w
7
Street roots
Education * Dialogue * Independence
The first time I gave plasma
BY JAY THIEMEYER
he first time I gave.
| plasma, was in a storefront
V o n Peachtree St, Atlanta. Windows
covered completely with brown
paper, slick butcher paper.
j
The place was a one-story, window-clad
storefront, full of men
and women wearing summer
clothes, others in white. It was in the
hottest p a rto f summer.
7
Jimmy Carter was in DC.
OPEC and the Shah were in the news.
Khomeini was in Paris
just like Ho
Chi Minh
used to be.
You don’t have to be the Shah,
I rem ember thinking,
to be beholden.
I laid out my arm
and observed the contraption
set up to bleed us.
But the surprise of something new.
A moment of caught-by-surprise, lids shut,
then back to the same wornout
rut. A bubble bursting, forgotten at once.
The image of draining blood;
I needed the 7 dollars.
When I was told I had to cash
the scrip they handed me
at th e neighboring package store
at a charge of 25 cents,
. -
I didn’t rise up.
I was too tired to protest.
I would have enough
with what I Was handed
to get where I wanted to go
and fallout somewhere invisible to the naked cop’s eye.
It was the naked cop’s_eye f
. - ,
I always watched out for. It was my treat
to watch for the naked cop’s e y e .,
And weèds high enough to conceal me.
It looked like some kid’s
science project, something thrown
together out of nothing great,
not intended to impress
just to get the ordeal over quickly.
A puzzle made ofleft-overs;
I was thinking guillotine/erector-set
and how the stick might sting
like mercurichrome on a c u t
They swabbed each puncture site
with purple antiseptic, a
lovely shade. As pretty
I still have the vision:
this hobnail hanging . -
over me, held by a girl, bearing down.
I am smiling as it nears,
a smile designed for her.
I wonder how long
-just as I am wondering now
how long this Spring
shade of green
will last- how long
h er skin will hold its
color
how many donations will it take
for that shade to disappear?
I smile at h er and then the point
of the steel gray hobnail
as mercurichrome.
descends then enters,
The whole process
of being drained for a bag
took forever.
Being brand new,
meant having to wait. I sat
in a straight back foldchair
that squeaked. And listened
to a baby with a chill.
And when the paper work
was done, whatever good
that was, I had to wait again.
Like the lines for feeding. Same with bleeding.
It was all in how much time
you wasted to get to i t
That was the essence of the thing:
I t was all just more wasted time.
I was exhausted, my feet hurt from walking
on cement, my soles were a dull ache
and one ankle twisted
when I first came in. By the time
it came my turn I was ready
to lie down on the flat gurney.-
The crack in the black
plastic stuck in my back.
No matter. My eyelids felt
like steel hatchs on an old rustbucket.
It would take a storm to rouse
these rusted lids. They’d clamp shut before
the first time I got poked. It was the surprise
of something new, I felt,
a' thrill of joy, a sense of joy. ’
It was new. And my blood running out
was something to see. Like a riverbed
being born in the still flat plastic bag.
It looked like a placenta hanging there. *
I was too tired and broke to protest
.♦the inept nervous stabber. I could only laugh.
I had been dreaming I remember
but can’t rem ember the dream.
I woke with the poke,
I didn’t care. I turned it off. It was nothing to divert me.
that sea Uon of a v em 'T h e whale, my whale, and
the point
disappearing in my whitening skin _
a drop of blood leaching
from the corner.
the needle does nothing
form e
save for the seven
dollars. And believe me at that time
7 dollars was
7 dollars; and my blood
was almost all I had besides.
7 dollars was treasure, worth its weight
in Îïlood or yellow
gold or amber ale
like plasma soon to be spun
to corporate purpose and sold for real money.
As I lay flat, I fell to sleep
with that blithe needle in my arm.
And I noticed others likewise
asleep on their gurneys. Like children during rest
when we were all quite young.
The man next to me
big as a whale
woke and raised his arms
clasping his thick hands behind his head. The trail
of tubing hanging around him. Swinging like hair on a head.
Everyone seemed to notice but him. He’d been here so
much
He wanted something to laugh at.
When I looked at him, he laughed.
The gurneys whose old wheels resembled gimlet eyes
of a shark or a very tired ancient: of days, a whale in short,
old and resigned to th e ocean as master,
like donating plasma for chump change or to get out of the
heat, shrieked when wé moved in our sleep.
All the gurneys
like ships of the line ranged out as if for a glorious
blood-letting. My desensitized neighbor winked
and I did the same. Not knowing what else to say.
We were sharing the same crow ’s nest after all.
We were skanning the horizon
for the same whale.
We were grateful for the chance
to get but of the sün
and have a place to lie down:
It was more than half what mattered
till the bleeding was done and we had to go.
Leaving the cool hands of the phlebotomists behind.
And the cool flow of saline in my veins. It was cool
this storefront environment, cool to the touch
of the hobnail. But we had to go.
There were more of us waiting behind.
The phlebotomists Î talked to,
who apologetically stabbed us,
knew what it was like.
To be on your back and beholden.
It had been their training for thé job. . ,
Itw as a time of no good jobs.
Jimmy in DC
lost his.
And it was how the phlebotomists
supplemented their minimum wage. The joke,
I suppose, was on us. The Shah
got a plane ride to the White House
if memory serves. All the way to
Walter Reed Hospital. And shook the hand
that fed him. And the president was fired.
And I have craters in my arms,
fallen arches and memories that serve
to recall the harpoon sailing over
my outstretched white arm, the blue vein ,
bulging like a seal waiting for the bite, \
or a great sperm
whale full of blubber and .
blood. More than enough to fill
the waiting bag.
“Down bag!” was our repeated call
when the bags grew full and dropped
fat
with our blood. 800 ml strong.
In the bag, as it filled, the blood
looked like a pricey foreign delicacy.
The balance lever would lift its flag
and a white coat would come
to clip the bag from-its umbilicus,
and haul it off
to the back
where the blood
would be spun in the lab.
And the blood corporations would profit
from our fluid and ruin.
The gimlet-eyed wheels squeaking,
our bodies shifting in a powerless seething mass,
a truth to be told,
a whale or a seal
waiting for the hit, the next one,
as we lay and rested for just this one moment ,
out of the sun,
on thé old donated gurneys
in â storefront I was told had once sold flowers,
a hippie shop on the Strip-
In retropsect, a lot to pay
simply , to get away from the sun
a lot to pay to rest sore feet and get
scrip for 7 dollars.
But after all,
7 dollars was
almost 7 dollars. When you allow
for the quarter. >
A short distance from zero.
I donated from then on, the same way I bummed
change. I gave it my all; every ounce of me.
My daily nullification I turned
to my own
odd profit
And always drank to that acumen I had
in this untiring vein. For several days more
than twenty years straight,
I explored every avenue for every bit
of nothing and void I could find,
leaving nothing to rumor. I explored them all,
the above being only one.
Call it success of the obverse kind
save for the one thing I failed a t