Lay on a Bed of Nails
This was a tough one to arrange! I know two burlesque performers that live near me that use bed of nails in a few of their routines, but neither of them were willing to let me use them for liability reasons. There are performers that you can hire out of the Tampa area that do bed of nails, but none that will teach you or let you use theirs. I then looked into the Coney Island Sideshow School, but due to COVID, they still hadn’t resumed holding classes and didn’t know when they would be. I cast the net far and wide to see if there were any performers who would want to offer lessons, and I found Jezzibel. She is an absolutely amazing performer who does bed of nails, human blockhead, fire work, and angle grinder in Chicago.
Absolute bliss! That's the best way to describe my experience laying on a bed of nails. Did it hurt? Oh yes! Was it amazing? So, so, so very much!! My legs and back and stomach were all covered with little poke spots and parts of my skin felt sort of raw, but it was incredible. I felt so at peace and then afterwards was blissed out on the endorphins. In all, there are 836 nails on the bed and Jezzibel was a fantastic instructor.
I even made my own bed of nails, but there’s definitely still some tinkering that needs to be done because I am not a great carpenter and they’re uneven, resulting in some bloody spots, lol.
