriage, you’re
sacrificing not
to each other but to unity in a
relationship.”
More photos
of the healing process and procedure will be in Monday’s
BME/extreme update and stay tuned for the full video as the new
site launches. Thanks to Clive and Gillian for sharing this with us, and
best of luck to them in both their healing and their future together.
Finally, let me here wish them luck and longevity in their future
together. You know what the strangest thing about all of this is? It
doesn’t even seem weird to me — it seems right. I don’t know
if that means I’ve been doing BME too long, or if it really means
they made the right decision. I hope it’s the latter.
Shannon
Larratt
BMEzine.com
IAM
members, click here to comment on or discuss this article.
Shannon Larratt is the
editor and publisher of BMEZINE.COM, the largest and oldest
full-spectrum body modification publication on the planet. He also
is known for his promotion of radical individualistic politics,
spirituality, and on a more base level, his main vice: exotic cars.
Shannon is currently working from an a portable computer as he
vacations in Mexico with his family and friends.
Copyright © 2005 BMEZINE.COM. Permission is granted to reprint
this article in its entirety as long as credit is retained and usage
is non-commercial. Requests to publish edited or shortened versions
must be confirmed in writing. For foolish bibliographical purposes
this article was first published April 1st, 2005 by BMEZINE.COM in
La Paz, BCS, Mexico. Interviews conducted in person, late March 2004
in La Paz, BCS, Mexico.
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