The Gallon Club

My harrowing attempts to be a good person.

My mother donated blood often when she was in her 50s. She would head to the Cigna blood drive after work and return home with a triumphant, colorful bandage around her elbow. 

She either did it often or she did it once and it blew my mind. Memory is such that it makes no difference now.

She was always ( ? *See above) glowing and bragging about it and it made her seem wonderfully strong. I was 12 at the start of that decade for her and, as she donated year after year, I inched closer to when I could donate my own blood and save a life, too. 

Sophomore year of college, a blood drive came to NYU and I recruited a friend to come with me. 

“It’s going to be really special. This is a way to help someone without having any money to give,” was what I said to recruit my civic-minded buddy to come along.

The summer before, I had sponsored an impoverished child growing up in Guinea-Bissau on my mother’s credit card. Without asking her permission. We sponsored that child until she turned 18. Her name was Naima Danfa and my parents were like… Ok, but please don’t do that again. 

Blood donation was a kind of philanthropy that I could easily and fairly access on my own terms, and it opened a world of generosity to me that suited my, as of yet unsubstantiated, notion of myself as a magnanimous person. 

My buddy Andrew and I, before our cardio/conditioning jazz dance class, went to quickly donate blood. (The amount of youth in that sentence is staggering, I know.)

At 19, I was a shoo-in. My iron was robust. My blood pressure, perfect. I hadn’t been to any countries with foot and mouth disease. 

Andrew, however had “had sex with men who have sex with men.” We were blindsided. He didn’t have AIDS! Come on! Our little bonding activity ended with him waiting outside like a pariah as I headed in to donate. 

On the way out, with my very first colorful bandage to call my own, I murmured an apology to him and we headed off to dance class where I recall doing push ups all the way to the floor without issue. One pint of blood down and totally unaffected.

Soon after, I went to donate a second time. Alone.

Again my cherished vision of ‘doing good’ went slightly awry of my long-held ideals. This time, though, in a more visceral way….

I’m donating blood. Feeling vital. Feeling philanthropic. Enjoying the power of my iron-absorption capacities. And I’m half a pint in. At NYU. No gay friends with me this time. I went alone, like a better ally.

I’m actively not watching my blood drain, turning demurely away so as not to vomit from the sight of my own frothing life force. 

I’m doing pretty well at seeking other sight lines. I turn my head toward my companion, a young woman on the gurney across from me. My intention is to nod at her in respect for donating with me. Saving humanity. “Good on you, girlfriend,” is what I intend to say, with a collegiate nod.

But what I see instead is deeply… unexpected. First I notice. She’s pale. Pale to the point of translucence. She is a cylinder of sidewalk chalk with brown hair. 

And my eyes wander lazily down to her inner elbow. I myself am a bit lightheaded, which makes me a hero and it’s all in due course. But it affects my timing. As I see her inner elbow. Slowly I engage. The point of the needle’s insertion. A gentle but. No. Increasingly urgent drip or stream or oh, God, it’s a current of blood that runs from her vein. She isn’t donating blood so much as bleeding. She is bleeding. A slight but salient distinction. 

My reflexes are quick like a cat, but a cat who has all four paws suspended in a web of melting taffy. 

One: because I’m losing blood but two: and more of an obstacle, I’m seeing blood. Which I had intended NOT to see. You can donate without seeing. It’s an art but you can. Plus, I’m 20 now. And not as hearty as at 19 and if that seems insane and unscientific I can tell you, I had recently started “the pill” to thwart hormonal acne and my iron absorption was falling precipitously, a side effect I felt keenly as my life force steadily fled my arm. Call it placebo if you like, but A) You’re not a scientist and B) No one understands women’s bodies anyway.

Oh God, my pale friend. A stranger but, my compatriot on the across-the-way gurney. Had she been so pale before? I was drunk with fluid loss and what I saw now. My mouth mutely rallying, forming pursed and dull shapes as her elbow bent grotesquely and her non blood-letting arm folded to clutch her tapped vein. A low moan attempted its way out of her soundless mouth. 

“Excuse—excuse MEEEE!!!!!” I found my voice as hers from the depths of a dream. “This girl the girl here HELLO excuse me?”

And I could hear, competing with my ineffectual bleating: 

You guys saw the match this weekend? Can you fucking believe…? How did he…? I know! What the hell?!

“HELLO THE GIRL CHECK ON. The girl??????”

And a man came running. A nurse man. 

My gurney mate had fully folded her arm now. Clutching her needled vein in bewilderment. Blood falling — nope. Spurting. Her eyes are now rolling to the back of her head. What I can describe best as a seizure. Oh, God I want to puke, but I’m too sleepy.

A flurry of men now. Nurses fixing her. Stopping the blood. Whatever she had donated going to waste. As if she’d never been there. 

I turned my head dutifully away. To give privacy. To continue my civic duty without ruining the batch. 

