Via Bizarre Mag
INTERVIEW: If you thought drinking blood was exclusive to nocturnal vampires, think again. Meet the real-life Californian girl with a genuine taste for the red stuff.
WARNING: Drinking blood from another human can put you at risk of serious blood-borne diseases, such as HIV and hepatitis B and C. You should only ever have contact with blood or blood products that you know to be safe.
You don’t have to scratch deep to find the erotic subtext in most vampire yarns. From True Blood to supernatural grot flicks like Harry Sparks’ new The Vampire Mistress, mainstream culture has always had vampires down as kinky buggers. Yet if nibbling on a virgin’s neck is traditionally the domain of gothic fantasy, there are also people in the real world who exhibit a similar craving for blood. Whether it’s savouring claret from a Dartington crystal tumbler, or licking a lover’s fresh wound, it’s an extreme infatuation known as ‘blood’ or – you guessed it – ‘vampire fetish’.
A talented tattooist, artist and art curator from The Antelope Valley, northeast of Los Angeles in California, Michelle Navarette describes blood as “beautiful.” She says she has been drinking animal blood daily for nearly a decade, and often uses blood in her own captivating artworks. Fittingly, her most recent art is a portrait of Vlad Dracula III or Vlad Tepes (pictured, entitled ‘The Darkest Prince’), the 15th century Wallachian Prince who impaled his enemies on stakes, and according to some legends, even downed the blood of his defeated enemies from a goblet.
But Michelle’s favourite haemoglobic recreation doesn’t always involve painting; her primary passion is drinking blood, and ultimately, for the consensual supping of blood from humans, either from partners, or close friends. Last year, her thirst for the red stuff saw her filmed on the American TV series My Strange Addiction.
Despite the nature of sucking blood, and the fact that a lust for blood is also often termed ‘clinical vampirism’ or even ‘Renfield Syndrome’, named after Count Dracula’s crazed assistant, Michelle is keen to distance herself from any mainstream conceptions of vampirism. For her, bloodsucking offers deeper, more profound meanings. She says it isn’t taboo, is and is something to be celebrated not feared – as it is in horror flicks.
“The social take on what vampires are is based entirely on movies and books,” she says. “It’s common to affiliate something that drinks blood with being a beast or something negative. There’s an extensive history about vampirism that people overlook. Do I love vampire films? I sure do, are they the reason that I drink blood? Most definitely not!”
YOUNG BLOODS
Michelle is a charismatic, self-confessed “outsider” with a striking alternative look and a cool mane of jet-black hair. She first became smitten with red body fluid when she was “eight or nine-years-old” having accidentally cut herself. She remembers finding herself enamoured to the thick red liquid trickling from the wound.
“I just thought it was really pretty, and when I tasted it, it just stuck,” she recalls. “My interest was also fuelled through living in a republican town where so many things are taboo. Blood became my private, dangerous thing. I couldn’t understand why other people were afraid of it. I still don’t quite frankly.”
Michelle, who recently turned 30, now drinks animal blood as part of her daily diet, and consumes between two-to-four litres a week. Given that blood contains high levels of the mineral iron, she admits that drinking any more could put her at risk of an iron overdose, a serious condition which damages internal organs, such as the brain and liver, and could be fatal.
The vast majority of blood that she consumes comes from pigs, and occasionally cows, which she purchases from Asian food stores, who often use blood in their cuisine. But it wasn’t until Michelle left home in her early 20s, that she began guzzling the stuff on a regular basis. “I couldn’t just store it in my parent’s fridge next to their milk,” she laughs. “When I moved out, I could keep myself well-stocked.”
To ask Michelle what it is that she loves about blood requires a broad answer. The simple response is “everything”. But to break that down, ‘everything’ includes its look, smell and taste, and the way that it ebbs, flows and glistens. But this isn’t just an aesthetic love affair. Beyond those immediate attractions, Michelle hints at deeper, more spiritual reasons at work. For her, it’s about the inherent power that blood embodies; it’s the source of life and the great reminder that we, as humans, are all animals too.
“Everything living is derived from blood, it is the life source of existence,” she says. “It’s like how water is to this planet, blood is to life. There’s no greater sense of power than that. I don’t think of blood as something that’s necessarily sexually stimulating, it’s bigger. I find it to be kind of…mystical. It’s also the one thing that connects humans to everything else.”
LICKING WOUNDS
As a daily blood drinker, it would be daft to presume that Michelle hadn’t acquired a taste for the liquid’s sanguinary flavours. She describes pork blood as being “more gamey” than beef, because of its higher iron count. But she says that the taste of human blood depends on the iron and protein in a person’s diet, with high levels of both making it especially salty.
Drinking blood from humans is Michelle’s preferred quaff, primarily because of the intimacy of bloodsucking, and she admits that she feels “a profound spiritual connection” to anyone whose blood she consumes. She has “several friends” that she is able to drink from, and does so when she can. She says that some pals genuinely enjoy it; others do it out of curiosity, despite harbouring a veil of fear.
