How I F*ck with Blood and Vampires

NATALIE RIVERA: Hey everyone, just a warning that today’s episode explores blood. You might have already guessed given the name of the episode but just thought we’d add a disclaimer in case any of you are queasy. Alright, onto the show. 

NR: I don’t know about you, but I really love quickies. They’re just so convenient, hot, and, you guessed it, quick. Some of us have had quickies in the morning before getting ready to go to work or in a car after a great day. Some of us have also had them in the restroom. Maybe not the germaphobes that listen to this show, but if I had to guess I’d say a lot of have had a quickie in the restroom. But if I had to bet, I’d say most of us quickie-in-the-bathroom perverts have never had a blood quickie before. Yes, I said blood quickie. 

RAVEN: We were actually at my parents’ house, and decided we'd sneak off into the bathroom. It's like, oh, I'm just gonna get some blood out of you with a hypodermic needle. She actually blew through the vein and just put the needle in too far. And so nobody got blood. And, you know, I had a little bruise, nothing fancy, nothing exciting, but it was just like, Yeah, do not do blood play into your gut, you know, no pressure, no rush. Not parents waiting downstairs. And that was the day that we learned that actually, blood play and quickie don't go well. 

NR: This is How I F*ck and I’m your host Natalie Rivera. Vampires, blood, medieval role-playing. These are just some of Raven’s favorite things. Raven, who you just heard from right now is an author of vampire novels and a lover of all things gothic and dark, which makes sense given the home she grew up in. 

NR: Why was there a cemetery in your backyard?

RAVEN: I lived in a historic town in New England, and you couldn't fit like, all the living people in without kind of stuffing them in next to the dead ones.

NR: So that was like, a common thing with other people's homes, too, like a lot of people also might have be, you know, have a cemetery in there? 

RAVEN: Well, there was this was in front of the old Hill Burying Ground, I'm not joking. And so there was, you know, the whole, there's a whole lot of houses right in front of it. And then there was another cemetery, I walked in, and it had houses all around it, too. So I guess it might have been hard to live there without living near a cemetery.

NR: Raven Belasco looks like someone who had a cemetery in her backyard growing up, and I do not mean that in a bad way. Not at all. Frankly, I’m a bit envious of Raven’s style and her name. I mean, who wouldn’t be? Raven’s parents were publishers so she grew up around a lot of books, you know, in her house with the cemetery in the backyard. Some of those books were kid-friendly. A lot of them weren’t. 

RAVEN: I'm pretty sure I first actually read Dracula at age 12. And that's, you know, that's a pretty horrific book. You know, I, there was a science fiction book, I got my hands on that I remember, it just shocked me so much that I was like, You know what, even as a child, like, I know that this is a bit much, and I'm just gonna put this book down it was, I can't, somebody's getting impaled through the anus with a steak. It was like in the first chapter. And this is like one of the big names science fiction writers too, or, and I was just reading it, I was just like, boom, you know, I didn't need this in my head. And we're closing this book. And we're putting this down

NR: While Raven did put down books where things like anal violence came into play, most of the books she picked up she’d finish reading. She was a bookworm. A horny bookworm. 

RAVEN: There was a book called The cave twins, where one of the twins was naughty and got a spanking. And I was like, oh, oh, you know, and I thought I was being really subtle. I put this little tiny piece of like pipe cleaner in on that page. You know, and then figured, you know, if my parents found it, I'd be like, I don't know how that piece of pipe cleaner got there. It's definitely not a bookmark that I would put in the book at all.

NR: But it wasn’t just books that had this effect on her. 

RAVEN: The earliest fantasies, I remember having, I actually called them the spanking monsters, and they had these big hands, and they pick me up and do things to me. And I pretty sure that was influenced by a Porky Pig cartoon where he gets caught in like, he's in this machine. And he's having a nightmare that he's being force-fed and stuff like that. And so that helplessness really spoke to me. And then there were some episodes of Tom and Jerry that just really sparked my kinky little developing brain.

NR: While her imagination was filled with sexual fantasies throughout her early adolescence, she didn’t have sex until she got to high school. She had penetrative sex for the first time at 15. She didn’t waste any time after that.

RAVEN: I was a big old horn dog, and which is usually a term used for men, I think in society. But I definitely was as annoying as any teenage boy. My friends got super tired of listening to me talk about how much I wanted to have sex. And they found a guy who was likewise annoying. And they said, okay, you to go off into that room, don't come out until you can shut up. 

NR: Raven and this guy didn’t go to a room to have sex actually. They did it outside in the woods as a sort of safety measure. 

