Hooks, Humans, and an Hitachi
a memory of ecstasy
In 2003 at Black Rose in DC, I got to do my first hook pull. Rooted in ancient practices of doing intense things to the body in order to transcend the mundane, a hook pull involves putting big hooks in the chest and yanking on them. Basically. Large gauge hollow lances pierce the chest; the hook then get knocked into the end of the lance, sliding smoothly into the recently-created opening in the chest. The hook goes under muscle, not just skin; it’s going through enough tissue to hold the hooks in place. They aren’t gonna pull out; the piercings are rich and deep. Once they're in, a length of cord is tied to the loops at the ends of the hooks.
It was my first time for a hook pull, but I wasn’t new to needle play; I even wrote a book about it. I love sharp shiny things and most of the stuff that can be done with them. I was ready.
I have a history of doing intense things with my skinsuit, and I figured this rite to be up my alley. CM Hurt, out of LA, and Fakir, may he rest in blessing, were the piercers. I had some history with CM--she had done my 32-strike brand and capping incense burn, so I knew we had good chemistry. I went with her. Her modwork is amazing and her spirit is vibrant, full of dark humor and huge love. Cleo was ka-see-ka (‘experienced guide’) for the trip.
I waited in line to get pierced, held by my lovers G & S woh were also dancing that day, and some of their lovers, safe in the arms of blessed community. I was living about half the year in California and half the year in Detroit, at the time; it was so much easier--and cheaper--to fly out from Detroit as a hub to teach in the midwest & on the east coast than it was to fly out of Arcata, my Humboldt home, that it just made sense to live there part-time. I did that for several years, and am beyond fortunate to still have many of those relationships alive and well in my life. Plus, most of my partners at the time all lived there, so I guess you could say I had incentive. Some of my Detroit peeps had gone with me to Black Rose; it felt tingly and scary and bubbling with potential. It was like filling up your gas tank right before you head out to Burning Man, your vehicle loaded with gear and tribe. It felt like gathering the people to go on an adventure into the unknown right before liftoff.
Finally, it's my turn. CM and eye lock eyes, grinning rather maniacally at each other as she drew the marks on my skin and set the lance to slide through. I don't remember that we spoke; it didn't seem necessary. We saw and knew each other as spirit, wicked and delicious in our shared shadows and light. At the top of a nice, deep breath, our gazes locked, and the lance went in. No tug on the skin as it passed through the top layers of dermis; the lances are very, very sharp with a beveled edge. No nerve endings in muscles, so just the sense of a slightly-intrusive pressure, then a slight pressure from under the skin as the lance emerges cleanly from the other side. Yeah, it hurts—for about a 20 seconds. You’re poking 10 gauge hooks into your chestmeat! But then…oh, but then. I fell more deeply in love with my endocannabinoid system in that moment than I’d ever been before. I had Aliced right on through that looking glass. The world was new, brighter, more dimensional. The drum sounds offered up by the musicians sailed like prayers rippling on my skin; it was as though the new holes, tight as they were wrapped around the metal of the hooks, had opened me to the rhythms. The drumbeats and low chanting danced right into me through the opening is my chest.
Each of us—there were about 30-40 participants in this ritual if I recall; all memory bets are off after the hooks go in because of the sudden, immediate and dramatic priority shift that occurs when breaking through the fragile boundaries of the thin skin of ordinary consciousness. I have no recall at all about how many others were watching and holding, but it memory-feels like a great many. A host. A legion. We all moved gingerly at first, finding our places in our bodies, in the pain, in the sounds, in the room. There was presence. None of us were alone in any sense of the word. That sens alone was worth the price of admission. It’s an incredible feeling, that not-alone-ness.
After everyone had been pierced, whatever had been bubbling and brewing in the sacred simmering cauldron of that circle spilled over. The holes in your chest can let things in—and they let things out, too. Maybe it was the leopard print sarong I was wearing, flavoring my experience, but I transformed. I was wild, feline, joyful, wounded, perilous, and ecstatic. Spiritually feral. I played with the sharp edges of my consciousness and the experience, discovering who it was that I wanted to hold my cord, who it was I wanted to share cords with, who it was I might be willing to tug on. It had nothing to do with 'choosing;' it was more like following a map written in light on the air, ta map with directions to discover the brights chests of treasure destined for me and my experience.
