Hang in there. This will hurt.

**BertRoot** · 14th February 2007

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Allen Falkner likes to tickle his students with thoughts of trauma. "Somebody's skin is going to tear tomorrow," he said. "Hopefully."
Falkner, the "Father of Modern Suspension," had gathered 15 students in the back of a San Jose tattoo parlor for a four-day class titled the Art of Human Suspension. The curriculum attracted a lawyer from San Diego, an IT guy from Silicon Valley, two journalists from Mexico City, a state employee from Nebraska and a truck driver from Pennsylvania.
For $600 a pop, students were taught how to hang a human body from steel fish hooks, the kind used for catching salmon. On the final day of the class, after students learned how to pierce skin, rig pulleys and clean wounds, they got the chance to practice their new skills on each other.
Despite going out of fashion in San Francisco in the past decade, the painful ritual of suspension has witnessed a national surge in popularity. It's an ironic turn, Falkner said, considering the city was the suspension capital in the late '80s and early '90s, thanks largely to Fakir Musafar, the Menlo Park artist who popularized suspension with a 30-page interview published in "Modern Primitives," the 1989 book that brought body modifications such as tattooing, piercing, and scarification, to a mainstream audience.
Falkner, 37, who lives in Dallas and runs Suspension.org, said he keeps tabs on as many as 25 suspension "teams" that have sprouted up around the country in the past 10 years, but none are based in the city. "I don't have a good reason for why it's happened," said Sky Renfro, a former San Francisco resident and owner of Body Mechanixx, an all-things body modification company that sponsored the class. "San Francisco is a fickle town. What was in yesterday isn't in today. They move on."
When Falkner told his students he hoped someone would tear on the final day, he meant it in a good way -- an opportunity for education. Falkner's repeated theme during the course was: "Things constantly go wrong. Things you can't expect, but should. Don't freak out."
Yet he also warned his students to stay cautious. "Skin can be like fabric. Once it starts" -- he made the motion of tearing a cheap bed sheet -- "it gets going really easy."
II. First-timers, Falkner noted, like to try a suspension called the Suicide. The hooks go through the back fat above the shoulders and the hangee remains vertical; few pass out in this position, and the chance for an epidermal tear is minimized.
Falkner is a short, intense instructor, and has a barbed fish hook tattooed behind his left ear, symbolizing his devotion to suspension. He lectured his class like a concerned drill sergeant with a taste for droll humor: "Your nice little rope that you paid $200 for is going to get blood on it. I'm sorry, that's just part of the business," and "If they're up in the air and have a seizure and freak out, you're going to be the one who has to cut them down. Can you deal with that? Consider it."
Falkner hung for the first time in 1992, not long after he'd learned how to body pierce in a class taught by Musafar. Falkner later returned to Dallas and started one of the first U.S. suspension teams, Traumatic Stress Discipline, which, according to its Web site, has "done more to bring suspension into the mainstream than anyone out there."
Falkner's former teacher has misgivings about such boasts. Musafar, 76, claims suspension goes back primarily to two cultures, one in South India, where the ritual has been recorded for 2,000 to 3,000 years, and to Native Americans. In both cases, the intent of suspension was a spiritual exercise, to stretch skin so far, as Musafar put it, "until you transcended your body and meet the Great Spirit."
Musafar grew up on an American Indian reservation in South Dakota, and said his suspensions are meant to honor the indigenous cultures. He coined the term modern primitivism, and says all of his piercings and tattoos are spiritual endeavors. He is not of American Indian descent.
"My goal is to present this as a spiritual practice," Musafar said of all his body modifications. "It's a way of realizing a higher type of self."
Today's suspension teams vary in their goals. Some, like the Anti Gravity Relaxation Society in Houston, focus on the inner-peace suspenders claim to feel. Others angle toward the ghoulish. Albuquerque's Ascension showcases a 178-hook suspension (running along the shoulders and down to the ankles) and argues on its Web site, "Life holds only two promises: Pain and Death."
Falkner views his classes as a means to share the best information with people who are determined to hang. To ensure a serious clientele, Renfro conducts a background check to make sure potential students are licensed piercers or members of the "body modification community," as opposed to, "just some Joe off the street."
"I grieve for this," Musafar said of the proliferation of suspension. "Because I brought it into this culture, and 98 percent of the people who are doing it are attracted to the visual, the graphic of it, and they have no idea where it comes from or what it's about.
"It's not fun and games," Musafar said. "It's not meant to be a nightclub act."
Then Musafar recalled he'd suspended in a nightclub last year. "We thought it was the best way to reach people, to show them what this ritual is."
III. Chris Prybyla, 37, had traveled from Wrightsville, Pa., to hang for the first time. He'd had an eye for hooks for 10 years, he said, ever since he saw photos of Musafar in "Modern Primitives."