RAVEN: So from reading too much especially like, you know your Victorian shit like Dracula. I had this notion that there was going to be like when I lost my virginity there was gonna just be blood everywhere, you know. And so I was quite concerned about how to take care of that in a way that my parents didn't see it. So actually, my boyfriend and I went to go have sex in the great outdoors. It was Memorial Day weekend. And so we didn't have school. And so we needed something to lie down on. So there was actually an old shower curtain in the house. So I got the old shower curtain in the idea that it could just easily be rinsed off from the, you know copious blood that within spew forth for my pricked Maidenhead. There was no blood. 

NR: That’s because breaking the hymen isn’t always an indicator that someone had sex for the first time. The whole “popping my cherry” is a concept that has been debunked by experts but that might have been embedded in our minds when we were younger, myself included. As you might have imagined, Raven’s first time awakened her sexuality in a profound way. 

RAVEN: Once I found sex. I got quite diverted just to that for a while. It was a really exciting new thing. But I actually know I said a while. I guess it feels like a while when you're a teenager. By the age of 17. My friends were actually giving me books about kinky sex, and being like, yeah, you're a big old pervert. So I know for my 17th birthday, one of my friends gave me Anne Rice’s Exit to Eden. And one of my partners in high school gave me Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs. So so by a lot of time, we're talking like a year or two But then it was like just switch over to fully getting into like the basic principles of BDSM the early Raiders of it. So I was headed in that direction whether I wanted to or not.

NR: Back then, like many people we’ve talked to on the show, Raven didn’t know that bisexuality existed. She would flip through magazines and would be turned on by the models, but she didn’t think to much about it. 

RAVEN: I was like, Well, I know I like boys. So that didn't, this sentence ended with a period, you know, like, I like boys. And I knew that I liked looking at the female body, and could be awkward around to other girls. But that didn't really apply to me.

NR: A goth most of high school, Raven spent more and more time reading vampire literature. This was around the time when Anne Rice’s vampire worlds were gaining popularity, and more and more writers were feeling inspired to create their own vampire stories. 

NR: I'm not too familiar with vampire books, unfortunately. So I'm just curious, like, what is it about? The Vampire genre? I don't even know if I'm saying that. Right. It's correct to say it's a genre, but what is it about it that attracts you to it?

RAVEN: The power exchange is the thing, it's the same as the spanking monsters that I had as a, you know, when I was young when you're with a vampire, you are not in control of the situation, you know, this is a being that is way more powerful than you, you know, older than you, you know, probably wiser since they've been around the block a couple 100 more times. You know, they're, and they may have powers like mesmerism or something like that where you're even more out of control. So, you know, it's, it's, you know, you can't just walk in the room and be like, I'm on the same level as all the vampires here. So, I think that must have been what drew me to it initially. And then, you know, when, you know, and race rates, uh, you know, blood-drinking scene, it's, you know, if you hadn't considered the erotic power of it before. And of course, I certainly had from Dracula, where, in the Victorian era, they couldn't just put sex scenes in books the way we do now. So they actually had vampires that their powers became so popular because they were able to penetrate a male vampire could penetrate a woman with fangs instead of his penis. So, blood-drinking stood in for sex in the Victorian era. And everyone's like, Oh, you know, all the women were like, I want to read those vampire books. And nowadays, we don't have to have a stand-in for sex. So you know, vampires can just be really sexy. You know, it's, not just, you know, the biting anymore. They can be biting and fucking at the same time. All the penetration.

NR: While Raven had a couple of experiences with rough sex in high school, it was limited to some restraint and amateur rope bondage. She wanted to learn more. Thankfully there was college. 

RAVEN: I went to UMass in Amherst, there was a group for college-aged kids, and they would bring in experts for classes. And they'd be like, Okay, you've all tied each other up, here's how to do it. Right. And, you know, any classes that you wanted, you could actually, you know, say, you know, put in a request, like, you know, I want to learn about this. 

NR: Raven learned a lot and was finally having the dominant/submissive sex she had dreamt about since she was young. Still, she had a thirst for something different. 

RAVEN: The minute and you know, maybe we can blame those vampire books. But, you know, the minute that I started, like, you know, having there be bondage and spanking, there was, you know, like, oh, there's sharp things. There could be blood. So, yeah, and they didn't, I don't think they had a class on it right away. But at the time, I was dating someone who had had some nursing training. So at least we were, we were entirely playing like really safely. But it was better than nothing.

NR: And so before I started asking you like, what was the first time like, please get to, you know, the technicalities? Before I asked you that, can you tell me what blood play is on? What is it like an umbrella term? Are there different types of ways you can practice?

