NEW YORK (Reuters) - Despite the bone through his nose, his shaved head and pierced face, the 25-year-old pacing a seedy stretch of New York sidewalk admitted he was terrified of what he was about to do.
But after a few minutes, a couple cigarettes and several deep breaths, he sat in the basement of a storefront tattoo parlor, closed his eyes and let a friend split his tongue down the middle with a scalpel.
The latest trend among teens and 20-somethings who indulge in so-called extreme body modification, forking one's tongue like a serpent's "is an art form," said T.J. McGillis, who offers the service for a $250 charge.
"Everybody wants to get it done. It could be the next mainstream thing aside from piercing," he said.
That may be an exaggeration. The number of people with split tongues is estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 people by the editor of a Web-based magazine devoted to body modification, but the trend is attracting enough attention that a few U.S. state legislatures have moved to ban the procedure.
Ian, the young man with the bone through his nose who did not want to reveal his last name, opted for tongue splitting after earlier adventures left him with huge rings in his ears, silver barbells piercing his face, myriad tattoos and who-knows-what-else under his baggy shirt and pants.
"I like the way it looks," he said, listing his reasons. "Two, I think it will be more fun during oral sex and the girls will get a kick out of it. Three, everyone and their mother has their tongue pierced and four, I'm an idiot."
FRESHLY CUT MEAT
The process is nothing short of gory. In Ian's case, his tongue was clamped in place, numbed and slit 2 inches up the middle, looking uncomfortably like a piece of raw liver freshly cut by a butcher.
Other methods entail tying increasingly tighter pieces of thread through a pierced hole or cutting with a laser.
Blood gushed out of Ian's mouth and over the silver barbell in his lip for a few minutes, then abated with several doses of mouthwash.
"Go home and pull it apart," McGillis ordered him, suggesting a regimen of separating the two halves each morning and night to prevent reattachment.
After splitting his tongue, Emrys Yetz, 20, said it wasn't long before he could move each half independently and do party tricks like picking up pens and pencils.
"It's done to better yourself," he said, opening his mouth to wiggle each half like a snail waving its antennae.
Yetz argues tongue splitting is no different than a far more socially acceptable face lift or breast enhancement. The only downside, he said, is eating ice cream, since it's harder to make a scoop of your tongue when it's split in two.
NOT ALL FUN AND GAMES...
Not surprisingly, doctors say there are more downsides to tongue-splitting than dripping ice cream.
"There's the potential for life-threatening hemorrhage and the potential for life-threatening infection," said Dr. Lee Pollan, an oral surgeon based in Rochester, New York.
If that's not enough, he added, tongue-splitting can damage speech and taste and cause permanent numbness.
And reattaching a split tongue can be a complex process of reconstructive surgery and skin grafts, he added.
Dire warnings notwithstanding, tongue splitting is kids being kids, said psychology professor Stephen Franzoi at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who specializes in issues of physical attractiveness and body esteem.
It's a form of self-expression, alienation, rejecting mainstream culture and asserting independence, he said.
Comparing tongue splitters to young people wearing long hair and ragged jeans in the 1960s, he said: "This is the same psychological process, albeit more extreme.
"We encourage kids to be independent and express themselves and find their own personal identity," he said. "Every generation has a different way to find themselves in our culture. Some of them are more extreme than others."
After splitting his tongue, Ian made plans to pierce each tip, even as one waiting friend dampened his hope that the girls would love it.
"I think it's gross. It creeps me out," said hairdresser Jill Johnson. "I've dated guys with tattoos all over. I've seen it all, but that's too much for me. Imagine when you're 60 years old and you have your tongue like that."
But for believers in modification, a split tongue is merely a start. Split noodlees, sliced lengthwise in half, are not unheard of among aficionados.