In high school, Prybyla described himself as a straight-laced "Phil Collins man." He joined the Marine Corps, where he got his first arm tattoos, and after becoming a civilian again, got his first body piercing -- along the skin between the scrotum and anus.
One begat another.
"All 15 piercings were below the neck and under clothes," Prybyla said. "People didn't know, couldn't judge."
Prybyla drives a truck during the day and works as a body piercer on the weekends. His wife, Michelle, left their 2-year-old daughter at home with relatives and flew with a video recorder to San Jose for the final class with Falkner.
"I warned her," Prybyla said, "I might freak out and pass out. But she wanted to be here."
On the big day, it was cold enough inside the parlor for Falkner to wear a scarf, and some of the students clutched coffee cups to keep warm. Prybyla, who was shirtless and wearing shorts, sweated heavily from his armpits.
"That's the nerves kicking in," Michelle noted.
"I can't put a tangible reason as to why I want to do it," Prybyla said as he awaited the hooks. "I don't like pain that much, but pain is a tool that works through the body. I'm sure I'll hear something in there ... I'm sure it will teach me something; I'm not sure I'll learn the lesson today."
Erik Dakota, Falkner's co-instructor, said he'd seen first-timers back out just as the ropes begin to tug on the hooks. "Some people just can't go on," he said. "It's breaking through, telling yourself you can do this, that it isn't impossible."
Prybyla lay belly-down on a table and prepared himself for the piercings. Two technicians had marked six dots across the rise of his shoulders, their targets for each hook. Because Prybyla weighs 260 pounds, Falkner recommended six hooks instead of the usual four. The plan was for the curved steel to enter the spot, slide beneath the skin, and then exit an inch and a half below the original hole.
"The back is prime real estate," Falkner said. "It's meaty, and the skin doesn't tear as easily as, say, above the kneecaps and hips."
IV. Each of technicians grabbed a chunk of Prybyla's back fat and readied the eight-gauge hooks. Their job was to pierce simultaneously, starting on the outside, near Prybyla's arms, and work their way in toward the middle. At the count of three, the technicians each pushed the tip of a J-shaped hook through Prybyla's flesh. They slid the steel through, then lifted up, and the tip of the hook reappeared. Prybyla shut his eyes but didn't make a sound. Four more to go.
A few second later, the technicians repeated their maneuver, but this time, one of them pulled a hook short of the exit mark. A stream of blood swelled around the exit wound.
The choices were to leave it or remove the hook and try again. Falkner took a look and said it wasn't enough to worry about. The ropes on the rig could be adjusted for torque, so all the hooks would carry the same weight.
The technicians returned to their work, and soon six hooks poked across the top of Prybyla's back. Finally, he made a sound. A long grunt: "I am so f -- rock 'n' roll."
He asked if he had time for a cigarette before they took the next step and strung the ropes. After he returned, Michelle took a long look at her husband as he walked in the room.
"I love you in your meat hooks," she said. Prybyla said he didn't get the endorphin rush he'd expected, just the sharp pain that comes with getting stabbed. He was relieved the pain lessened as time passed, and likened the feeling to "wearing a T-shirt that's a little too small."
Prybyla took a few sips of water and stood beneath the rig as a student laced up the ropes. Dakota, the co-instructor, slid into a harness a few feet away that connected to a thick rope, which would hoist Prybyla from the ground.
Falkner instructed the novice to simply stand up on his tippy-toes to get used to the tension. Prybyla walked back and forth on his toes as Dakota slowly took in more slack, raising the student. As the tension on the hooks increased, blood streamed from the holes.
"Now you're bleeding a little, love," Michelle reported as she continued to videorecord.
"Keep walking," Falkner said to sooth his student. "You're married. You know about pain."
Prybyla laughed. His shoulders hunched more as Dakota pulled on the thick rope.
Prybyla was nearly off the ground now, barley scraping the tips of his checkered Vans across the concrete. His back skin stretched to the bottom of his ears.
The other students began to gather and look in awe. Renfro, who stood a few feet away, said in a low voice, "Look at his face. It's the most amazing thing to watch their faces as they leave the ground for the first time. ... It's a face that says, 'I am no longer on this Earth.' "
Prybyla went airborne.
He looked surprised, then elated. Then in pain.
"There's ... a lot of sharpness," he said. "Whoa."
His body swung as his feet continued to walk on air. One technician gave him a slight push. Blood dripped steadily from the shallow hook, which the technician continually wiped way.
A few silent minutes later, Prybyla reported that the sharp pain had settled. His body swung like dead weight and, finally, a smile creased across his face.
His wife used one hand to gently rock him and the other to hold the video recorder.
For a moment, Prybyla closed his eyes and appeared to go into a tranquil state. When he opened his eyes, Falkner was to there to say, softly, "The next time you hang, you may want to go for a low light, mellow setting. ... You don't seem like a high-energy guy."
Prybyla laughed. "That's the opposite of how I am in real life."

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