An Archeological Study of Blood

Blood, since the beginning of my life, has always garnered my attention. Through all the memories lost in childhood the core ones I never forgot are based around it. Whether it was a shot at the doctor’s office in my thigh that made it trickle out through a small cookie cutter hole in my skin or scrapping my knees on the pavement when I fell off a scooter. One that stayed with me was watching The Shining, the scene in which the elevator doors open to a waterfall of red liquid overflowing in the lobby of the hotel. Perhaps it was the color that initially piqued my interest, how it moved slowly or vastly poured out of the body, the quantity of it, what it symbolized. Blood is more than life, the opposite of futility yet becoming such without a body to build. How exciting that is to witness, the moments in which life is lost, what is lost is the reason that blood cemented itself as the marker of an obsession that has never left me.

For a friend’s birthday we initially planned to do a rather large needle scene, but instead we opted for a small blood letting ritual with our friend group. They pierced us one by one at first with 22g and then a punchy 18g that would come to leave its love marks in the form of a bruise. We took turns removing the needles from our forearms over a kidney dish to catch it, blending our blood together. There was humor when some of us bled less than others, chanting “pump it” to get the blood to flow. It was silly, light hearted. Blood, sharps, needles, all the things that breed fear for most people, those that allow it to conquer their imagination as a terrifying display of mutilation. They lack an understanding for moments like this. An earnest group of blood fetishists laughing over the combined hope for someone to bleed enough to have a drop or two make its way into the metallic dish below. I wish for those who are terrified to be able to witness the joy or laughter that can come with something so striking. To challenge what it means to bleed for another.

When I top for needles I describe myself as being in a trance like state, where my attention never wavers from the body. It is one of the few times my brain quiets, growing focused on the only thing that matters to me, my bottom. Once I pierce one needle through the skin I crave more, like an addictive desire. Seeing it pillowed underneath the first few layers of skin ignites my childlike curiosity to twist it around, stack needles below it, or cruelly drag it against the ceiling of flesh as I pull it out. 

Blood is essential for life, it is sacrifice. When you see it clot you witness the vessel trying to save itself in its most pitiful and beautiful state. I am always above looking down at my bottom as if they are an animal on a dissection tray. Watching them squirm or cry or beg for me to be nicer. I’ll remember the vampires I’ve read in books or seen in the movies, that this might be the closest I get to understanding how they feel. Puncturing a wound in the flesh, creating another hole to violate. In a way needle play acts as the most radical act of disruption, going against the nature of existence, of a predetermined world. I like to say it is my objection to civility, a disavowal to the rules that tell me when and where to put things. If this form of sodomy makes me monstrous then it is this type of monster I have grown to adore about myself for its transgression. Though it is as much about this penetrative reciprocity from the soul that offered themselves fully to me, who asked to no longer be contained inside this magnificent instrument. What we both know is this: the power by which transmutation occurs through the breaching of a manmade, or rather monster made, opening. Gaping the wholeness of our own humanity to showcase to ourselves this extraordinary vulnerability. For we are open wounds and bloodied fountains, and who would we be to deny ourselves the pleasure of confronting the wound and sticking our fingers inside?

Sharps play has its endearing moments, the ones that feel lighthearted and full of love and yet it is innately cruel in its nature. It plays with fear and I desperately want to see what a body can do under these circumstances. By demanding the fullness of another it offers back a sacred exchange in visceral devotion. There is nowhere else to be but here, caught between the metal in skin and flesh. Blood letting, purging out what once was to make way for its new life. This kind of play is all about the drama of it, violence being intertwined with care. Under the needle’s gaze you are an opening made of flesh that deprives you of any place to hide. It acts as the kind of beginning as a means to an end, one that reminds you what you are made of. 

What can come from a Shakespearean level kind of devotion? It congeals, coagulates, clots the wound, becomes dried and cracks around the bending of a skin. It’s prehistoric, a cave painting I’ve made to last for a lifetime. Telling a story of a brief moment in which life poured out of this body, and it is so wondrous as it becomes lost. Buried underneath the washing, only to be rediscovered in memories. Blood is an archeological study of a person, a collection of pure human essence. A rarity in its ability to mark the tracings of life that existed here and for this small fleeting moment it is mine to play with, to adore and bring out of the place it once belonged.