ARLINGTON, TX – For Jeremy Stroud, body piercings were usually brought on by a dare.

“I’ve been around the tattoo community, and a lot of my friends are in it,” Stroud said. “They’ll sit around and say, ‘Hey you want to do this?’ And I’ll get it pierced and pull it out.”

But that wasn’t the case for the piercings he got May 2 – this was for the record books. That day Stroud had 1,197 piercings done, enough to break a Guinness World Record.

The 18-gauge surgical needles inserted over about five hours at an Arlington tattoo shop — about 800 in his back, 300 in his right arm, 50 in his right leg and 20 or so in his left arm – left scars across his back, he said.

“They’re so close together that they leave a line. It kind of looks like I had stitches from my wrist all the way up to my shoulder,” he said.

‘It’s just therapeutic’

Stroud, a diesel mechanic for a large freight carrier, isn’t new to tattoos and piercings, known as body modification. He sees it as art, with five piercings on his face, several tattoos and gouged ears.

“A lot of people say I did it for this reason or this means something to me,” he said. “But not for me….  It’s just therapeutic.”

He said he got a “smiley face sunshine” on his leg because he was mad.

“I stay away from meaningful tattoos now,” Stroud said. “Now it’s more art. I just like being covered up in it.”

And he’s used to the stares that go along with being covered in tattoos.

“When most people get to know me they say, ‘You’re a totally different person than what you look like,’ ” he said. “Yes, it’s called stereotyping.”

Doing His Homework

Stroud had been planning the record-setting piercing session for eight months, at the urging of Tyson Turk, an Arlington body modification artist.

Last year, they began testing parts of Stroud’s body to see whether he could tolerate the pain. And in March, Turk did a test run of 50 piercings in the small of Stroud’s back.

“I did my homework,” Stroud said. “This isn’t just something you can go out and do; you’ve got to be prepared for it.”

In fact, making the record official required a witness, a photographer, notarized statements, two EMTs and months of paperwork.

Turk had experience in that area. He also did the piercings for the previous record holder, a Dallas man who received 900. He also plans to claim the record for the world’s fastest piercer.

But Turk’s coaching couldn’t prepare Stroud for all the pain.

As the session wore on, each piercing produced radiating pain that felt like an intense sunburn.

“After a while I guess the body just starts rejecting all the needles,” Stroud said. “It felt like my back was on fire and my arm was on fire. It was a totally different kind of pain. I just wanted those needles out of me.”

Stroud was hooked up to a heart monitor during the session.

“As soon as we got the needles out I was fine, but during I started to get really slow, and my pulse jumped up to 130.”

The original plan had been to do 2,000 piercings.

“I made it to 1,200 and my body was getting ready to shut down,” he said. “I had no idea what I was getting into.”

That’s one reason Stroud isn’t sure what he’ll do if someone breaks his record. The past record holder, Robert Jesus Rubio of Dallas, is already talking about it, Stroud said.

“There’s a reason it’s a record,” Stroud said. “He made it to 900 and his body had enough. And now that I’ve gone through it, I see what’s really happening during the process.”

Source : Star-Telegram