RAVEN: It is absolutely an umbrella term, it can cover anything, you could like, I was just on the fetlife website the other day and saw a class for blood painting, where you do small cuts on your partner's body, and then use your fingers to, I mean, kind of finger paint, but, you know, next level finger painting. So you can, you can just like to see blood to smell it to have the excitement of knowing that, you know, your partner is let you actually open up their skin and trusted you that much. Or else just a primal sense of the the power of blood. There are people who definitely want to get to you know, their mouths on it. And so cutting someone to drink their blood is very much within that blood play umbrella. 

NR: Blood fetish, or Hematolagnia, doesn’t always involve cutting, but when it does, partners are extremely encouraged to be precocious in their methods. This means actually taking a course in knife play which some BDSM communities offer depending on your area. Sterilizing instruments, getting tested for any infections and diseases, and drawing from safer areas where they don’t have veins or arteries like forearms or thighs. You can also get a partner who is a nurse. Okay, that’s not official advice from an expert, but it’s what Raven did by chance.

RAVEN: With my ex Michelle, there was just, you know, oh, you know, like, you know, do you want to, you know, listen, we're talking about blood-drinking, oh, I want you know, oh, I want to do that, oh, I happen to have a hypodermic needle. Oh, that's great. And, you know, because she had the, she had that nursing training. And so that was something that made a lot of sense for us. Because when you're cutting, you know, that's something that takes a lot of practice, you don't want to cut too deeply. You know you want to cut in the right areas, you know, where there's sort of fatty tissue underneath and no veins or arteries, especially. But a hypodermic needle, you know, she'd been trained to draw blood, and she could just get right into a vein, take out a bit of blood, close that wound back up. The complete lack of scarring was a real attraction. 

NR: Their first time drawing blood was that quickie we talked about at the beginning of the episode, you know the one in the bathroom. It was a bust — her then-girlfriend blew through the vein and put the needle in too far, so no blood was drawn. The first time they successfully drew blood was a whole other story. 

NR: What did you both do with the blood once I was drawn?

RAVEN: Oh, that's easy. That's I was anticipatorily excited, aroused. If I probably didn't have the common good sense to have actual fear. But I mean, this was someone I trusted very highly to. And what she did was raised the syringe up above her mouth, hit the plunger, and dramatically squirt the blood down her throat. Swallow it, lick her lips, and, and then we probably proceeded to spend the rest of the night fucking

NR: When you saw her do that when you saw her just like, drink your blood right in front of you? How, how did you feel at that moment?

RAVEN: I mean, I'm, I could get poetic, but hardy is the word. You know, you're just completely, like soaking wet and ready. You know, like, I had given a gift of submission and an actual physical gift of, you know, a precious bodily fluid. And, you know, after that I was just, you know, take me. Watching her take the blood from my body, watching her consume it to kiss her and say that's my blood in her mouth. 

NR: Raven had tasted her own blood before, so kissing her girlfriend with her blood on her mouth wasn’t anything extremely new, but it was still arousing. Also, she had tasted her girlfriend’s blood before. A different kind of blood. 

RAVEN:  r is still really living blood, you know, menstrual blood is, you know, sort of sounds gross, but debtor, you know, it's been kind of sitting around down there for a while. So it's, it's got a darker, heavier taste is the only way I can describe it. So it's the, you know, actual blood straight out of the vein is, you know, much greater flavor. But here I am trying to talk about it like it's wine or something. But, you know, so it's, I guess, one could say it's an acquired taste, but, you know, but you know, you're gonna be getting, like, you're mostly going to be getting it if you make her orgasm, you know, and get the muscles to squeeze nicely. So, any evidence to me that I've made a partner come, you know, that's good for me, if I end up having, you know, getting covered in the menstrual blood and then having to take a shower afterward, like, you know, it's really not a problem for me.

NR: Period blood is definitely under the blood play umbrella. Not everyone who enjoys period sex necessarily likes blood play though, but still, playing with blood whether tasting it or rubbing it around someone’s body or yourself is definitely kinky for some, including Raven. 

RAVEN: I think maybe once we actually got into drinking blood, menstrual blood took on an extra value. Because it was blood you could access without actually having to, you know, use a knife or a needle or anything like that it was kind of a freebie. So, you know, there was, there was one time I made her come really hard. And she ejaculated. And there was, you know, there was blood in the ejaculate, and it was just like this fountain of blood coming out of her and it was one of those beautiful, powerful things I've ever seen. You know, I just, I didn't even have my mouth down there anymore. Because she didn't fucking around. And it just this gush of beautiful blood came out and I was just like, wow, you know, like, I'm in this incredible moment. And I just have to, sit back and be amazed by the beauty of the female body and what it can do. You know, and, you know, I can only imagine a vampire would have enjoyed that, that visual as well, although perhaps more actively.

