Extreme body modifications- Implants

Steve Hayworth is a medical device designer, working since 1984 designing and manufacturing equipment for plastic surgery at Hayworth Tech Company. When he sees need for new procedures or custom-made tools, Steve makes them himself, then does the deed. No plastic surgeon can claim that honour. As a matter of fact, the instruments designed to create the metal mohawk are not even available to the plastic surgery community. Hayworth is the man behind the modifications that make some APP (Association of Professional Piercers) members uncomfortable, although they are largely unfamiliar with his background.

Steve was a piercer for some years, and has generated many innovatinos in the piercing and branding fields, but insists that what he's doing does not, and should not have anything to do with body piercing. Piercers thinking about imitating his performances should reconsider- the techniques are completely different, and imitators may end up inadvertantly lacerating an unfortunate guinea pig. Piercing has given him some background on controlling cross-contamination, he concedes, but he is no longer a body piercer. Steve carefully researches each procedure and its implications and runs his findings by doctors in the medical community.

I recently called up pioneer Steve Hayworth, the man behind the modifications to discuss what he calls Three-Dimensional Modification. In his portfolio of note: the Metal Mohawk of Joe Aylward, Mr Lifto's forehead implants, and the Enigma's horns.

• Joe Aylward is thirty two years old and is from Arizona, and is reported to be apprenticing under Steve at HTC. He had surgical steel implants installed on his head, transdermally (through the skin, rather than completely under it). Photos of his healing head can be found in Tattoo Savage and accompanying an excellent article in Body Art magazine:
  
  "We had a registered nurse apply local anaesthesia, and once the area was numb we made one horizontal incision about an inch long at the back of the crown. At that point Steve inserted a skin elevator that lifted the epidermal layer, and ran one long channel from the back of my head to where the front-most implant would be... Then once the channel was made he removed that instrument, slipped a base implant in, and with another tool that was also shaped to my head, pushed the implants to where they needed to be seated. With a dremel he took out a small core of skin that lined up with the threaded base of each implant. Two small stitches at the back and it was closed! The whole procedure took an hour and fifteen minutes..."

  

  Mr Lifto is the longest-standing member of the Jim Rose Circus (besides Rose and his French wife, Bebe). His act is notorious for making piercing fans and the uninitiated cringe by lifting weights with his pierced septum, tongue, nipples and penis. In March of 1996 at the Houston Tattoo convention he had beads implanted in his forehead to match his tattoos. He says that the procedure only took half an hour.

  

  Enigma, well-known for his appearance on the "X-files" Humbug episode as the Conundrum, as well as is membership of the Jim Rose Circus as a sword-swallowing, keyboard-playing insectivore is quite easily recognized for his tattooed and shaven appearance. People can't help but wonder "Why?" when they look at him, so now he is an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle: dozens of tattoo artists worldwide have been inking the Enigma for years, covering him in blue ink in the form of jigsaw-puzzle-pieces. This opus was started by Ashleigh (formerly of Seattle, designer of the Jim Rose Logos) and taken over largely by Katzen, the Enigma's stunning wife, who herself is covered in black stripes. Just last week Enigma had his fourth generation of horn implants installed. A generation is basically equivalent to the gauge system used in wire, gradually getting thicker. The plan for the Enigma's horns is for seven generations, or stages, of teflon of increasingly larger size, allowing for the skin to stretch. Currently they are 3/4" long. By the end of one year (early 1997), he'll be ready to have the teflon implants removed when they're an inch long (sixth generation) and replaced with the seventh generation coral. Coral was chosen since the body will recognize it as similar to bone and will disperse the coral whilst calcifying it, adhering the horns to Enigma's cranium. Enigma had to be discouraged from his original plan of jewelled eyebrows due to the unacceptable risks associated with transdermal implants near hair follicles, but he has even more plans for body modification for the future. Perhaps British fans won't be disappointed and get the promised tail afterall!