I love the color and the texture of blood. I always have and, in spite of everything, I suspect I always will. I am very lucky that my new gig as Jerry's "Gal Friday" let's me see lots and lots of it!
There is something so pure, so intense about the color of blood and something so smooth, mysterious and voluptuous about its texture. As you might have heard, blood is thicker than water -- it is ribbony and smooth like Bailey's Irish Cream in a TV commercial. It swirls and moves with deliberation and slowness. It has a dense quality not unlike slurry.
Blood is almost like a veloute -- one of the mother sauces of French cuisine -- a word derived from the adjectival form of the French language word "velour" which means velvety. Okay, so it's not from the Greek but that is exactly what blood looks like to me. Velour. Soft, warm, thick and French -- doesn't get much sexier than that, now does it?
Blood.
Velvety.
Voluptuous.
Sensuous.
Forbidden.
I suppose that this is one of the reasons why vampire movies always have undertones of passion and sex. I mean, there is the obvious relationship between the vampire, traditionally a man -- sometimes known as the biter -- and the defenseless, frail, virtuous woman waiting to get sucked and bitten -- sometimes known as the bitee.
I remember as a kid watching Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula bite Helen Chandler as Mina in the 1931 movie version of Dracula. I was too young to know what sex was then but I sure knew she was liking it. A lot.
"Doesn't that hurt her" I asked my mom. No response. "Why doesn't she hold up her cross to make him go away?" I asked, hoping that the cross around
my neck held such secret power. Again, no response -- I think my mom was getting into it as much as Helen, the bitee, was. The look on Helen's face was not pain, or fear, or anguish at being turned into an un-dead which I thought should -- at the very least -- hurt a little bit. That look was something else that I just couldn't quite put my finger on.
But the bite of Count Dracula and his drinking Helen's blood also made her one of them -- bad with a capital B-A-D, without a soul and with no hope of ever going to heaven. That's pretty much as bad as it gets, right?
Wasn't the whole vampire thing -- the sucking of blood -- something that you were supposed to fight, resist, confront with science and religion and garlic and shun -- just like the passive -- even though, as you try, you know that it feels so good, is so seductive, bewitching and captivating, that you are helpless to its attraction? I think I felt the same thing in the 8th grade when little Timmy Staley kept asking me to go down to his bedroom in the basement. Believe me, no amount of garlic was stopping that either.
But enough about me. During Bela's bite, the look on Helen Chandler's face was not pain, or fear, or agony. It was ecstasy, passion, love. I knew it then even though those words were as foreign to me as a young boy as the words diet, "no more wings, thank you" and tight abs are now. That look between the 2 of them suggested -- as far as the MPPDA Hays Code would let them -- that they would need a cigarette, you know, afterward.
And, after the act -- the bite -- two little tracks of her blood trailing down that long yet firm beautiful white neck, the look on Bela Lugosi's face was the same -- but with just a touch of hunger and embarrassment. He did, after all, miss a drop or two, didn't he? Oh sure, you can say it was for the camera, the cinematography -- the shot -- but, in the final analysis, he failed. He didn't get it all and now she was dirty. He was not able to suck it all and keep that precious life-giving blood in his mouth. He spilled some and, when he did, he knew that in a moment or 2, it would stain her lovely gown with the white fur collar. Stained forever because you know you can't wash blood out of fur collars -- especially back then before Tide with Acti-Lift Liquid Detergent was available. Dracula didn't want to be responsible for that shit -- he just wanted to suck her blood, stamp her V card and move on. Maybe Bela himself knew little Timmy Staley. He
was fussy and overly concerned about his appearance -- plus he never went out until really really late. I think that Count Dracula might be gay, what do you think? With a name like Bela you never know. Just a thought.
Anyway, back to blood.
In the Greek Orthodox tradition, all Easter eggs -- the very symbol of rebirth and renewal -- are dyed blood red to remind us that Jesus Christ shed his blood on the Cross to save us from our own sins. Festive, huh? In my happy-go-lucky church, the egg itself symbolizes the new life of the Resurrection and the enclosed, uncracked eggshell symbolizes Christ's tomb. The fun just doesn't stop for little hairy Greek children, doesn't it? But, wait, there's more. The old Greeks believe that the 1st egg dyed was the "egg of the Virgin Mary" -- appetizing, right? -- and they saved that blood red egg in their ikonostasi -- basically a Greek Orthodox shrine in your parents' bedroom -- for a whole year to protect the household from the evil eye. The egg of the Virgin Mary is only removed from the ikonostasi once the evil eye passes or when the egg smells so bad, so foul that it brings tears to your eyes and makes you gag when you're sneaking peaks in your mom's brassiere drawer (which of course I NEVER did -- if that's what you're thinking).
