Blogspot, Abandoned Pools song,

I bit my lip on the elevator down from work yesterday. I didn’t bite down awfully hard, but I did it with one of my sharper teeth and in the middle of the scar of a recent cold sore, so I drew blood. It turns out, a good amount too—I could feel a drop coalescing and beginning to roll out of my lip.

Thinking back on it, I wonder what the lawyers from the 21st floor, my elevator-mates for this ride were thinking. On one hand, I guess a single drop of blood sliding down the corner of some young thing’s mouth is a little romantic. Then again, I don’t think I've ever made a very convincing consumptive libertine.

As it were, I guess it was pretty gross, so I wiped it off with the back of my hand. People on the street would just assume it was a burgundy tattoo of an amorphous streak--all the rage among the downtown kids, I'd say. To stop the bleeding, I started to lick the wound, figuring that if it was good enough for White Fang, it’d be good enough for me. It kept bleeding for another minute or so (my powers of healing rivals those of Wolverine’s obviously), during which time I ate enough of my own blood to make me a little nauseous, like during a nosebleed.

An interesting side note: one of my co-workers went to medical school at Mt. Sinai for a year and tells me the nosebleed nausea stems from taking in too much iron at once. A tip for you anemics out there: When you feel faint, just drink your own blood.

As a whole, other people’s blood doesn’t bother me all that much anymore. I saw a heroin user this Saturday while volunteering at the ER who had a huge abscess on his arm. One of the physician’s assistants opened the abscess lengthwise with a scalpel. Pus and blood rocketed out and hit him on the face shield. To clear the area, the PA pushed on the surrounding tissue. The extruded liquid ran progressively less pea soup colored and more red. A couple years ago I might have been grossed out more by the experience, but my verdict: pretty fucking sweet.

In contrast, I had to have my own blood taken a few months ago as part of a checkup. The nurses tell you to ball your hands into a fist when they insert the needle and tell you to relax after the sample reaches a certain volume. To hear the nurse tell it, I was so fixated watching the vial fill up that she had to tap me on the shoulder to tell me to un-ball my fist. God help me if I ever need dialysis.

A weird contrast: seeing other peoples’ blood as a vessel for gas exchange, nutrition and hormone transport and seeing my own as red(dish) gold. Just another way in which I am selfish, I guess.