Selling Outselves a Little
A Presidents’ Day Monday morning in the first-wait room of the plasma donation center. Here to make ten bucks. Ten or so waiting donors who look like low-lifes: longhaired teenage boys in dirty jeans and beat-up tennis shoes, poorly-fed women with yellow complexions and stiff, sticky hair; a tall thin man with a handsome face but a speech impediment and flea-market clothing. The young woman who checks you in, Peggy, is pretty, has an easygoing personality. When she weighs you she focuses at the scale’s weight slider midway between your face and hers, so she seems to be looking at you prettily with a slightly cross-eyed gaze.
The back of one t-shirt says the wearer attended the Tri-State Jam ’78, featuring The Beach Boys, Steve Miller Band, Jan and Dean, Axis, Barkin Band, and Sweet Breeze.
A few of the boys have battered faces (odd ridges on a forehead, an off-center nose, a lumpy jaw, a chin with the skin making pleats across it )—from fights, I guess.
Now I’m on the table waiting to be tapped. Others are flexing their fists to pump blood through spaghetti tubes into plastic bags hanging below body level. Some are waiting for their second bag. Some, like me, are waiting to be stuck.
The tables we lie on are collapsible formica tables—banquet-hall tables—with vinyl covered pads on top and wedge pillows.
A pretty-faced, plump young woman is nervous about the needle. As Peggy sticks her, the woman’s leg shakes, and her feet curl. She looks distressed. What an undignified way to make ten bucks. Poor woman.
And poor me. One of these people from the margins. Bums, sluggards, incompetents, and college students who don’t come from money and haven’t found a job.
Demeaning. But it’s for a good cause. Someone will need this plasma I can live without.
Peggy is brisk and pleasant, has long pretty hair, an ample bosom. A slightly weathered but pretty face—around 30 years old. Her hips are narrow, like a young girl’s.
The plump woman has red hair and lips—a saloon girl face and colorful clothes: russet blouse, pale-olive slacks, red socks, gold moccasins. Dressed for some better occasion than this. ~ Journal, Feb. 19, 1980