Basic B*tch

If you cut me, do I not bleed enough?

Medical professionals have said many things to me over the years that I’ve forgotten immediately: “You didn’t actually need to remove all your clothes”; “You shouldn’t drink on this medication”; “We only see this level of vitamin D in the housebound elderly”. But one thing, hissed in cold frustration by a nurse with needle in hand, has plagued me for years, unsettling my very sense of self: “You’re stingy with your blood”.

I have been called rude, and delusional, and (obviously, because I’m on the internet) a fascist: grand. But stingy? Is there anything as culturally loaded? As morally unattractive? As fundamentally threatening to any right-thinking Irish bad feminist?

If you cut me, do I not bleed? Apparently not. This was an insult to my very humanity.

For thousands of years an excess of blood was associated with enthusiasm, laughter, lightness. Full-blooded. Bloodless. I felt Hippocrates himself had descended to curse my biliousness; it seems sinister, this bloody stinginess.

Kind nurses have reassured me since, complimenting my voluptuous veins, my slutty and forthcoming median cubital. It’s never enough; it will never be enough.

I’m the consummate hostess: crank that tourniquet tighter, doctor, I can take it! You think you’ve seen fist-clenching before? I’ll clench my fist like a pregnant lady’s kegels, I’ll slice myself open and bleed into a bowl. I’ll use a lighter to warm the crook of my elbow in the waiting room, I’m that sanguine. Do you need another syringe-full? Honestly, help yourself, I’ve loads.

Of course, it turns out that such a keen willingness to be pierced with needles is actually a bit of a red flag for medical professionals, but that’s less injurious to my ego. And maybe they’re not far from the truth: the rush of people-pleasing is hard to beat.