At last, everyone dancing is pierced. The musicians had been playing soft and steady during the piercing; once everyone was set, they began to play in earnest. It swept us away, right into the present moment. Once we were good and warmed up, Cleo danced her way into the middle of the circle with a large metal ring, about 8" in diameter, a ritual rattle, and a Hitachi on a very long, bright orange extension cord. She beckoned, we went. Using carabiners, Cleo hooked each of our cords to the large metal ring. We stood around the ring, no more than 3 or 4 feet from it, as far as our cords permitted. It got more and more crowded. We had no choice but to touch each other, to find a way to comfortably stand and sway without falling down or knocking someone else over.
That was my first intensely-lived, immediate proof that humans can cooperate instinctively, regardless of how we feel about that person. I learned that I don’t need to know you, much less like you, to be able to dance with you in shared states. I mean, yeah, we're pack animals, and we're meant to work together, but this was a whole 'nother level. It's different, when you witness it happening in real time, surrounded by growls and cries and scents and smells and skin and touch and ordered chaos. I recall a moment of the room shifting, blurring, and all the dancers became, for a brief moment, fireflies in a summer meadow. We were life itself, giving life to life, as we danced our pains and deathstory of being human with full hearts and cleared minds.
Cleo began to play with the center ring. It was a circus of sensation; she vibrated the thick metal ring with the Hitachi, and we all sighed and hummed with one voice. She lifted the ring up; we rose to our toes, moan-laughing. She lowered the ring to the ground; we bent crouching towards the source of sensation, howling and laughing maniacally.
Then everything stopped, suspended in air and time. It was like someone had hit the mute button on the whole world. I didn’t hear drums or people or moaning or chuckling. I didn't hear feet shuffling, or myself crying. All was still. In that stillness, that silence, I realized:
No matter what we did, we were connected. If one person took a deep breath, someone on the other side of the ring felt it. If someone moved sideways, we all went sideways. There was nothing--not a laugh, a sob, a twitch—NOTHING—that didn’t reverberate through the ring and into everyone else attached to it. It was undeniable, inescapable, adamant, irresistible. We were all connected. Yeah, yeah, I know I said that. But truly grok & bet: WE ARE ALL PROFOUNDLY INTERCONNECTED. In that moment for me, there was no difference between that center ring and the center of the cosmos, no difference between me and other humans I didn't even know.
The hooks left my flesh later. I was naughty and <ahem> 'forgot' to return them to be sterilized for reuse (sure hope the hook police don't come for me now). My people were there, waiting to catch me as I fell into a puppy pile of warmth, safe embrace, and magical adoration. Some beloveds had been in the dance with me; with strangers, it was somehow almost flirtatious. With my lovers, it was raw, savage Eros while vertical and having clothes on. Some had been holding space for we dancers, a safe place to be after the intensity. When I floated back down to the material reality--the hotel conference room, the hotel conference room carpet, glowing faces of participants and witnesses alike--I went back up to my room to bathe, but have no recall of having gone to my room.
My memory picks up at the moment I lowered my torso into the tub. The dried blood around the hooks flowed into pink wet as I sank—slowly—into the warm water. To my ritually-heightened senses, it felt like all my lovers holding me at once. Bliss. There was a brief moment of feeling bereft as I carefully slid the hooks out of my chest, feeling like the new best friend I'd met at the party had to return to whatever magical realm they came from, taking a small piece of me with them.
Hooks, humans and an Hitachi supplied me with that ah-HA moment of experiential awareness about how connected we all are. I don’t know what it’ll take for you or for the rest of the world, but I firmly believe it is a knowing we all must come to. And soon. The illusion that something as fragile as a skinsuit somehow makes us separate from each other is ridiculous. It’d be downright hilarious, if that illusion didn’t cause so much fucking pain in the world.
Even though we can’t always see it or feel it, we are, at all times, connected to each other by life itself. Not just the people we want to play with, or to family and tribe. Everyone. We’re all hooked into the web; someone thrums a string in Sri Lanka, and we feel the ripples of it in our own skin. Someone drops a bomb in Gaza and the homes in our souls crumble to rubble. A child in Kenya starves to death and it's our guts that cramp. We turn away from someone in anger, and we yank on other people’s spirits.
Perhaps we’re just too small-sighted to notice the depth, breadth and scope of our connectedness, too distracted to see--much less treasure--our interbeing. Perhaps more folx could benefit from ecstatic ritual to remind them of their true birthright to pleasure, transcendence, and connection.
Hook in, people. Hook in. Find your own way of experientially knowing this Truth of connection. Choose wisely whose cords you tug on, and to whom you hand your own cord. Then come dance your truth with me--I’ll be waiting with the Hitachi. Hooked together, we can all be free.
Note: I tried to find a picture of me with hooks in to post, but they’d all get me a CG strike. :)