I wanted to do it myself. Looking around, it was obvious that most attending this class came with their partner. This was not surprising; the ultimate goal inherently could be a very bonding activity between two people.
But I came for me, to explore something I had recently found as fascinating, alluring, something I wanted.
When it came time, I sat down with the kit provided. I explained to the instructor my intention. They were very encouraging, sitting in front of me just in case I needed any help.
I'd waited til most of the couples were done, knowing I might need that one-on-one time with the instructor. The couples at least had each other to lean on. I was flying solo.
My nerves started growing as soon as people stepped up to start. When I broke out all the pieces of the kit, sitting them on the table beside me, my heart fluttered. I made a decided effort to slow my breathing, to remain calm. This was not an activity I wanted to fuck up.
I wrapped the tourniquet around my arm and felt at the cleft for a vein. Just as I was instructed, I found the spongy spot. There it was. I chose my right arm because every time I've had my blood drawn (every time) it has been from my right arm. My left arm's veins are not pleasing.
I cleaned the area. I picked up the needle with my left hand. I took a deep breath.
Slowly, I inserted the needle into my skin, working millimeters at a time. There was no pain. When almost all of it was inside me, and yet I still had not drawn blood, my instructor suggested a different angle. Still no good. Then they asked if they could try. One small move and I saw it; the line of blood appeared in the plastic tubing.
I slowly pulled the syringe, extracting my own blood. As I saw my life force exit from my body, my other instructor came over, caressed my hair, and sweetly said, "Pretty girl." When the syringe was nearly full, my instructor removed the needle and I immediately placed gauze over my skin.
I didn't want anti-coagulant, so I capped the syringe with the blunt tip needle and made my way over to the second station.
There were two options; I chose the simpler holder. I pushed the plunger, filling the pendant with my blood. With the assistant's help, I capped the top, melted the plastic, and added the metal fastener. In my hand was my blood pendant.
But, in the other, was the syringe with the remainder of my extracted blood. I'd seen as others discarded their extra blood or drank it quickly back into themselves, but that didn't feel right to me. It needed to be more sacred, more special.
I got down on my knees, tilted my head back, and opened my mouth. As I pushed on the plunger, the first drop dripped into my mouth, landing on my tongue.
The taste was familiar, yet amazing. The depth of the mixture, the nuance of the flavor, the thickness of my body coming back into me.
As drop by drop I drank my blood, my thoughts were of my year and my goals: Bravery, Endurance, Forgiveness. A refrain of those words cycled through my mind as I remembered my adventures, the people I'd met (including my instructors in that room), the memories I'd made, the life I had lived from January up until that moment.
When the last drop fell, I felt full of self love.
I stood. I discarded my expired syringe.
I held my pendant in my hand, turning it over and over. In the small vial I had captured myself in a moment, myself from this year, a piece of me.
It hangs now on my wall above my bed. So many memories, so much of my life captured in one small little pendant.
Marked
~ a story ~
Birthdays are always fun at the house. Everyone gathers. We drink. We eat. We laugh. But, most importantly, we all enjoy the show.
We have a little tradition amongst our friends, a rite of passage for each new year of life. One year, one person, one hit.
The funny ones opt for the birthday spankings, the simplest form of our tradition. One-by-one our friends circulate, the birthday boy or girl stands in front, bent over, counting as hits land. There's lots of laughter and everybody, including the birthday boy or girl, has a great time.
But this was my birthday. I wanted something a little different, something special. Still, it would be hard to choose my fate. Celine had an intense display for her twenty third year, twenty three slaps across the face. Taren was just as hardcore. He took twenty-nine punches to the face, stomach, and chest. Not many had the stomach to take a swing, or to watch, but we did anyway.
For my twenty-five strokes, I wanted more meaning, more feeling. After all, it had been a big year for me. Meeting Daniel. Our recent engagement. And my promotion at work. I wanted to mark my years, and, I decided, mark myself.
I sat on the chair in the middle of the room, the small table beside me. The tiny scalpels laid on a sterile sheet. Twenty-five cuts to mark my twenty-five years.
Only three people had the stomach for what I asked them to do: Raquel, my oldest friend in life, Nance, the first person I met when I entered the public kink scene and who'd been my rock during my first difficult days, and Daniel, my love.
The room grew quiet as soon as I sat down. Everyone knew what was about to happen. I made sure to warn the faint of heart to stay away, but everyone remained.
My three stood behind me. Raquel was first.
Before that night, Raquel and Daniel had learned the proper precautions to take from Nance who, among our friends, knew the most about (and presents on) blood play. He also explained to them what I wanted.
Raquel's area was my right shoulder blade. I spied her gloved hand in my periphery as she picked up her scalpel. It didn't shake, not an inch. I could always rely on her to be strong. She cleaned her area, then placed her left hand on my back, steadying myself and herself.
I felt the bite of the blade, the quick scratch of the first mark. Then the second, a little more pain now that my body knew what to expect. The third, as I felt a drop of blood form on the first. The fourth, as I felt the high begin. The fifth, slashing across all four, the hardest mark to take yet.
I gritted my teeth as she worked, breathing, pushing through the pain. Her second set of five she placed beside her first, ticks marking off ten of my years. When Raquel finished, she disposed of her gloves in the waste bin and her scalpel in the sharps container. She came around to my front, knelt, and kissed my forehead. There were tears in her eyes and mine.
