Originally published in the May/June 2004 issue of The Petal and the Thorn, the newsletter of Black Rose

What am I doing here?! This question occurs to me often as I participate in the Spirit + Flesh Workshop with Fakir Musafar and Cléo Dubois. Why is a 50-year-old mother of two from Bethesda dancing half naked in a ritual that reminds me of old National Geographic magazines of African tribal warriors, complete with spears going through people's faces?

We watch a video of the original ceremony on which the ritual is based—which, I am amused to discover, did in fact appear in National Geographic and inspire Fakir’s work. Then Cléo greets each of us individually, wafting us with the smoke of burning sage leaves—surprisingly effective in alleviating the sleepiness from being up way too early on a weekend morning.

The sense of strangeness increases with the prayers. The altar with the pictures of the goddess Kali and the Virgin Mary makes me feel like I accidentally walked in on someone else’s religious ceremony.

The preparatory floggings, and then the opportunity to pierce each other with needles, have a more familiar feel. Chris M. and I up the ante by piercing each other at the exact same moment—an endeavor in which I do my first nipple piercing ever while my own breast is getting pierced. Hmm, I love a challenge!

Now for the insertion of the chest hooks. Sarah J. has practiced this on me the day before (when Fakir also pierced me with a cheek spear). She did an excellent job, so I’m first in line at her station. The level of pain on inserting the hooks is no more than I experienced as a regular blood donor for years. Within a few seconds, it is gone.

We pull on our own piercings, either with a partner holding the rope, or by attaching the rope to a rack. This increases the pain some—but the euphoria more. I gradually increase the weight I am putting on the hooks as much as I can. Chris gently pulls my hair, further increasing the tension on the hooks. After a moment, I tell him, "You know, you could pull harder if you wanted." He obligingly does so, then asks me why I am not screaming. I apologize for not being able to scream if he wants me to, but tell him that it just feels too good.

We begin the dancing. We let our bodies move as they will as the drummers beat out hypnotic rhythms. My body, it turns out, moves fiercely. The pain is gone, even when I attach the ropes from my hooks to a ring, and play tug-of-war with others attached to the same ring. At one point, I have 4 people attached to one side of the ring, and just me attached to the other, and I am still moving backward when I pull.

Finally, a man who is as strong as I (whom I later learn is Raven) attaches himself to my ring. We balance each other and stabilize the ring, so that with or without others attached, neither of us is in danger of falling over. In the end, we abandon the ring, and each of us loops the other’s rope around us so we can pull directly on each other. In that final ecstasy, flooded with both endorphins from the needles and adrenaline from the fierce pulling, the ceremony ends.

What am I doing there? Having the time of my life, generating a euphoria that will last for days, that’s what!

Copyright © 2004 Free