NR: Okay so here’s the deal with drinking period blood. There isn’t that much research on what drinking period blood will do to you, though certified OBGYN Dr. Felice Gersh told Well + Good that she recommends not getting period blood in your mouth since there’s a risk of passing bloodborne pathogens, like HIV. Of course, there’s always the option of you and your partner getting tested and trusting that both of you are being responsible.. Drinking blood that isn’t menstrual carries some more risk. There’s still of course the worry that you can transfer pathogens, but on top of that drinking blood excessively can lead to an excess intake of iron which can be toxic. Raven and her girlfriend wouldn’t draw too much blood, just enough to taste it and arouse them. While we are not sex experts, this is what we found in our research and we ask that you please speak to a professional before engaging in any bloodplay.

NR: Raven and her girlfriend dated for 10 years. Raven considered herself the bottom in the relationship, her girlfriend naturally was the top. Their relationship was polyamorous, so they had other partners. In that time, they engaged in a lot of role play with each other. Some of it included blood, some did not. 

RAVEN: You know, I'm like a witch in medieval times, calling up the demon who then decides to take my blood for various demonic purposes as you do. Then we're not going to use a hypodermic needle because they haven't been invented yet. You know, demons are so much more likely to use a knife. I feel. So it was it wasn't. It wasn't preferenced in. Oh, now I feel like a needle. Now. I feel like a knife. It was sort of like Oh, the fantasy that we're role-playing today calls for one thing or another. Here's on vampire scenes. We did have some fun sort of playing with, like, the idea of like, a deity coming down and wanting a blood sacrifice. If you can come up with a kinky scenario. We probably did it. Uh, I love roleplay I love getting to put on a character. And, you know, acting within that. That just makes sex so fun for me. But it is hard to find someone who either wants to do roleplay so often or who is willing to go along with your random roleplay ideas? Like, oh, you know, I've never been probed by an alien. You know? Okay, I'll get the alien probe room ready? Yeah. Um, but yeah, there was no time in history, that that was safe from our ultra sizing it you know, no, like, and, you know, all sorts of like, like horrific things from the past to turn into great DSM scenes, you know, Salem witch trials? Oh, yeah. You know, so in a way, you're, you're almost sort of ultra sizing things from the past to handle it to make them safer to think about, you know, there's deeper levels.

NR: Were you the one who wanted to be powerless? Did you want to be dominated? Or was it a constant of switching roles?

RAVEN: We didn't switch very often. Like I am a switch, you know, generally like I can be a switch. But when it was our relationship, it was easier for us to sort of stay on the one level and not switch back and forth. 

NR: Where do you think your desire for being powerless comes from?

RAVEN: It's from my earliest fantasies, I think that's just part of like who I am. I hadn't had enough I like it, you know, I didn't have like, this isn't come from a trauma, it doesn't come from, you know, I had enough life experience before I started having the fantasies for it to have actually come from anywhere. It's just part of what makes me me.

NR: Raven’s relationship ended for the same reason most relationships do: they grew apart. They both learned and explored so much during their time together, but now it was time to move on with new partners and old ones. 

RAVEN: The great thing about Polly is that that whole time we had had other lovers often shared but you know, some on our own. And so when she and I broke up, I actually had another partner whose arms I could console myself in, and it might not have been that same level of intensity. But you know, it wasn't hard to get back into dating, because I hadn't been, you know, monogamous. So that it helps. I can see I could see How you know a monogamous person, like going from a relationship and then be like, Oh my god, how do I find another? That would be really stressful? So I'm glad I gave up on monogamy when I was 17.

NR: Raven continued doing blood play with partners after her and her girlfriend broke up, but it wasn’t the same. First, it’s difficult finding someone you trust enough that you can be fluidly bonded with. 

RAVEN:   who has been so completely aligned with my kings ever again. Or, like they might have been aligned with my kinks. But we weren't in a place where we could have that depth of relationship. As I said, it's rare to find someone like that. I've had great relationships since then. But yeah, finding someone who just wants to have a big old mouthful. Your blood. You know, it's rare and special and should definitely be appreciated.

NR: Since that relationship, have you tried, have you ever really explored again, maybe drinking someone else's blood or other forms of blood play. 

RAVEN: I’ve had partners who’ve drunk my blood. And I haven't, I haven't really done any blood painting I kind of things in a long time. And now that you're saying that, I feel like it's a lack in my life, and I have to fix it. 