Suffice it to say that all of this was some heavy shit to a 10 year old with a salt shaker who just wanted to eat a hard boiled egg after 4 weeks of fasting.
Most of the religious symbolism was lost on me as a kid but I can remember staring at the big bowl full of Easter eggs -- all blood red --wet and glistening straight from being dyed in the kitchen sink. Those eggs were beautiful just like a Christmas tree. Because it was Easter and I was fasting, the eggs were forbidden fruit and I'm not talking Richard Simmons either. I would stare at those shiny red shells, wishing I could eat one and squinting so that the deep red color would become richer and more intense, each individual egg turning into one huge impressive egg, ruby red, with small variations in its gem-like color. In case you're wondering, the opening sequence to Family Affair was based on this same special effect. I would do that for hours and hours until my mom said "for God's sake, get away from those eggs, will you! You can't have one until after church." I knew that. I didn't want God to get all pissed off at me for eating an egg when I could just as easily have had some fasolakia -- Mom's meatless bean stew.
It was fascinating to me that something so associated with a happy time -- after all, Easter in the Greek church is only a bitch until midnight on Saturday night -- could be so inextricably linked to blood and tombs and sin. Once Easter service is over -- long around 3 in the morning -- you are with your family and friends, there are parties and music and -- most importantly -- you can and do eat so much food that you nearly pass out and fall over from the thrill of eating meat and dairy again. But, there, in the midst of all those complications, were those eggs -- blood red and reminding me of Jesus -- trying without success to buzz kill all the fun out of me. Those eggs never lost their fascination for me but they were -- to me at least -- a constant reminder that someone had to die so that I could have another hard boiled egg at the end of another huge lamb dinner with manestra, spanakopita, youvetsi, pasticchio and various other meat casseroles. Looking back, I suppose it was a little bit of a buzz kill but, hey, that's the Greek Orthodox Church for you.
Another thing to consider about blood is what the whole last 30 years has done to it.
I can remember being a kid and getting a cut. It wasn't a bad thing assuming it was a small one and it almost always was except for the time I ran to the back door to scare my cousin Charlie and pushed my left wrist right through the glass window. When that happened, Mom wrapped a big towel around my arm to slow the bleeding and Dad drove me to the emergency room. I can still remember the blood squirting all over the interior of that cool 1964 green Buick Skylark convertible they had bought to make Sharon happy. It was scary for a minute but, after the drive to the hospital, I got to eat anything I wanted for the rest of the day.
Other than that one cut -- the scar still visible on my wrist today -- most cuts were tiny and not scary at all. A cut on the swingset might sting for a bit but it never stopped me from swinging high enough to touch the leaves on the tree. And a gash from Dad's secret special shovel -- the one with the paint splash on the handle -- might leave a splinter of wood inside my hand but I didn't stop digging up Barnabas in the back yard. I would just put the cut or gash up to my mouth and suck the blood a little. It tasted so sweet, so salty and . . . well, really, so good. It wasn't bad -- it was blood. My blood. I savored the taste of it and then moved on, trying to grab a leaf or dig up my old bird named, coincidentally, after another vampire, Barnabas Collins. Maybe life does just repeat itself for me year after year. Maybe life does just repeat itself for me year after year. Maybe it's just
me repeating myself. I don't know.
Now, fast forward to June 5, 1981. The US Center for Disease Control issued the first official notice of the disease that would become known as AIDS. Putting aside the countless tragedies visited upon the world as a result of this disease and the countless lives -- both young and old -- that have been prematurely lost to its horrors, AIDS completely changed how we look at blood and there is no turning back.
Today, blood is bad. Blood is evil -- something to be feared and reviled and isolated and cleaned up with an over-abundance of bleach-like products. There is no fudging on that rule of thumb nowadays. It is a judgment, a curse, a danger worse than yelling "FIRE" in a crowded movie theater. You don't want to touch blood, you don't want to be around blood, you don't want to touch anything that ever in the last 5000 years had blood on it -- hell, you don't even want to
see blood anymore, do you? I almost feel like my own blood is a bad thing. It's a shame really. Just like nickel gum balls, telephone booths and clothes manufactured inside the US -- things are so different in 2011 than they were back in the day.
