I’m incredibly turned on by blood. Soft, pale flesh yielding beneath a blade, crimson beads dripping down your warm body… while most people would be happy enough just to live out these fantasies vicariously via B-movies and straight-to-Kindle erotica, I’ve always loved the idea of wearing someone’s blood as a necklace. Unfortunately, this isn’t the sort of thing you can reveal to a one-night stand. It’s hard to convince someone who doesn’t know your full name to let you slide a needle into their arm and wear their life force as an amulet.
Then, at the beginning of the year, everything changed. I met a guy, and did what any regular person does at the outset of a new relationship: instantly signed up for a phlebotomy course.
I knew he was the chosen one, and it was time to collect his blood.
When I first opened up to him about my special interest, he was immediately game. He didn’t just agree to let me have a little bit of his blood for accessorizing purposes, he offered himself up enthusiastically. Motivated by his encouragement, I booked onto my nearest training course at Glasgow Clyde College. It came with a £160 price tag, but the thought of walking into a classroom and leaving six hours later with enough practical know-how to carry out my own procedure was well worth it.
“There was a beat of silence, a quick flush of shame”
When the day came, I excitedly spent the morning coordinating different shades of black. I decided to wear my traditional goth girl uniform of fishnet tights, lacy corset top, knee-high boots, tight choker, and a possibly offensively short skirt. You’re supposed to dress for the job you want, so I turned up like a cross between Dracula himself and one of his brides.
The nurse leading the course asked us to take turns introducing ourselves. There were ten of us in total, and everyone else had a ‘legitimate’ (yawn) reason for being there. A glamorous young aesthetics practitioner; some eager GP receptionists who perched forward with their pens like they were revising for an exam; a jaded school nurse in her mid-fifties; a girl doing some sort of PhD research. Then it was my turn. “I don’t have a connection to the medical world,” I said, “but I consider myself a bit of a vampire.” There was a beat of silence, a quick flush of shame. At least I had been honest.
Once we were all acquainted, we dove straight into anatomy. Veins, arteries, capillaries—the full vascular highway of the human body. Next came the equipment rundown. Tourniquets, needles, vacutainers—those little plastic or glass tubes with stoppers in that nurses use to cup drawn blood—and gloves. Looking around the classroom, I began to notice that the carpet was mottled with stains from the fake blood; the ceiling dotted with splatters from previous students’ attempts.
Then, to my horror, out came the training arms.
They looked like the appendages of the damned, grasping through the void, or someone desperately asking you for toilet paper from the next cubicle over.
After six hours of practice, the nurse came around for the final test. One by one, we had to talk her through the step-by-step fundamentals of venepuncture, which include talking to a patient about their consent, finding a juicy vein, disinfecting the skin, and angling the needle just right.
After my monologue of medical jargon, she handed me my certificate.
I was now, officially, a ‘blood guy.’
When the day finally came to draw blood from my boyfriend, I laid everything out on the kitchen table. It looked like a cross between a science lab and a dungeon. My boyfriend sat down and rolled up one of his sleeves, looking slightly nervous. Two fruitless attempts and sore needle holes later, and the enthusiasm he had expressed when I first pitched the idea was starting to wane.
As I set about immobilizing his arm with the tourniquet for the third time, he admitted that he felt a little bit turned on by me taking charge. Then, with a fresh needle and tighter tourniquet, we finally hit blood. An erotic shiver shot through my body, but I also felt a strange sense of professional accomplishment from being able to complete the procedure correctly.
Afterwards, he told me how much he loved that I had a permanent piece of him to carry everywhere in my otherwise normal life; resting against my chest, warm and secret, on the bus and wandering the chilly aisles of the supermarket.
Forget bouquets of roses or couple tattoos, I have this. Maybe, if everything goes to plan and I can figure out how to take my own blood, he’ll have a matching vial very soon.
Follow Claire Lindsay on X @Claire_Lindsay_
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