Food, Sex, and Split Tongues

Fielding questions on Oral Body Mods

I’ve lightly alluded to my most extreme body modification—over my tattooed hands and large-gauge, inner-cartilage piercings—in the columns preceding this one, and in this penultimate Mods column, I’m spilling just a little more.

Splitting my tongue was probably one of the most “long-time-coming” mods I’ve collected. I remember seeing the “Lizard Man” Erik Sprague in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not book I snagged at an elementary school book fair and being enthralled with the concept and look. 

There’s a continuous sense of relief in doing it during the pandemic in 2020: Most of my in-passing interactions with strangers are masked, so I have yet to field the plentiful questions and passing comments I often receive with my tattoos and piercings.

I also don’t expect that to change a ton, as my tongue usually stays in my mouth in public, but I’ve already run into a fair amount of questions online from friends, strangers, and gross men on Grindr, mainly. In the same vein as my tongue piercings of yesteryear, the mod typically prompts questions in line with the dueling themes of this issue: food and sex.

Many folks are curious how anything from a tongue piercing to tongue bifurcation would affect consuming food, one of life’s simple and essential pleasures.

“Do you have trouble eating?”

“Can you still taste everything the same?”

“Is it easier or harder to get food out of your teeth?”

I have to say, plainly, if oral modifications significantly altered a person’s ability to eat long term, I’m not sure that folks would truly pursue them in the numbers they are.

With any oral modification, your relationship and habits with food during the initial healing will shift significantly. I have retired three tongue piercings; with each, I had a good week or so of a mostly-liquid diet, avoiding high-sodium and dairy foods, and ultimately finding if I overstepped that boundary and ate something that required too much mobility out of my healing tongue, I’d surely feel that soreness the following day.

People are surprised when I say that my split tongue was a quicker heal than any of my tongue piercings, but it’s true. 

A piercing with a professional needle is essentially making a space that wasn’t there before and then leaving the jewelry there, caretaking to the site, until your body essentially gives up on healing the new hole and works around it. My tongue was split and immediately sutured, so while the first week was a little more tiring and intense, it wasn’t a months-long process like oral piercings can sometimes be. 

In fact, I was eating and talking essentially back-to-normal about two weeks after I split my tongue. And yes, I can still taste everything the same.

Mobility when eating is just as unconscious as any person controlling their own tongue while eating food: After healing, it’s involuntary. I don’t really have to think about it, and because my tongue was in one piece for a lot of my life, I find that in these more unconscious acts, they sort of act as one piece anyway, unless I’m using the right side to access the right corner of my lips or mouth, or vice versa (which is a bit more of a calculated muscular movement with any tongue).

Honestly, I get pretty repulsed trying to recount the amount of questions I’ve received about my tongue in regard to sex, even when it was just a piercing. Most of these comments do not come from people whom I’m about to be intimate with, but rather from pretty much complete strangers on dating apps. 

(See the July column I wrote a few months back on sexualizing and objectifying people with body mods.)

I was 14 when I first got my tongue pierced, and I remember, even as a child, my attraction to it was purely aesthetic, but I already understood how oral body modifications are immediately sexualized. It was right around the time I very prematurely came out to my parents, and I felt the need to reassure them that the piercing had nothing to do with sex (which I wouldn’t even have until I was nearly out of my teens) because I understood how prevalent this attitude was, and still is.

It’s usually just some deviation of one main question, and the hilarious part is, I really can’t answer it:

“How’s that tongue feel on a (fill in the blank)?”

I’ve gotten away from responding to this question altogether, especially when it’s the first thing someone says to me in a conversation. But for the lucky few who happened to receive a response, the answer is something like: “I don’t know? How would I know?”

I have personally not been sexually involved with anyone with a split tongue or even a piercing, so I plainly have no idea how to answer that question. I’m also not quizzing my sex partners afterward, “So, uh, how was it with my tongue?” and scribbling down the feedback to report to prospective, future partners. Actually, I’m more attracted to people who don’t immediately objectify and sexualize my body. A novel concept!

I think of it the same as any other oral, or genital, modification: I’m sure some people really love sex acts involving modifications, and I know that other people are pretty neutral or don’t have an opinion either way. I’m sure some people dislike it.

If it wasn’t clear: I did not get this modification (nor have I pursued any body modification) for sex appeal. Do I think it’s sexy? Oh yeah. But I got it because it makes me feel better in my body; I got it because it’s fun to play with and because I think it’s cool.

You really think I would cut my tongue in half just so I can make you, or any random person looking to use me to cross off an item on their sexual bucket list, feel more sexually satisfied? Get a grip.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to talk to people in passing about their modifications. I will always accept a passing compliment on my tattoos and piercings, though honestly, I don’t really talk to strangers about their body modifications in general.

Mostly, I implore folks to think about what they are asking strangers and, like many other conversations, to what extent it is this person’s responsibility to educate and to what extent this person’s testimony speaks for a group of people.

But hey, in this one-way column format where I cannot field a collection of replies, I’m happy to dish. I graciously recommend unlocking your smartphone and typing “Google.com” in your browser if you have further questions.