M.A.I.M’s office is on Ventura Boulevard near a coffee shop and a pet store. There’s a series of concentric circles, the M.A.I.M. logo, painted on the office’s blacked-out windows. Inside, you could easily mistake the reception area for that of a dentist office. The waiting room is full. People talk, but it’s mostly gossip about who’s dating whom, and which upcoming parties are worth attending.

I stand in line and wait. When it’s my turn, I tell the girl at the front desk who I am, and that I’ve been exposed to HIV. None of the other people in the reception area reacts to what I’ve just said. Conversations continue. I’m invisible. The receptionist gives me a clipboard with some forms, and I hand her my driver’s license. The forms include spaces for personal information, the types of tests I am taking today (HIV, Gonorrhea, Chlamydia), and a waiver of privacy so that my test results may be disclosed. My hands shake as I write, so much so that I have to ask for a second set of forms. When I’m done I hand the clipboard back and she gives me a plastic cup, which I take into the bathroom.

I fumble with my zipper, and it takes concentration to steady my aim so that my stream makes it into the cup. I screw the lid back on the cup, wash my hands, and splash some water on my face. After drying my face with some paper towels, I look in the mirror above the sink for a glimpse of my reflection. It’s not there. Panic crashes into me like an Arctic wave and I take a half-step back before I remember it’s not a mirror I’m peering into. It’s a sliding-glass window to pass urine samples through, and on the other side is laboratory space. I compose myself and leave the bathroom and head for the blood-drawing stations.

The blood-drawing stations are located in private rooms. I sit in the chair and roll up my sleeves for the nurse. She gasps when she sees the scarred-over craters in the crooks of my elbows. The holes are right at the spot where a junkie would shoot heroin, and they are large enough to push a pencil through. She doesn’t ask. She composes herself and ties a rubber tourniquet around my arm. The nurse swabs the area with alcohol and stabs at the scar tissue with a needle, but it does not penetrate the scar tissue. I make a fist and a vein bulges on my forearm. She stabs the vein and the needle glides in easy. Blood spurts into the collection tube, and it starts to fill.


The scars inside the crooks of my elbows are souvenirs from my homeless days when I needed money for food. I sold just enough life blood to stave off death. Whole blood is made up of red blood cells, white cells, and plasma. They only let you sell whole blood once every few weeks because your body needs time to regenerate its lost red blood cells. When you donate, your identification is shared in a database so you can’t game the system by going from center to center before enough time has passed. It takes weeks for the human body to regenerate lost red blood cells, but plasma, however, is replenished quickly and may be sold twice a week, so I switched.

The reason the scars are so large is because the gauge of the needles they stick in your veins for plasma collection are wide enough to drink a milk shake through. They have to be to prevent clogging. When you donate plasma, you’re hooked up to a machine that sucks your whole blood out of your vein, spins your blood inside a centrifuge machine to separate your red blood cells from your plasma. The machine keeps your plasma and returns your red blood cells back to you through the needle. This process repeats itself for several cycles until your plasma donating quota, based on your weight, is fulfilled. If you’re a larger man, you must give a more plasma per visit than a smaller man, but your pay doesn’t scale accordingly. You get paid exactly the same. For a man my size, it takes many repeat cycles of sucking, separating, and returning, and I could be hooked up to the machine long enough for me to watch a movie. You learn not to eat fatty foods before you donate, because excess fat in your blood may clog the needle, slowing the process even further.


When I’ve filled the collection tube with blood, the M.A.I.M. nurse removes the needle, swabs the area and puts a band aid on. This is to be the first of many HIV tests I have scheduled over the coming weeks. I’ll have the results for this one in a few days.