Sometime in the late nineties my casual interest in body piercing became my passion. I was desperate for knowledge, yet there was so little accessable. Nowadays, we take for granted how easy it is to learn about body piercing (or any subject for that matter) by using nothing more than a few keystrokes. However, in the nineties the internet wasn’t something I had access to. So I relied on printed media, which was fairly hard to come by in Columbia, SC ,where I grew up. Fortunately, I found a local Harley shop that carried bulk packs of various tattoo magazines back issues and I bought them up. One magazine in particular, the long since defunct, “In The Flesh” magazine was a piercing magazine and what I read in those pages defined who I was to become. The interviews with Jon Cobb, Blake of Nomad and many others changed my entire outlook, not just on body piercing but on life as a whole.
One of the inspirational piercers featured in those pages was Cliff Cadaver. Cliff was a cutting edge piercer of that era and unlike a lot of piercers at the time, he was willing to share his knowledge. Through various interviews, features and his book “A Basic Guide To Body piercing” he put out the information that other piercers guarded as if they were top secret classified info. In fact, one feature in particular where he described the nasallang piercing (that he is credited as inventing) was so inspiring to me, I rushed out at got one myself (that I still have and wear daily).
So, when I was thinking of influential piercers whom have not been previously featured on a BME interview, Cliff was an obvious choice. I tracked him down on facebook easily,obviously there are not many people named Cliff Cadaver. At first, when I asked to interview him he seemed reluctant, but after a short while he had started writing his memoirs and totally alleviating me of any interviewing responsibilities. Since, I am an admittedly crappy interviewer, I was thrilled to have this piece written and edited with very little input by me. I helped check a few facts for him, but aside from that, this whole piece is written by him.
The memoirs he provided me with are rather long, so rather than present it in one long feature with a few choice photos I decided to milk it, and use it as a weekly feature with several photos in each episode. Since this piece (beyond my intro) is purely his writing, I must preface it by saying the opinions stated in it are Cliff Cadaver’s and do not reflect the views and/or opinions of myself, BMEzine.com or the Catholic Church.
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