Blood safety and feeding
by Sarah Dorrance
METHODS OF WITHDRAWL
1) Biting. Not the safest or most painless way to obtain blood. It can be very sensual to receive a hickey (less sensual to give it, if you are trying to get blood through the skin - you end up sucking so hard that you give yourself tongue burn). Breaking the skin, however, hurts. If you are going to use this method, be sure you have used mouthwash beforehand to minimize germs (I used to recommend brushing the teeth, but this can often cause bleeding gums, which makes swallowing blood very unsafe). Keep a first aid kit handy. The best way to bite someone is in the middle of sex, or sexual foreplay; you'll get a higher endorphin count, and your donor will not notice the pain as much. The neck is the most easily accessed place, and it is very sensitive, but the thighs are more practical in that they can be covered and are at least as sensitive as the neck. If your donor has breasts, they can be a good target area as well; although I don't recommend biting the nipple hard enough to draw blood. Go slow and gradually build up sensation. Then, after you are done with feeding (and sex, if this is in the middle of sexual activity) clean up with a local antiseptic.
You won't get much more than a few drops this way.
If you place your hickey on the carotid artery, you will get a large amount of energy, and you may also cause your partner to slowly asphyxiate. Be careful. Asphyxiation is an advanced technique and most SM practioners consider it edge play (most vanilla people consider it weird). You can get somebody off with asphyxiation, adding orgasmic energy and frantic struggle for air to your pool of energy taken, but if you don't know what you are doing you can cause brain damage. Do not strangle your partner for more than 30 seconds at a time. I know it doesn't sound like very long, but trust me, counting to thirty slowly is a very long time indeed, esp for the person who is fighting for breath. After thirty seconds to a minute (one minute is REALLY not recommended) your partner will begin to pass out for lack of air.
2) Cutting. Use a very sharp knife, a lancet, a scalpel, or possibly a very sharp razor. Do not use a dull implement or an exacto knife. This hurts! The sharper the blade, the better. Be careful not to cut any actual veins or arteries - you don't need a whole pint of blood, and you don't want to have to clean up the mess that spurting blood invariably causes. Many vampires think they need a lot more blood than they do, esp when hungry. Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. Visualize the spurting jets as you drain your victim of energy, but keep it on the astral level. Your physical body is just going to excrete the stuff anyway, mostly undigested; you're feeding off the release of the energy, and a little cut will work just as well. Again, the best way to get a lot of energy is if this is part of erotic play. If you practice SM fear may be very well part of desire - esp if your donor is afraid of blades.
You can trace very fine lines on the back with a blade, and get a certain amount of blood to rise to the surface in the form of bleeding welts. I did this once with a pair of sewing scissors. Don't dig any deeper if this is what you are doing.
Avoid vital organ areas.
If you are trying to minimize pain, the best way is to get your donor to cut him/herself on the wrist (this is do-able without serious blood loss - I've done it myself, and avoided veins and arteries quite nicely). Or maybe the ankle. This will also minimize the fear. The best time for this is after coitus, when the body is still flooded with endorphins and your donor is relaxed. Hopefully not falling asleep. It makes for a very intimate, cuddly sort of feeding.
3) Jabbing. As in pins and needles. If you get into piercing at all, this is a great way to get little tiny amounts of blood. (sometimes more, if you have hit a cappilary) If you know how to do venipuncture, even better, because you can remove vials of blood this way (and surgical needles don't hurt very much). However, if you are not a trained phlebotomist, don't do it. (Great reason to take night school courses in medical assisting...)
The safest way for the amateur to get blood is with the use of a Soft Touch device (thanks for pointing this out to me, Tamazin! :)) It's how diabetics monitor their blood sugar. It's pretty idiot proof. I don't find them very erotic but they have their uses.
4) Whipping. If you have a masochistic donor, great! Whipping is one of the best ways to get LOT AND LOTS of endorphins and energy release. You'll tire yourself out a little, but the energy will be more than replaced if the scene goes well. Discussion of whipping techniques, and ways to make an SM scene great, have taken up entire books, so I'll just restrict myself to how to draw blood. Use a rubber whip, or a braided cat with steel tips at the end, or possibly a cane or a really vicious crop. These are by far the nastiest of the common toys. Signal whips are also pretty efficient, and the sound of a signal whip usually inspires terror in the heart of even the stoutest of bottoms, so you'll get some adreneline out of it too. (Signal whips were originally designed to motivate sled dogs. By making a really scary noise.)
You can either build the scene slowly, gradually increasing sensation, or you can start fast and nasty and get nastier. It is really up to you and the bottom. Both methods have their merits. The usual rule of courtesy is that the bottom has the right of veto, and can stop you at any time, so keep this in mind. You don't want to be a date rapist, after all. And whipping to the point of drawing blood HURTS. Most bottoms are not strong enough to find this erotic. It takes either a lot of natural endurance, or a lot of training, to get a bottom to endure a seriously severe whipping.