NR: While Raven hasn’t played with blood as much as she did in that relationship, her fascination with dark, sensual themes have carried over from the bedroom to the bookshelf once again. 

NR: So talk to me about your writing because you mentioned that you've written some books and so what are they about? What are you exploring?

RAVEN: I the was ending as I started writing the first book, and it was definitely escapism from that. And I hadn't done blood play in a long time. So it actually was inspired by a dream I had the I dreamt a sex scene from the first book, like completely perfect, all written out in my head. And when I woke up, I actually knew all about the characters. And so I just was like, Okay, well, I've wanted to be a writer, I've known I'm going to write a novel, I thought it was going to start with science fiction, but apparently, I'm starting with vampires now. 

NR: Raven’s books include, of course, scenes where vampires drink blood, but surprisingly or unsurprisingly, in Raven’s world that’s not the only thing her vampires are after. 

RAVEN: that I've created, they actually really prefer to mix sex and blood drinking. You can have, you can, you can have just blood drinking, for like healing, you know, if you're in like a really desperate situation. But actually, you know, if you're going to actually enjoy the activity, you know, the vampires are, it's it's inextricable from sex, which gives me an excellent excuse to write plenty of sex scenes. And that, to me, you know, just like the Victorians were using sex for, you know, vampires drinking blood to stand in for sex, I can't, I can't really untie blood drinking from sex. So I don't think I could have written a an asexual vampire. Really. You know, I can definitely have other characters that are asexual, but vampires to me are just, you know, running around looking for their next drink and fuck. 

NR: What vampire sex like, in your world, then with these characters? What did what does that entail? And also, do they have the same bodily fluids as we do?

RAVEN: I am delighted you asked that question. Actually, because their systems have to be so really tight with you know, they're not getting they're not draining a whole human. So every little drop of blood counts. They're processing that blood really efficiently. So they're not creating other bodily fluids from it. So when a vampire comes, they come blood. I've actually, I've I left that in there for fun, basically, just because it amused me. But they don't cry. They don't sweat. There, they're being hyper-efficient. So, it's amazing. For one reason, you know, vampires have been living long enough to get quite good at it. But then drinking blood actually gets them. It's kind of like a drug for them. It's not just food, it makes you feel really good. So when you mix intoxicants and sex, you can often have a very nice time. And so that's actually one reason why my protagonist decides to go ahead with some rather dubious choices. Because the sex is amazing. It's like, you know, she's never had anything that good before. And so, and there are, you know, plenty of downsides to being a vampire. So, really great sex seems like, like an upside, I felt like writing And, you know, if you're, if you're going to not be able to go out during daylight hours, and you know, you're going to have like a whole host of other, you know, issues that humans don't have to deal with. You could you know, at least you get good sex.

NR: If a vampire comes blood, does the vampire come inside a human? Yeah, how does that happens to the human you just have someone just came?

RAVEN: in one scene, I have her giving him a blowjob. So actually, she's drinking his blood. And then, then there's, I like to try and work a bit of humor into these books. So there's just one Seeing where she wakes up in the wet spot.

NR: Amazing and the names of your books again?

RAVEN: Blood ex libris and blood Sinai quantum. 

NR: Amazing. I know you're working on a third, right?

RAVEN: Yes, that will come out at the end of April and Will Be Blood ad infinitum.

NR: Perfect. So yeah, if Well, of course, someone's listening right now. Please just buy her book or consider buying her book. You have still had a lot of time on your hands right now. Especially with quarantine. So, Raven, thank you so much again for speaking with me. I really appreciate it. I had a lot of fun. So we've been working, where can people find you? If you want to be found?

RAVEN: I yes, I do want to be found because I very much would like people to buy my books, please. So the website is Raven belas.co. But the easiest thing is to just type Raven Belasco into Twitter and you'll get taken to any of my social media or my website.

NATALIE: Thank you for listening to How I F*ck. If you like our podcast, give us a rating, leave us a review. Tell a friend. And please, subscribe if you haven’t already. Also, if you have a micropenis and would like to be interviewed for the show email us at hello@howifckpodcast.com or send us a dm on Instagram or Twitter. Our handles are at howickpodcast, that’s “How I F*ck,” without the “u” so “fck.” We also have a website, howifckpodcast.com, again without the “u.” There you can find all of our episodes as well as show notes, transcriptions, sources, and photos. How I F*ck is produced by me, Natalie Rivera. I’m also the host and creator. Ben Quiles is our audio engineer. Shyanne Lopez did copy and fact check. Original music by Miguel Gutierrez. You can find more of his music online under the artist name Magh. Gabriela Sanchez is our Social Media Manager and our Sponsorship Manager is Mouna Coulibaly.