Just look at how different a trip to the dentist is now.
When I was a kid, going to Dr. Cahnovsky's office was fun. I got candy -- how frigging sick is that, a dentist giving candy to his patients -- the women at the front desk always played with me and let me color in the special coloring book with the teeth and the red lips -- all with freaky smiles on them bigger than the surface of their cartoon faces and long eyelashes for some strage reason -- and then there was the cavity -- with a sad upside-down frown that I always colored black. My mom always made sure I got a treat afterward, usually a hamburger from McDonald's which, back then,
was in fact a treat. So, a dental appointment was a fun experience putting aside the fact that Dr. Cahnovsky's belly was so big and round and heavy that he had to set it on my arm to rest it during my appointment. I always knew that my cleaning was almost over when my right arm was completely asleep and tingling from the constant weight of his big bo-belly up against me. Do that today and your mother calls the cops but, again, this was a different time. Dr. Cahnovsky was a very nice guy, but he was also a big hairy Polack with a huge buffalo butt and he must have had a cholesterol count that was through the fucking roof, you know what I mean?
Compare the dental fun and games of my youth to a dental appointment today.
Everyone is gloved up, latex covers every square inch of skin, face, arm and skin. Most dentists now -- even the female dentists -- wear condoms at all appointments, you know, just in case. Gauzy see-through gowns -- seemingly made of marshmallow but somehow impenetrable to the evils of blood -- cover their dental clothing and their nasty nether regions. Big goofy looking safety goggles are strapped to their heads lest your blood spontaneously squirt out of your mouth, nose and/or eyes and into their mouth, nose and/or eyes. And on top of the goggles are the big plastic safety shield -- full face masks really -- kind of like the one Jennifer Beals wore in Flashdance when she was welding at her day job, sparks flying for another perfect example of dangerous cinematography.
But no longer is a trip to your family dentist a fun afternoon affair where you can declare "what a feeling!" Instead of looking forward to a bright smile, smooth teeth enamel and a free toothbrush -- a dental appointment is now an exercise in the avoidance of infectious organic material communication. Every surface is wiped down -- yours as well as the operatory's -- to make sure that your dirty stuff doesn't rub off on the poor schmuck who has to lie his ass in the reclining chaise of death next. And don't even make me go into the Sisyphusian arrangements for separate water, waste and disposal systems. It's like building the pyramids except without 50,000 Hebrews to do all the work. Do I have a 9 o'clock cleaning or am I in a bad Clockwork Orange wet dream? You tell me!
So, bottom line, blood is now bad but, for the life of me, I still can't get the image of beautiful, velvety -- like veloute -- warm and seductive blood out of my system -- as a GOOD thing. I am that modern day Helen Chandler, waiting, wanting and all tingly for a bloody nibble or two. My blood means life. My blood means eggs and the Virgin Mary and Jesus. My blood means Bela Lugosi will sidle up to me after dinner and drinks and give me a two pronged adult hickey that will leave me breathless and sated and, if I'm lucky, maybe a cigarette after it's all over. All that PLUS I get a castle in Europe and live forever! Wow, I could even get to see what the new Audis will look like in the year 3000! The year 3000? Hell, before my vampire bite, I would have been happy just living long enough to see the next season of Glee.
Okay, I obviously do not want to be one of the un-dead but I do wish that I could come out of the closet about my love of, and my fascination and obsession with, blood. And, to be honest, I do kinda wish I could see what the new Audis will look like in the year 3000.
But, more realistically, I would just like to be able to safely stand at the counter in Jerry's operatory while he's extracting a particularly difficult tooth from Tumba Melnik's spread eagle mouth, writing up the diagnostic procedure in her thick and well documented chart, without having to hold my breath in a vain attempt to avoid the inevitable spray of dear Tumba's dirty, perhaps diseased, Hungarian blood. No longer do I want to neurotically wash my hands until my skin chaps, chafes, cracks and peels after I clean up from sup-epithelial connective tissue graft surgery. And, to be brutally honest, I would like to have sex just one more time before I die and NOT have to worry about somebody's tainted bad-ass nuclear blood interfering with me trying to get my groove on. Is that too much to ask??? Believe me, at age 52, it's just too hard to do that while -- simultaneously -- pulling my jiggling muffin top tight, sucking my stomach in and making sure my Johnson is in the required state of necessary happiness.
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