Vice recently ran a photo expose about lesbian couples that have sex on their periods. It consisted of a bunch of photos of cute girls with boy’s haircuts cuddling in bloody sheets, rocking redwings. If you are unfamiliar with the term redwings, it’s when you get menstrual blood all over your face by going down on someone while they are menstruating.

It’s gross.

Even if you know me well, one thing you probably don’t know about me is that I’m scared of blood. Not as in I don’t like blood, as in I have an irrational phobia. It’s not exactly blood itself, it’s veins and arteries, the circulatory system in general. During high school biology class, I had to excuse myself when the subject came up. I avoid doctors because the thought of having a hypodermic needle inserted into me has literally caused me to have panic attacks in the past. I have no idea why. My body just completely seizes up.

Fortunately, it’s not the blood itself that causes the reaction. If you like women, that would present a huge problem one week out of four. While I don’t like having sex during a woman’s period, I will. It does create a huge problem for threesomes though.

No matter how kinky she is, no woman wants another woman’s menses squished into her during a threesome. Every single threesome I’ve been invited into but then got aborted was for that reason. No one chickened out, they simply didn’t want to share smelly, coagulated uterine lining with one another.

One of my former lovers used to joke that she wanted an app on her phone that would tell her which of her female coworkers was on the rag, so she would know to avoid them. I mentioned that women in close proximity tend to sync up, and the app she needed was probably right between her legs.

I then realized that that probably was no longer true. Her period was regulated by the birth control pills she was on, and probably so were most of her coworkers. Prior to 1960, menstruation was only interrupted by poor health, pregnancy, and the pheromones of other women. Maybe by the moon, but I have a feeling that that’s bullshit. Now it’s largely regulated by what type of birth control a woman is using. It’s too bad everyone isn’t on the same stuff and using the method of starting on the first of the month. It would be much easier to plan an orgy, you just avoid the end of the month.

It seems like there would be an easier solution. There is. You just need to consult the professionals.

Years ago, I was working on a porn site. I do marketing. I’ve successfully marketed many businesses, many of which I owned. The problem with marketing a porn site is that marketing pornography is a very different animal. Almost every technique I would use to market a normal website is forbidden. No Google, no Facebook, no Spam.

There is no manual, and porn is a very competitive industry. There is no “How to Market Porn for Dummies” book on Amazon. So, I started listening to and reading porn-industry publications to try to figure it out. I eventually figured it out, but that’s not what this story is about. It’s about the other thing I learned while doing research, how pornographic actresses perform when it’s their time of the month.

You would think they would use some specific product, like a special diaphragm or cervical cap. Not so, the standard practice is much lower tech. If they are bleeding, they simply wash out and block their cervix with a few makeup removal pads. The technique evidently works very well, allowing them to perform for the hours it takes to shoot a scene without a drop of blood on camera.

Then there’s the other sort of blood.

When I was younger, I went through a phase where I only dated models. I was kind of a dick about it, I basically refused to date or sleep with anyone over 120 lbs. They didn’t have to be fashion models, though the one in this story was a fashion model.

She had just landed an apartment on the upper west side of the City. It wasn’t a great apartment. It was small and had hideous wall to wall carpet. I’m more of a hardwood floor guy. Her furniture was trickling in slowly from various delivery guys. As we waited on the deliveries we decided that we needed to christen the place.

The relationship didn’t last long, she eventually left for California to pursue an acting career. But at this time, we were crazy for one another. We pounced on one another and fucked right on the floor. The bed hadn’t been delivered yet.

As it turns out, cheap polyester carpet is not a good substance to screw on.

We made love in the missionary position. It was spontaneous, passionate, and rough. At one point I noticed that there was blood on my hand, but I assumed that it was just her time of the month. I did my best to make sure that we climaxed at the same time, and we did. Afterward she started to freak out.

She complained that she though that she had rolled onto a screw or nail. Her back was suddenly killing her. We got up and realized that the carpet was smeared with blood. Her back was covered as well. It looked like we had killed a kitten and rolled around in its guts.

I checked her up and down, there was no nail or screw. There was however a large hole in her back. After she got in the shower and I ran to Duane Reade in a panic for disinfectant and bandages, we realized what had happened. We’d torn the skin off her back with the friction of the cheap carpet.

She was a model, and so thin that her spine protruded from her back, especially her tail bone. With my weight on top of her pelvis, her tail bone had been ground into the sandpaper like carpet. It striped the skin off her, almost to the bone. She recovered but has a permanent scar.

She claims that she didn’t even feel it until after she came. It’s amazing how pleasure blocks pain. It doesn’t block figuring out how to get blood out of cheap carpet though. I think we eventually just put a chair over the stain.