This ain't your principal's suspension

Spectators cringe and groan as, one by one, six thick hooks are pierced through the skin of Justin’s back.

“He’s insane,” some say.

“Don’t get blood on the bed,” the girlfriend of the apartment owner warns.

Some hooks slide smoothly through. Others hit veins, sending blood trickling. The piercer, a friend of Justin’s, comments that he’s done more piercings on one person in the past 20 minutes than he did in three hours at work in a tattoo parlor. Throughout the hurried piercing, 20-year-old Justin Scott is fed Kit Kats to keep his blood sugar high. This will keep him from passing out later, like he did last time. “Later” refers to when he plans to hang from those hooks on a questionable wooden stand that a few friends built 10 minutes earlier.

Suspension—the act of hanging oneself by multiple hooks pierced through the skin—never receives a mild reaction. Lately, it has been receiving attention and spawning a slew of Web sites and groups across the country, mainly in large cities (However, Google “suspension” in San Francisco and the most you’ll find are Web sites for auto shops, unusual sexual devices, and one actual occurrence at the Fetish Ball in 2003).

Some consider suspension to be an act of stupidity. Justin’s girlfriend, for example. After the piercing, she leaves the room to hide her tears of dread. While friends comfort her, she curses the boyish sense of mortality she usually admires in her boyfriend. “Unlike Peter Pan,” she vehemently sputters, “he can’t actually fly!”

Others gulp the experience down like an adrenaline-spiked cocktail of euphoria, a reminder that nothing exists besides the current moment. The main propagators of this viewpoint are a group of women in their 20’s, who are chain-smoking on the porch. If Justin and his friends are adrenaline junkies, these women are adrenaline groupies. They seem to glorify the thrill-seekers as if they are actually capable of floating through air.

“I’ve always noticed the euphoric state that people go in. It’s like a haze,” explains Bailey Foehr, 23, who has attended several suspensions. “Because of the euphoria, the out-of-body experience, you get in touch with who you really are in essence. Like some people walk on fire, it’s their version of an outer body experience, overcoming death and overcoming pain.”

Others also consider the out-of-body feeling that suspension induces to be a spiritual experience. As far back as the history of suspension is known, it has been linked to spirituality. According to bellaonline.com, a Body Art site, North American tribes practiced piercing and then hanging themselves from the piercing as a form of spiritual sacrifice during Sundance, which occurred around the Summer Solstice. Similarly, the Tamils of South Asia fused piercing practices with the worship of their god, Murugan.

In modern times, “people are seeking the opportunity to discover a deeper sense of themselves and to challenge pre-determined belief systems which may not be true,” reads the Web site www.suspension.org. “Some are seeking a right of passage or a spiritual encounter to let go of the fear of not being whole or complete inside their body.”

Others, like Justin, see suspension as a defiance of the impossible through the embrace of pain. With a buzzed head, multiple tattoos, and holes in his ears that were created by one fell clutch of a hole punch, Justin defies norms in his appearance as well as through his actions. He’s the traditional image of a badass, someone who Hollywood would type-cast as the guy who inadvertently burns down an orphanage when he flicks a cigarette out of his car window. However, Justin breaks stereotypes as well as traditions. His many tattoos are in honor of his mother and sisters. His fuzzy head is less noticeable than his sharp sense of humor. He works as a piercer himself, but hates to hurt people. And most interestingly, in this Berkeley apartment filled with alcohol and probably other substances, he refuses to partake. After drinking his last beer three years ago, Justin has been completely sober despite his surroundings and peers. Suspension, it turns out, is his last high. More importantly than the high, however, hanging from hooks is a middle finger to the safe. It is an act that will separate him from the normality of others.

“I think it’s awesome doing something that barely anyone on earth has done,” Justin says. “To know how much pain your body can actually take is cool.”

Considering Justin’s desire to attempt the unlikely, it is fitting that he is about to try a suspension named after a superhero. Suspended only from his back, he will be attempting the “Superman.”
Before the hanging, he meditates and exhibits confidence in what he is about to do.

“You can’t think about the pain or the people watching,” he said. “You just have to center yourself, no matter how much partying is going on.”

Despite the superhero allusion, however, friends worried about Justin’s mortality.

“I pray to God that it goes smooth and there are no injuries,” said friend Travis Souders, 18. “I was shaken up at first (when he was pierced). I had to step out of the room.”

When it comes time for the actual suspension, the group of about 30 people crowds into the apartment’s living room. Everyone grows silent. While friends look for a stool for him to stand on as he lowers himself, some appear to grow more anxious. Justin’s girlfriend clutches her fists and is incapable of looking at the people patting her back, incapable of acknowledging anyone besides her boyfriend. Even Foehr nervously fidgets and picks at her nails.

Justin himself remains silent and calm. An appropriate stool is found.

As Justin slowly lowers himself, people start muttering encouragement. When he is hanging only by the skin of his back, Justin’s face exhibits something between a grin and a grimace. Cheers grow louder as the skin of his back starts to resemble hills of flesh, rising up to where the hooks are pierced through. The stool is abandoned as Justin’s body, like a grotesque puppet, is held off the ground only by the hooks.

Now, fully suspended, Justin is steadily swung back and forth. His ease appears to grow as friends shout “Mission accomplished!” mingled with “take it easy man.” As Justin’s legs dangle and his face breaks into a smile, a friend of Justin’s jokes “makes you feel like river dancing.”

After a couple of minutes of suspension, Justin comes off of the hooks. Spectators, both relieved that their friend is whole and amazed at what they have just witnessed, talk excitedly. Many give him words of praise like “tonight you became a man.”

Afterwards, Justin talks about the pleasure in accomplishing something he has wanted to do for years and the reality of what it felt like. It is in his nature to stay calm and cool, but he also seems satisfied.

“I felt it more than I thought I would, but I liked it,” he says. “It felt like pressure, like someone was standing on me.”

“But I’m happy,” he adds.

Friends are also excitedly in shock.

“Oh man, that was gnarly. His skin just stretching, it was insane, it was ridiculous, it took my breath away!” Souder says before starting to sing his rendition of “Take My Breath Away.”
He then breaks into “I Believe I Can Fly,” appropriately ending the night.