BODY PIERCING TREND COMES TO CAPE AREA

The classified ad is relatively inconspicuous. No fancy writing, no ornate border.

"Body piercing," it reads. "Safe, sterile, from the waist up. Sorry, no exceptions."

Two phone numbers follow.

The curious caller reaches A Different Drummer Tattoo Studio at 405 Broadway. There, Kathy Drury waits with her artillery of needles, antiseptic and jewelry.

Andrea Arnold, already sporting a nose ring, was inside A Different Drummer Saturday to have her bellybutton pierced. She said she always wanted the nose ring but wasn't sure she would like the bellybutton piercing.

That's the thing about piercing -- you can always let the hole close.

The one or two customers who come in each day for Drury's work give different reasons for their patronage. Some think the earrings are pretty. Others want to be different. Most are following a fad that is slowing overtaking relatively conservative Cape Girardeau.

"It's more than college kids doing it," Drury said. "I pierced a 55-year-old man's nipple the other day."

The classified ad says from the waste up, and A Different Drummer means it. Drury receives plenty of calls from people who want their genitals pierced, but she refuses to discuss it. She tells them to go to St. Louis.

But Drury, a registered nurse, can pierce just about anything else -- eyebrows, noses, tongues, nipples, bellybuttons, necks, hands and that little piece of cartilage that protrudes over the ear canal.

So far, in Drury's three months of private and then public business here, noses and bellybuttons have been the most popular body parts for piercing. Her own bellybutton was pierced at one time, but she took the ring out.

"I've had four babies," she said. "It's not like I'm going to run around in a halter top."

The procedure for bellybutton piercing is relatively simple but painful, according to Arnold, Saturday's customer.

First Drury used ethylchloride, a topical anesthetic, to numb the area. She marked the hole and then stabbed a needle through. The belly ring hooked into the point of the needle and was dragged back through the hole.

Drury put a ball-shaped post on the other end of the ring, squirted alcohol on the area and bandaged it. The bleeding was minimal, and Arnold took it like a champ, other than a single shout of "Damn, that hurts!"

The care is much like that of an earring. Just use plenty of alcohol and keep the hole clean, Drury said.

Pamm Semmler used to have her bellybutton pierced but let it close. Now she "only" has 11 holes in her left ear, two in her right and one in her nose. The 23-year-old works as a hair stylist at Regis and a bartender at River's Edge and Players.

She fielded plenty of questions about her nose ring in the beginning, but seldom hears about it anymore.

"Everyone wants to know how I blow my nose," Semmler said. "You just blow it like everyone else. The hoop doesn't make a difference."

She said she started piercing her ear one day and ended up with three holes. Her mother asked if three was the limit. Semmler answered yes, then got a fourth, and a fifth.

Her mom eventually stopped asking.

Classmates at Semmler's high school in Tuscaloosa, Ala., teased her about the piercing at first. Later, they wanted to duplicate it.

She said her piercing days are over, at least for the 11-holed left ear.

"I have to stop or it will be perforated," Semmler said.