No, I’m not talkin’ about some episode of Angel where the Dark Avenger is happy. That happens like twice a season, ain’t worth discussing. What I intend to treat upon is nothing less than the end of an epoch. An epoch of frustrated good intentions and insults to my nutritional intake. Yes, devoted fans and captive audiences may realize, I am discussing my long-stymied desire to share my blood.

Just the other week, I was thinking, “It’s about time for me to undergo another exercise in frustration by spending an hour waiting and doing paperwork only to discover my iron levels are ‘healthy but insufficient’! Yeah!” No, I’m not kidding, I actually thought it was about time for another try. The very next day a stylish drop of blood appeared on the Nike internal website (even blood and charity have to be stylish to make it onto that page) and summoned me to make an appointment to have my blood taken today. Of course, cockeyed optimist that I am, I signed up immediately.

It was with a certain spirit of weary dutifulness that I trudged over to the Tiger Woods Center, past a gigantic photo of said golfer that I can only describe as glamour photography and at which I always stifle a giggle, and introduced myself to the volunteers at the Blood Drive. My appointment was at 10:30. I was early. They were running late, they explained, because they have some new procedures - like asking you the scandalous questions in person and face to face! - and are training a new person, and apparently Nike employees tend to be on time 60% more than the average blood donor, thus throwing off their entire groove.

So I dutifully read scary things about West Nile and long explanations of what they’re allowed to do with my blood, and then settled in with [A truly excellent book about the Little Bighorn and the fate of Plains Indians in America|text|Killing Custer] and waited. Also, I waited. Then, I waited, traded quips with the woman next to me about how long we were waiting, and eyed the post-donation junk food table with ill-disguised longing. Every minute I waited made it that much more certain, by the cruel nature of the universe, that I would be turned away for my weak blood. At 11:50 or so, they called my number.

Before they can test your blood for excessive wimpitude, they have to confirm and update your donor record, which is done, in these whizbang days of techno-magic, on a laptop. I do not believe that the chap with whom I was placed was supposed to be doing this portion of the procedure. While his motions once he at last came to testing my blood were slow and deliberate, they were quite deft. He interacted with the laptop more or less as if he was a member of an isolated tribe in the Amazon and had had only half an hour’s orientation training to our brave new world. He hunted and pecked in the truest sense, where ‘hunt’ implies ‘slowly move through a dense forest quietly and slowly, peering through the leaves to attempt to spy the elusive ‘F’ key.’ He typed everything without spaces, which I had to sweetly remind him to insert. Finally, after his typographical safari had stretched on for ten minutes, the moment of truth arrived.

He uncovered the azure phial of mystic copper sulfate, nursed several domes of glistening blood from the ritual puncture on my finger, and loosed the dark fluid into its watery trial. The dark bead drifted downwards, and caught on the wall of the vessel. I looked anxiously at the acolyte, but he merely gently tapped the side, and the bead happily resumed its descent. Either the 11% daily recommended iron in my multivitamin or the steak dinner to which wonko had treated me had prevailed. I was found worthy.

After the usual round of questions designed to expose my sheltered existence (no, I have not exchanged sex for money or drugs), my staid lifestyle (no, I have never been to Africa) and my conservative aesthetics (no, I have not received a tattoo in the past 12 months), the blood pressure, the pulse-taking, I was ushered to the center of the room and beckoned over to a wizened man with an Eastern European accent, labelled with medical tape as ‘OSCAR’. He seemed disapproving that I did not have a favorite blood-giving arm, and did not exclaim, as had the cupric acolyte, over the beauty of my veins. He merely took my empty tubes and bags and dourly began arranging to suck my blood. He cuffed my upper arm and began gently probing my underelbow. He studied the veins, pressing up and down like a kneading cat, peering through his glasses. Finally, he made a shape like an arrow on my arm in purple and intoned, “Thees ees where we begeen.” Then he looked up and his dourness broke to reveal a truly benevolent smile. “You haff very long vein,” he beamed. I felt inexplicably proud.

It is not merely my overgrown sense of occasion or my desire to dress up a picayune blog post that leads me to speak in liturgical terms. There is something ritual about this, the process by which the stuff of our lives is removed and preserved to bring life to others. And in this case the curious figure of Oscar, his solemnity, the diamond-circled onyx ring on his left hand and the band of sheaves of wheat and crosses on his right, added to the sacramental tone. I sat, flinching away from the organic heat of the plastic tube snaking across my wrist, concentrating on the last days of Sitting Bull on the Sioux Reservation; but all the time, on some level, I was aware of my fingers, rolling and squeezing a foam toy, and the deep sanguine cord spooling into a sack below my chair. It is beautiful, that color, the color of working blood, blood flowing from place to place as it does within us, rather than seeping or spilling or splattering into the world outside. In time, Oscar returned, and frothed my blood into tubes for testing, to track the spread of West Nile Virus, to check for disease, to learn who could take my bottled life. He gravely held up a string of meaningless numbers and letters for me to read as I held my wounded arm above my head, and released me to the junk food and the stickers, the obsequious volunteers pushing lemonade and cookies. I waited a while, waited in vain to feel some ill effect, and pushed off into the cold, richer and poorer, full of the quiet fulfillment of this reverse communion.