nicole11@unm.edu
A small rivulet of blood trickles down Shelby Smith’s spine as her skin stretches further and further, pulled by a pulley system connected to hooks in her back. She slowly inches upward until only her extended big toes touch the ground, her face in a grimace. With a quick tug on the pulley, she is suddenly suspended two feet above the ground by a couple inches of taut skin.
“You’re at that point where you’re being lifted up and you’re on the tip, tip of your toes and they just seem so heavy, like it’s almost impossible to pick yourself up,” said Kasja McCarthy. “It’s one of those things you have to jump into and you start swinging. It was like flying; all of a sudden, I was completely weightless.”
Suspension is a type of body modification in which participants pierce their skin and insert hooks attached to ropes and pulleys. The ropes are then used to hang the person from trees, light posts or open ceiling beams.
McCarthy is a member of Ascension, an Albuquerque-based suspension group that toured with the band Jane’s Addiction for most of 2011 and was featured in movies such as “The Flock” with Richard Gere and “Gamer” with Gerard Butler. Ascension puts on shows around Albuquerque, but many of its suspensions are for people who want a more private and personal experience.
Ascension member Mark Fischer, who is also a UNM Health Sciences researcher, said he was first intrigued by the activity because he saw the participants enter a more personal state of mind.
“After I observed, I noticed that there was some sort of intrinsic ritual that people went through to provide themselves a safe space for suspension,” Fischer said. “I thought that was a phenomenal way to come into yourself as a person.”
Steve Truitt, the Ascension group’s founder, said he was first intrigued by the intense pain described in books.
“I had read about it in books like Modern Primitives when I was younger, and it was supposed to be this crazy painful experience,” Truitt said. “It was supposed to be so painful that your spirit left your body because it hurt that bad.”
But most Ascension members agree that the pain is minimal. Truitt said it is helpful to breathe deeply and move limbs around to distract oneself.
“Once you’re up there, your endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, kick in, and it depends on what you’re doing, too,” he said. “If you’re thinking, ‘This hurts, this hurts,’ then it hurts more. If you’re swinging around and enjoying yourself and just going with the experience, it doesn’t hurt nearly as much.”
Truitt suspends primarily for shows the group puts on or at suspension conventions. He said he once suspended over a waterfall in Massachusetts, and he is planning a suspension from a helicopter in which he and a few others will sky dive out of the suspension. Truitt said he gets a rush from the crowd, but Fischer said for himself it is a more personal process.
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“There was a fear that came in at first, like I don’t believe that these are going to hold my weight,” Fischer said. “The first time you actually lift your feet off the ground and you’re still there, it was a very gratifying experience and definitely a watershed of satisfied emotion. I realized the resilience of my body, which was striking.”
Fischer said many people are drawn to suspension as a method for alleviating personal issues. But he said performances are also important, because it can inspire people to pursue the activity.
Truitt said suspension allows the seemingly impossible to occur.
“Some people, they just want to deal with the pain, but a lot of people use it as a way to put things in perspective,” he said. “Putting hooks in your skin and hanging from it seems crazy and impossible, and then they do it, and so it makes other things they thought were impossible more realistic.”
Truitt said he and other members push the limits on what is possible with suspension. They personally test the strength of hooks in various positions to see if the hooks can hold their weight, or to see if their skin is resilient enough in certain parts of the body.
Truitt said a friend of his hung from his buttocks in a position called the “Astronaut” at the old location of his shop on Yale and Central avenues. They held the suspension at around 1 a.m. and as they were walking back, they passed by a long line of cars at the McDonald’s drive in. His friend’s underwear was bunched up like a thong and he had blood running down his legs.
“Those people were probably like, ‘That guy just got gang-raped in an alley,’” Truitt said.
Truitt said he gets mixed reactions from people who find out he suspends.
“Mostly it’s just, ‘Wow, did that hurt? How does it not tear? Why do you do it?’” he said. “During shows, we’ve had people faint, we’ve had people throw up, we’ve had people leave. But after the shows, we always have people who come up and are like, ‘Hey, how do I do that.’”
He said he doesn’t try especially hard to respond to negative perceptions of the activity.
“I just tell them it’s not for everybody, to each their own,” Truitt said. “I think as long as you’re consenting adults, you should be able to do whatever you want to do, and if somebody else doesn’t like it, then they don’t have to look at it or be involved in it.”