You will want to immobilize your bottom very well indeed, because s/her WILL fight to get away even if s/he really wants to be there; and you will almost certainly need a gag, preferably a ball gag although if you have nothing else you can make do with a wadded up handkerchief of scarf in the moth (do not cause your bottom to asphyxiate, and watch out for hyperventilation).
5) Picking scabs - is gross. I am sure there are some people out there who do this. My only response to this is: yuck.
6) Animal blood - if you are a city dweller and you don't like the idea of bleeding your pets (I know I don't) your best bet is to eat really juicy rare steaks. Which are not always the best thing for your health, as there is a slight risk of food poisoning. Drinking the blood from the package is not only dangerous, it's also really gross. I don't recommend it.
If you live in the country and can slaughter or drain your own livestock, more power to you. You can get a lot more blood this way, if you need volume, and you can be sure of where it came from, which has its health merits.
Hunting is an even better way to get lots of animal blood, and I personally think it is more ethical to hunt your dinner than it is to buy it from a factory farm.
I prefer human blood myself.
7) Menstrual blood - Some people get a thrill from it, I personally think it's yucky. It sometimes has a pleasant musky odour, but the texture is too gloppy and reminiscent of ectoplasm for my tastes; the actual taste is very pungent, and I find it unpleasant. Also, the energy is totally different. Usually it is all the negative stress that has been stored up for the past month - the nutrients in the uterine wall do not make up for the huge amount of PMS that is being shed. Yuck. Why bother. do you know that menstruating women have been known to make souffles go flat and curdle milk, with their pheromones? My anthropology teacher bragged about her tendency to do this, in a classroom discussion. This should tell you something about the nature of the energy.
If you want something raw and sexual and intimate, why not just go for the fluids that are usually produced during oral sex? They have lots of energy in them too, although it isn't blood.
FEEDING ON YOUR OWN BLOOD
Is a contradiction in terms. If you crave blood, not energy, you don't have much to lose, but you'll expend energy by cutting yourself. OTOH, if it's only blood you want, go for it. At least this way you are assured of a regular donor.
DISEASE CONTROL
AIDS, hepatitis, and syphilis are all deadly to everybody. Don't delude yourself into thinking that your special vampiric qualities will protect you from blood-born diseases. They won't. I know there has never been a survey done by the CDC on the percentage of infected vampires, because we aren't exactly visible as far as minority groups go, but just because vampires are not listed on the lists of infected subcultures doesn't mean we can't be infected (and haven't been).
If you do not know your donor really well (and I mean REALLY well. Friends for a month or two doesn't cut the mustard) you ought to assume that your partner is, in fact, infected with something that you don't want. It is unlikely that you will be infected by drinking bodily fluids of any sort unless you have cuts or sores in your moth or esophagus (as Vyrdolak pointed out in a post on VAmpyres listserv); what do you do to prevent this? Don't brush and floss your teeth before you feed, although you may want to use mouthwash; certainly don't feed after you have just been to the dentist! (Why do you think dentists use those nifty little contraptions called "dental dams," anyway?) If you have a raw, sore throat don't feed on bodily fluids either. So don't scream your brains out at a rock concert, or feed when you have a cold or flu or throat infection...Also, don't eat extremely spicy food because this burns the esophagus. It will also give you very bad breath, but that's less of a problem. (At least for you. Your partner, on the other hand, probably has a different perspective.) You may want to avoid feeding if you have heartburn. If you are prone to heartburn, find out what is causing it and change your diet.
As for safer sex - for God's sake use a condom, and put gloves on if you are fisting your partner and have cuts on your hand. And use a barrier with oral sex if you have cuts in your mouth but still want to perform oral sex anyway. (Saran Wrap is much nicer than a dental dam - thinner, and it doesn't taste as yucky. It does NOT make a good condom,alas.) Make sure your condom is latex, not sheepskin, and is lubricated with nonoxynol-9. During sex, don't just save the condom for when you are just starting to come (if you are male) as men are wont to do. Pre-cum has sperm in it too, and besides, if you have a sore on your "love rocket" it won't make any difference how close you are to coming if it comes in contact with infected vaginal fluid (of course, if you have a sore, what are you doing having sex? Go to the doctor! Sheesh!)
All this you probably know.
As for other forms of sickness - flubugs, etc -
Don't feed from a partner who is sick. Not only will the energy be polluted (and weak) but your partner needs all the energy s/he has to get well. Let your partner heal up first. Feed your partner things that boost the immune system and general energy level: ginseng, garlic, ginger, goldenseal, echinacea, damiana, cayenne pepper. (Hopefully your partner's chicken soup is not spiked with all of these things at once. Bleach!)
And again, don't blood-feed while sick. You might spread your germs, and besides, you'll spend more energy feeding than you will recover while eating.
BTW: I forgot to point out that Hepatitis B (and other forms of hepatitis) are a lot studier than AIDS, and more contagious. And therefore easier to get. Do yourself a favour and get a series of hepatitis shots. It's a good investment, and it beats worrying.
Comments? Please write to Sarah Dorrance, the author, or Amy Krieytaz, the keeper of this site. Thank you.
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