And it became my fate. Every Tuesday or so. To pass her, the blood-spurting-seizure-girl, on the way up to my Theatre Studies Class. And my knees at the sight of her face would give way. Always it was the same. She saw me. And I think she remembered or rather she registered. A terrible blanching of my face and she responded in kind, alarmed by my panicked disgust. Maybe not even recalling me, or why she was afraid, but mirroring my nausea and grasping in vain at a blocked memory. 

Our eyes would meet and I, an able-bodied 20-year-old would grab hold of a wall. I felt sorry because, wasn’t she just a nice college kid trying to donate blood like her mom does? Like me? Copying good women. Being a good woman. But oh horror, her face. Made me sick.

But I didn’t stop there. A life is only worth living in absolute intensity. The credo of one’s 20s. Go big or go home.

It was a hot July, when folks are less likely to donate blood, and the NY Blood Center had been courting and rewarding me with gifts (my love language). I was now an esteemed member of “The Gallon Club,” so named because I, along with other members, donated my pints often.

I’m never part of any clubs, due to my distaste for group dynamics, and I don’t go in for religion much, due to my concerns about archaic misogynistic texts written by untreated schizophrenics, and so, that was meaningful to me. To be in a club! 

And this club met my uniquely specific criteria:

No talking to people, no human rights violations. AMEN TO THE GALLON CLUB! I belong!

My blood type is O positive so I was (then and always) highly sought after via texts, emails and calls at a time when I was newly single. 

To have my body richly desired and recognized for its life-sustaining potential was pleasant and righteous in an otherwise thankless time.

So on a blistering day when I was 28 years old, I reported to the bowels of Port Authority to donate as I had done just often enough to be a card-carrying (they do give you a card) Gallon Club member.

The phlebotomist found my vein easily, but the process became slow. There was an arduousness that presented itself early. The iron test was the first red flag. I was on the cusp. I had just made the minimum by a hair.

I solidly cleared the weight limit, but I’m very short and had often wondered why they couldn’t do a “petite blood donation” — just a wee-er half pint for those who shop at Ann Tayler Loft? My blood pressure was low, but in the range that frequently elicits a “Wow, your blood pressure is perfect!” from nurses who encounter my vitals. And, with those very same numbers, I’ve had other nurses over the years, glance up from my arm, look me in the eye and cautiously whisper, “Do you feel lightheaded?” 

In these instances, I am often reminded of the scene in Death Becomes Her where Meryl Streep has no discernible pulse, but the doctor is trying to be professional about it.

So there I was. Nominally alive. Ready to give of myself. 

I began to donate. 

I turned my head away from the needle. And began pumping my ankles into a rhythmic relevé. Coaxing my blood flow to give faster and easier as I had been coached to do, both by experience and by a nearby poster.

And then. Soon. A trenchant weariness befell me. A clarion call. Eager as bright day. Inarguable. Unassailably ringing out with truth, singing to me: “Listen, love! Deep sleep! Is your birthright!”

And I fell like a heavy feather through the concept of the gurney mattress into a space without concepts.

A flurry of voices picked up. Agitated like they were in a play! 

No, not a play. A hospital drama. 

Shit shit get the ice pack 

Prop up her feet

Grab the

Go get the

Get over here

Go 

Get 

Come 

Bring 

Grab 

Where?

All this fuss for little me? 

I saw a tunnel. 

Yes, I’m serious.

A tunnel formed between me and the voices.

They were so stressed out and I was so amused and I heard them in their sublunary struggle where I, from whence suspended, thought to myself, 

This is absurd. I can’t die today, I’m just donating blood.

It was funny?; it was tragic?, but in truth it was utterly removed from the density of any emotional weight and only in translation to a living audience does it matter at all.

I’d have happily died with no opinion on the matter, except for a flickering remembrance that: it was stupid and illogical to do so today. But the autobiographical facts of my life went in and out like bad wifi and, when they were absent, I was sailing and free.

Abruptly, my feet are elevated. And I think. No no no, I’m only donating blood. Then the ice pack to the nape of my neck. And I’m 28. My personhood connects back to the router.

Then loses connectivity again.

There is then a lapse in my memory! And what’s extraordinary is I only know that now. Writing this tale at 37 years old. A lapse of memory is difficult to write especially for one such as myself. Famous among my peers (and my poor husband!) for having an unsparing and relentless memory, not essential for the memoir genre, but certainly useful, as far as innate superpowers go.

So I only know there’s a lapse here because how else can physics explain? That I awoke? On an industrial-style couch in an employee lounge and only today can ask. How? Did I get there? 

A stab of cold and a rude extrusion from…. Like a slap on the butt and a sharp inhalation. 

A photo snapped. A Facebook post:

Hello world! Please welcome our baby! Her name is Emma! Almost 59 inches tall. Reborn on a hot day in summer. Port Authority basement.

