Holing up in HoMa

East End body piercer sees industry-related trends and myths come and go

Name: Isabelle Manny, aka Dr. Isa

Age: 30

Occupation: Body piercer/proprietor of Café Exorciste

Bio: This spunky, determined Hochelaga-Maisonneuve (“da best!”) miss first started lusting for body piercing as a 10-year-old growing up on Île d’Orléans but had to wait until she was a grand old dame of 14 before actually getting any piercings of her own done. Recognizing she was born to be a piercer but frustrated by the absence of any Quebec City area “masters” to show her the ropes, a teenage Isabelle made her way down to Montreal to apprentice at a series of local studios before finally, in 2004, with the help of a whopping $2,000 bank loan, getting it together to open her own shop, the East End’s premier piercing/tattoo parlour, Café Exorciste (3267 Ontario E., (514) 313-8535, exorciste.ca). “It was a real struggle at first but I stayed open while other shops failed because I was used to being poor.” Today a happening business employing three—soon to be four—full-time tattoo artists, Dr. Isa says she loves Exorciste’s East End location because “downtown, you pierce people and never see them again. Here I see my people all the time, they’re my neighbours, I get to see if they’re healing properly when I’m out doing my groceries, you know?”

Where all the kids wanna be pierced these days: “Their cheeks. Five years ago, it was belly buttons. It depends on what the rock stars are doing.”

Does getting one’s penis pierced cost any more than getting one’s cheek done? “Genitals always cost more—but I only do females now. I used to do guys, but I often felt they were coming to me for bad reasons, like to a whore for a sexual act. I do lots of females though. For the same reasons most girls prefer female gynaecologists, they prefer another female piercing their genitals.”

Are most of the women coming for this service smelling like roses or does she sometimes wonder if she’s actually piercing a trout instead of a labia? “After 10 years, it’s only been really bad one time. This girl had just finished her shift working at Subway and when she dropped her pants, it smelled so bad I felt like puking. So bad that one of my tattoo artists working next to me actually cried out, ‘Holy fuck! What smells so bad in here all of a sudden? Did someone just shit?’, not knowing it was this girl with her pants down. So I had to tell her, ‘Look, you’ve got to go home and wash. I just can’t do this under these conditions.’”

Is it safe to assume this poor girl was absolutely mortified and never showed her face at Café Exorciste again? “Yeah, she was embarrassed, but she went home, showered, and came back the same day. She was fine after that.”

One myth about pierced tongues finally dispelled: That it’s going to make your cocksucking/pussy-eating skills any better. “People think it’s gonna upgrade their sexual life but it’s so not true. I always tell these people to just learn how to use their tongues instead. It’ll be way better than if I pierce them.”

Last book read: Diary of a Genius, by Salvador Dali.

Musical preferences: Nirvana, Cathedral, Queens of the Stone Age.

Words of wisdom: “The trouble is not with nuclear energy, it’s with the heart of men.” ■

COMMENTS? DIMWIT@OPENFACE.CA

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