In the heat of the summer. My legs, bare. I remember the slickness beneath my thighs. The audacity of using our own blood. Sitting, cross-legged on the floor. It was impossible not to be heady with it all -- the overwhelming smell like warm iron, steel. Sticky. Slick. The sense of vitality, of energy in that room, against that cold, hard floor, this pool of -- we were heady with it all -- it was as if you could almost hear the pumping of our hearts, see the pulsing --