An elderly nurse spreads over my field of vision. She says nothing by way of exposition. Only: “Please. Never. Donate blood here again. You are a liability. Never come back.”

That’s all she said. Of the place where I belonged. And had been in The Gallon Club.

I have to pee. 

A younger woman swoops in, as if offended by my attempt to rise, and insists that I pee with the door unlocked. 

What? I always lock the door. And, this is… Port Authority.

I don’t recognize myself in how she speaks to me, when she adds, “In case you fall. You need to keep the door unlocked. I’ll be outside.”

I pee. Feeling truly well and strong and gaslit by the tension around me. 

How can I be a fall risk? I donate blood and then do push ups all the way to the ground immediately afterward. I’m practically a (pacifist) Navy Seal. Do you KNOW who my father is? Well, neither do I, BUT I AM A MEMBER of The Gallon Club! 

My blood, a well-earned half pint, ends up in the biohazard garbage can because that’s their policy for people who don’t complete their donations.

I know because I asked. While I ate Oreos, having peed without incident, I inquired after my blood.

“We had to dump it. They only accept full pints,” said someone who works there. A lot of combative, litigious assholes whom you aren’t allowed to hate because they save lives for a job.

You might wonder here, if I asked for details about what had occurred, but, dear reader, I only realized today, you see, nine years later, that I passed out. All I recall was that people were angry with me, in an employee area, with some ice, in a place where previously I had felt virtuous belonging, but was now asked to *never* come back. I asked no questions beyond inquiring after my donation.

Unable to account for the last… hour? Ten minutes? I huffily exit, fuming that the half pint of blood couldn’t be donated. I hate waste. I don’t have AIDS. Stop thinking everyone has AIDS when they don’t! 

And I leave. Silent stares follow me from staff as I go. 

I go and get a beer in the midtown heat. Thinking, Well, you try to do a nice thing.  

Replacing a half pint with a full one. My blood is stronger now. I’m not so grouchy anymore.

Months later, I go to my annual gynecologist appointment, where I’m told again, with the usual congratulatory alarm, that my blood pressure is “perfect.” When the doctor comes in, I lament to my sweet and trustworthy gyno my frustrating inability to donate blood without being labeled a so-called “liability” who should “never come back.”

My gynecologist is an elderly Muslim Pakistani man. Brilliant and kind with an accent so thick that I sometimes don’t know what he’s saying.

My friends have told me that it’s strange that my gyno is an old man, given the options, but he’s who I landed with at 24 years old based on my insurance and we bonded early because we always end my appointments with philosophical discussions. I’ve come to rely on our ecumenical dialogues as part of my vaginal and reproductive health.

Plus, he’s an OB/GYN so, who really is a better proxy for God than this man who brings babies into the world on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other Wednesday? He has consistently fantastic online reviews, which is more than can be said for God.

Across his desk, after my exam, my gyno pivots slightly from his computer screen toward me.

For this particular query I’ve asked of him, about my expulsion from the Port Authority blood donation center, I’m expecting him to offer me science. Something about iron absorption or about menstruation. But he leans forward and chooses another angle entirely:

“You must take this intention,” he says, “to donate blood, and do something else with it. Just do something else. They don’t want your blood. So. Stop trying to give it.”

I sigh wistfully. He knows I’m weird and has never minded. “But donating blood is such a good, kind thing,” I say, “and I used to be able to do it so easily.”

“No, no, no. You miss the point. This intention to do good, this is what matters. So you take this intention: and do something else with it.” 

I nod. 

“You still picking up at the Nostrand Avenue CVS?” He finishes filling my birth control prescription on his prehistoric IBM computer.

Then he crosses his arms and says.

“I like Jews.” 

“What? Say more?”

“Among the doctors I work with. They’re so kind, the Jews. It was the Jews in residency and now the doctors I know who are Jewish. Very good, very moral people.”

“Oh, wow I appreciate knowing that. That’s… good to hear.”

I take this in. I think, should I say something nice about Muslims now? No. That would be awfully forced. Do I compliment his button-down shirt. No, that’s irrelevant and will seem flirtatious because he’s just looked at my cervix.

I thank him and say, yes, “I will find something else I can do that is kind and take this intention to do good elsewhere.” 

I’ve long since stopped donating blood, due to being a fall risk, a death risk, a lawsuit-mongering phantom. And I hope I’ve taken that intention and done some other good thing, but, to be honest, I can’t really point to what I’ve done in its place. I miss that incredible connected feeling, the specific high of saving a life with a matching blood that flows through all of us, inborn and native to myself, a gift I readily have that I didn’t have to earn or prove.

To give it away made me feel worthy and rich in belonging.

And it’s been humbling to accept what has pointedly been shown to me. I have to keep all of my blood now, every last pint, all to myself. 

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You uh… wanna donate?

https://www.redcrossblood.org/