i am five

years old and playing with my cousin on some beach, while the adults are smoking cigarettes at the bar-and-grill.

i cut my hand on a piece of tinted glass. it doesn't hurt, but it's the first time i have seen my own blood. it's a loud startling red and watching it trickle between my fingers produces an odd, woozy feeling in the pit of my stomach. not bad. not good. just different. even at the age of five, i already know the thrill of different. i don't cry, i watch; i am fascinated.

what i also know: blood is supposed to go on the inside of you, not the outside. i lift my hand to my face and lick the blood off. it tastes like the back of a clean spoon. more blood comes out. i lick that off, too.

my cousin passes out. i mean, literally. he's a blond boy about my age and his eyes roll into the back of his head and he keels over in the sand, just like that.

it's the first time i've seen that happen, too. it's scary. i scream, and now the alarm's going and adults come running and everything gets very confusing very fast. but it's not about my bleeding hand, at all. and yet it is about my bleeding hand. i'm sitting in the eye of the storm, watching red dots in the sand where a few drops of blood got away, and thinking of how fascinating this stuff is.

it has the power to make people pass out? how strange, and how cool. significant moment number one at the age of five: blood on a beach. turned me into a little gothy philosopher.