Blood
I just had my blood drawn.
I asked the blood drawing woman "How are you today?" and she said "Fine.", but she didn't ask me how I was doing and that's a shame because I was really getting ready to open up. I was thinking maybe we should share some dark secrets, you know? Like I could tell her I had anal sex when I was 7 with the neighbor kid, Randy, and she might tell me about a college date rape or some such.
It's intimate, this blood giving. But she was all business. Like a prostitute.
When she put the needle in, I looked away and wrote verses in my head.
You took my blood, whore, / and in return? / Silence / Faint breeze through the leaves of a sycamore / This pale loneliness.
We could of had something, blood drawing woman. Maybe lunch. But then at lunch you could have told me how you have big dreams, that you're really so much more than just a phlebotomist. How do you see yourself, blood drawing woman? Do you write songs that drip out of you while you strum an acoustic guitar? Do you paint impenetrable abstractions? Wait for just the right light to snap photographs of paint chipped fences? Or is there a novel in there, bursting out of your scrubs?
I was there for you, blood drawing woman! You could've told me how your Dad's unreachable distance made you question the visibility of your core. You could have confessed to me how you steal Klonopin from the absentminded nurse. So what if you earn a second income dancing in that club? I'm not judging you. I totally dig strippers. Spill, blood drawing woman. Spill it.
That would've been cool if you accidentally dropped my vial of blood. We could've watched the red puddle spread slowly across the cold floor while reflecting on spilled blood as an evocative image that represents intimacy. But you didn't. You just took my blood. You treated me like a 10 minute appointment.
And now I have a big piece of brown gauze wrapped around my arm and I feel wounded. It doesn't hurt. But the excessive wrap makes me feel wounded, like I have a story to tell.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Reader Comments (30)
It's interesting you mentioned Klonopin. I've been thinking about Klonopin for days. I'm thinking I might have to go back on it. Hesitating only because coming off it is such a bitch. I shared with you.
You are unique, BHJ.
"I'm not judging you. I totally dig strippers."
I'm not criticizing bu this line right here, even better if it ended with and then I dig holes for dead strippers.
Wait. I might be confusing the words "better" and "psychotic" again. I do that.
Universal Donor would be a greart title to your song.
I hate having this done. I turn white(r) and have to look away and think about Dreamland BBQ or maidens in leather masks or something. It's awful.
I never thought of writing poetry while having my blood drawn. I usually just turn away and think, "I need to not think about the needle. I need to not think about the needle. INEEDTONOTHINKABOUTTHENEEDLE." I don't understand why that doesn't work.
Prostitution is a perfect metaphor: an exchange of fluids without intimacy, passion, knowing.
This is why they give cookies and juice afterward. TO SALVE THE EMOTIONAL WOUNDS.
Did you at least get a cookie?
Alarms are going off at HIPAA Headquarters. Black helicopters dispatched.
That cold bitch.
You have a delightfully odd and twisted way of looking at things. I like it. :)
Damn vampires! I used to feel so abandoned when I donated plasma. Like, I was giving them SOLID GOLD, yet they acted like it was water that they were paying me $50 per week for. Man, I miss those days. I miss the $50 per week. I miss the free snacks afterwards. But the "crazy as a fox" meds I take take make that impossible. So now I steal $50 worth of crap from Walmart to make up for it... Just kidding, sorta.
No story but a nice poem at least.
I had to take my 2-year old to have blood drawn last week. How was I to explain this to my baby girl? Mommy's going to let some stranger stab you and blood (what's blood, Mommy?) will drip out of your arm and snake through a tube into three greedy little vials. She trembled involuntarily, we both cried and sang itsy bitsy spider. She kissed me through her tears and a starry blue bandaid was her reward for bravery. Does she still feel wounded? It was only a little blood, I should count our blessings. But I'm haunted by her visceral expression of fear.
she could have at least given you a blowjob.
I always watch the needle slide in, steel fang searching for sustenance to fill the glass belly of the tube serpent.
Even as a child, I would watch, despite doctors and nurses and phlebotomists urging me to look away. I never flinched. Unnatural, me.
My son is much the same, although he will scowl and say "Ow!"...but then he just sighs and gives in to the inevitable, partly bored, partly offended by the process, entirely resigned to his poke-y fate. I taught him to say "phlebotomist" when he was eighteen months old. Priceless. He tells them to take all they want, he'll make more.
She should have offered to kiss and make it better...
Shade and Sweetwater,
K
i had this done last week. brenda missed the vein in my right arm.
"i never miss. im so sorry sweetie. ok lets try again"
brenda misses again.
i go white. im spinning.
"i dont know whats wrong, i never miss, really!"
oh really brenda!? i feel like im gonna pass out now, thanks.
no, i was actually very nice to her. and she thanked me for being so kind and understanding.
a second nurse came in. first try, on the left arm. 5 vials. fuck.
they gave me a butterscotch candy and a juice.
Have you ever read John Donne's poem "the Flea"??
It's about JD (a member of the clergy) trying to convince a woman to have sex with him by using a flea analogy. His point was that the flea had bitten her and him already- so their blood was already mingled. Since they've already been THAT intimate- what difference does it make if they have sex now?
She didn't go for it.
Nor have I thought about that poem much since my University days- but this post? Totally the modern day version of...
Did you really have anal sex with Randy when you were 7?
That John Donne poem cracked me up. My favorite poet-trying-to-get-laid poem has to be "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time" where Marvel is all, "Baby, you are gonna get all old and crusty and die of old age, like, any day now, so let's get nasty while you're still young and hot".
Dear God, that was beautiful.
did you even get a smile out of her?
Mean people suck.
Sorry you didn't get the blood bonding experience you deserved.
So happy to have you back, Brian Horatio Jankowski.
This remind me of the last time I had blood drawn. A gloriously beautiful black man took my blood in what can only be described as a closet in my gyno's office. I didn't know whether to faint or pant with lust, so I kind did both.
And BTW?
"Do you write songs that drip out of you while you strum an acoustic guitar?"
Why YES! I do!!!! Dontcha love me now? I'm pretty drippy. And share-y.
And The Mother Tongue, I LOVE that Andrew Marvel poem! Also there is the Shakespeare sonnet about how his chick is damn ugly and smelly to boot but he is still in love with her anyway.
I bet that guy got sooooo laid! ::wink::
Do not encourage them- I like phlebotomists like I like my men. In, out, get what you need...no extraneous talking! Let me leave with that good feeling I can only get when I do something good.
I love a good draw. Prefer to receive, than give. I sense some parallels here. You've nailed a lovely model for therapy, although Xanax is much more fun than Klonopin. Higher on the addiction scale says the shrink.
Sadly, she probably would have called security if you started sharing all these thoughts with her. Her loss!
It's done. Next blood draw and the one after that and that one after that....you'll be there. Weird how that happens just because I happened to click on over here on a late Saturday night at almost midnight. It's burned into my brain. You and your blood drawing almost lover.
Yesterday I had a mammogram. And as she was wrestling my breasts into the squeezing machine, she told me that her sister had breast cancer and I told her my mother had died last spring, and it was so odd - so without emotion, so transactional, yet somehow so human. I kind of appreciated that there was no drama around it, it just was what it was.
This is just how I feel about my dentist.