A bloody quickie: Five quarts

Five quarts:
a personal and natural history of blood
by Bill Hayes
(ISBN: 0345456874)



I admit, I checked this book out from the library because of the title. If you're into vampires, you're probably acquainted with blood to some degree. Even if you're not drinking it from lancets, scratches, tablespoons, or disposable vials, you know the role it plays and you're overopinionated about it.

Should this be required reading for blood drinkers? Not quite. Written by a gay insomniac whose parter is HIV positive, Five Quarts devotes little of its space to vampires and glosses over such historical and literary luminaries as Vlad, the Countess Bathory, and John Polidori and Lord Ruthven. He describes both porphyria and hemophilia, two diseases long linked to vampires. He even talks about Van Leeuwenhoek, the man who first examined blood under a microscope and came to some conclusions about blood, most of them incorrect to the point of embarrassment. It's a decent historical and cultural look at the red stuff, and witty to boot.

Most of the book, however, describes Hayes' personal experiences with blood. While he writes at length about his sex life--when your lover's condition makes up the bulk of your book, it's hard not to--Hayes also describes several commonplace incidents where the fear of catching AIDS from his partner complicates the situation. At one point, Hayes' significant other broke a jar and accidentally cut himself on the shards. It makes me curious if people think that anyone of the vampirism persuasion goes bonkershit whenever something like this happens.

Hayes' partner was involved in a San Francisco clinic scandal in 1998, where a phletbotomist (licensed professional blood-drawer) was caught reusing butterfly needles, spreading such illnesses as Hepatitis C to unsuspecting patients. Hayes' partner's HIV diagnosis happened while the phletbotomist worked at the clinic; did a reused needle cause his disease? The phletbotomist's reason for reusing the needles: "Butterflies were expensive--eighty cents apiece as opposed to five cents for a standard needle--and they were intended for use only with a small number of patients, mainly pediatric and geriatric" (163-164). The idea that someone could risk the health of their patients to save money is chilling.

I've been a witness to irresponsible bloodplay. I once attended a party where the participants broke out knives and started cutting at random. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, and you can't convince the group that they're engaging in something life-threatening, get out of there. Trust me.