Extracting blood requires the willing person to make a “little nick”, usually on their arm. However, because the arm area is more prone or visible to scarring, Michelle prefers “the upper shoulder, or like in so many vampire films, on the inner thigh.” She oversees the extraction to make sure it is done safely but refuses to make the cut herself because she doesn’t want to be accountable for any mistakes. She also avoids indulging from the same friends too often for fear of them developing scars from her thirst. But things can still go wrong…
“Once a friend cut himself way too deep, which was horrifying,” she remembers, regretfully. “He cut his upper arm without me present. When I returned he had this giant, gaping wound. He refused to get stitches at hospital because explaining the wound would be awkward. I actually felt bad because I ended up drinking from the wound before dressing it for him myself!”
MY CUP FLOWETH OVER
Michelle says she avoided the word “fetish” when filming My Strange Addiction for fear of drawing negative connotations from the show’s mainstream audiences, but she has no bones regaling the sexual aspect to Bizarre. Given the explicit closeness and bonding nature of sucking blood from a fellow human, Michelle admits that it can become “odd” when drinking from friends rather than lovers. “I want to avoid the clichés, but it’s incredibly erotic, especially for the person I’m drinking from,” she explains. “If I’m sucking from a friend, it could easily ‘go further’ and I don’t want it to. I try to keep it plutonic.”
But blood is “essential” and intrinsic to Michelle’s sex life. She has explored her haemoglobin ways with past boyfriends, enabling what she describes as “a special connection” with her lovers. One ex was even once privileged enough to drink from Michelle, which she regards as “a special thing”. Michelle’s blood interests also branch out into other deviant activities, such as needle play and medical play, two forms of BDSM ‘edge play’, which result in skin being broken and therefore, of course, blood. But Michelle admits that she’s still yet to indulge her ultimate sexual fantasy: getting it on inside a bathtub full of claret…
“One of the rumours about Elizabeth Bathory [17th century Hungarian Countess] was that she bathed in the blood virgins to maintain her youth and skin,” says Michelle. “I’d just love to bathe in blood with someone and have sex. That’s a little harder to get my lovers to do!”
Solitary Woman: Example of Michelle’s art, done entirely in blood
BLOOD SAFETY
Drinking blood from humans holds many inherent dangers, and not just for the potential of scarring from cutting, but because downing another’s blood can put you at risk from blood-borne diseases, which are ailments spread through the contamination of blood. Among more familiar heavyweight nasties include HIV, hepatitis B and C, and viral hemorrhagic fevers. Michelle insists that she is “well aware” of the many serious risks and gets her blood tested regularly. She also only drinks from ‘reliable sources’.
In a bid to show up any biological damages of Michelle’s drinking habits, the producers of My Strange Addiction took her to hospital for blood tests. Ironically, results showed Michelle to be afflicted with nothing other than anaemia, which is a common blood disorder characterised by a lower-than-normal red blood cell count, often resulting in symptoms of fatigue and poor concentration. This would suggest that Michelle’s daily drinking of animal blood (not human) could, bizarrely, carry medical benefits. Michelle says it floored both the doctor and the film crew.
“I watched the doctor try to think of negatives of my blood drinking, because that was why the film crew had brought me there in the first place,” grins Michelle, mischievously, who was already aware she had anaemia. “He ended up listing obvious reasons why drinking blood might be dangerous, such as transmitting blood-borne pathogens. He said that there is never really a ‘safe’ way to drink blood. The show producer then asked if the anaemia could explain why I was so addicted to blood, to which he replied: ‘I deal with thousands of people with anaemia, none of whom tell me they drink blood!’”
MUM’S THE WORD
Since appearing on TV, Michelle says that she started getting fan-mail, typically from male admirers sending her photos of their self-inflicted wounds. Although flattered, the onslaught of grisly snaps was not what she was expecting – or hoping for. “People were asking me if I’d like to drink from their wounds,” says Michelle, sounding uneasy. “One guy sent me a photo where he had cut himself way too deep and you could see his fatty tissue coming out. It didn’t gross me out because that’s very hard to do, I just felt very bad for him. The caption he sent was ‘is this good enough?’ I was like, ‘uh, yes, perfect, now don’t do it again’!”
But Michelle admits she has been warmly surprised by the general positive reaction she’s received since appearing on TV. Having grown up on the fringes of society, she reveals she is used to being called ‘vampire’ or ‘freak’, so has no qualms about “freaking people out”. But since her My Strange Addiction appearance, she confesses, “everyone’s been really nice”. In fact, she even reckons the show’s producers started developing a curiosity having filmed her for a week.
But would Michelle now feel comfortable stocking bottles of blood in her parent’s fridge, since coming out about her “obsession”? Now there’s a question… “When I was younger my fear of getting caught whilst drinking blood was much greater,” she says. “As a teenager, having a growing body is already confusing, let alone having a habit such as mine. But as my mother stated on the show, with who I am, and how odd I always was, very little comes to her as a surprise. Though my family will never tell me my addiction is okay, and much of my extended family does have a problem with it, my mother has my back, and that’s the most important!”
If you’re interested in Michelle’s art, she welcomes you to contact her at mskyward83@hotmail.com
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