Next up was Nance. His marks would be on my left shoulder blade. Just like Raquel, he made his slashes in my flesh, two sets of four upright ticks and their fifth slash across. Disposing of his gloves and scalpel, he too came to my front, knelt down, kissed my forehead, and joined the watching crowd.
I could hear them breathing, but I didn't dare look at them. For me to get through this, for me to truly feel the meaning and weight of this, I remained in myself and saw only my arms or the eyes of my closest friends.
The last to mark me was my Daniel. His marks would be at the top of my back, just below the nape of my neck. As he worked, I thought about our year, thought about the first time I saw him across the room, walking into the lounge. I thought about that first eye contact, the way he made my heart flutter from twenty-five feet away. Our first kiss. Our first scene. Our first fuck.
When Daniel finished his marks and disposed of his scalpel, he pulled out the jar from under the table. Slathering the mixture on my skin, it hurt more than creating the wounds. But it was necessary. I wanted to hold the cuts, wanted to be scarred by this.
The scars were my years. The individuals who made them were my closest friends, the people who I held in my heart.
On my body, I wear my days. In my flesh, I show my years, my life marked.
~ a moment of terror ~
There is something about that first feeling as it passes over your lips. Something about that first drop on your tongue. That first taste. The fullness of the liquid. The salted sting of it as it flows from someone else and into you.
It is a powerful notion, a powerful moment, when the blood of another crosses your lips.
He laid in my arms, young, pretty. He was just becoming a man, just turning into something more than annoying. That's why I chose him. All that promise. All that potential. I knew it would make him even more delicious to consume.
He rode his motorcycle at night, on old forgotten roads where he could embrace his need for the wind rushing over his skin and the thrill of pushing his bike to its limit.
I made sure to appear to breakdown my car on that rode, late at night, with no one around. I made sure I wore something to attract him, something alluring, revealing, enticing. I made sure I had my syringe at the ready, and the knife nearby, for when it was time.
He stopped, ever the good Samaritan, and asked me if I needed help. And when I said I did, he did something even more remarkable. He threatened to rape me.
Said he wanted a fee for his generosity. Said nice hot piece of ass like me on a dark rode like this needed protection against the darker elements of this world. Said he'd be just the guy to help me out, provided I helped him out first.
His words would make the kill that much sweeter.
I took my shirt off for him, let him see the goods, pulled him in closer. He was young, handsome, and stupid. When his lips found my neck, I found it more than ironic the fate that soon awaited him.
My syringe found his neck and he fell into my arms.
When he awoke, a few hours later, we were far from where he was last conscious.
We were still outside, but now he was the one disrobed. On the ground. His hands bound. I left his mouth free to scream, his eyes free to see. I wanted him to see, wanted him to watch as I approached.
I showed him the blade. I'm sure it was nothing to his surprisingly hardened eyes. One little nick and the blood trickled from his neck. He struggled as my lips found his flesh, lapped up his blood, sucked the life force out of him.
Soon, though, his voice grew weak. His struggling eased and then stopped. His body grew cold.
It always is a little sad when they turn cold, once beautiful and still quite stunning, but lacking the warmth that is life, that is the essence of them.
For now his essence was inside me, churning in my belly, giving me his power, his allure, his youth.
So young, so stupid, so sweet for me taste tonight. I would gladly have drank from him forever were it possible, but this woman always has too great an appetite.
They gave a warning for the squeamish before they began. I, with a front row seat, wasn't going anywhere.
Chey laid face down on the table to my right. Stefanos prepared his tools for the demo: a glass fire cup, his fire wand, a lit tea candle, a cup of alcohol, and a scalpel.
Working on Chey's back, Stefanos sliced five incredibly small scratches into her skin. So small, in fact, were his marks that I could barely see the lines of blood.
With a quick swish of his wand inside the fire cup, he placed the glass on top of the tiny wounds.
And then we all watched as the blood began to seep up and out. Chey's flesh raised from the burnt oxygen inside the glass. The lines of blood trickled down to the edges of the cup.
Chey and Stefanos spoke about their blood cupping as we all sat watching.
Somehow, because of Chey's movements, the cup dislodged. Stefanos again spun lit accelerant into the glass and placed it back over the cuts. Again, we watched as physics pulled the blood out from her flesh onto her skin.
And I sat, my eyes locked on this small cylinder of glass, mesmerized by the show.
They then had us all stay quiet and watch the glass carefully. Chey braced as Stefanos popped the cup.
It wasn't what they'd hoped; no intense splatter of blood displayed on the glass, though there was a small pop of blood.
The cup to the side, Stefanos poked at the hematomas on Chey's back. Because the cup was placed twice, she had two differing sized hills of blood just under her skin. Stefanos played with them, moving the hills around like a cat gingerly batting about a ball.
We asked how she felt. We asked how much it hurt. How long before the swelling would go done? What kind of a mark did she expect to have afterwards?
Hurt, no. Felt, I can't recall.
Chey hypothesized the swelling would be down by the end of the day, leaving her with a rather large bruise for weeks.
As they cleaned up and the class disbursed, one thing remained on my mind. I had never seen blood play live before, especially not that up close and personal. I did not squick. I did not shy away.
In fact, I loved watching it. I wanted to touch Chey's back (though I never asked). I wanted to play in the blood (though again I made no overture).
I recalled seeing Stefanos pick up a large clot of blood formed at the edge of the glass cup. It looked like a wet red dead worm. And yet I wanted to touch it, push it around, play with it.
Because of Chey & Stefanos' Pyro Passion presentation, a majority fire play class, I learned that maybe, possibly, I want to play with blood.
