Plasma has a branding problem.

You’ve got your plasma televisions.

And your plasma rays.

There are plasma gemstones.

And the more ominous sounding Plasma: Fourth State of Matter.

So when our friendly blood collectors across the street at 85 Fitzroy St. recruited me to become a plasma donor, it was hard not to have very Star Trek visions of what this might entail.

(By “recruited,” I mean “I walked in, after seeing the ‘Donor Clinic Today’ sign out front for the 2,000th time, and said “I’d like to give blood.” Before I knew it, I’d been upsold to plasma).

So in 20 minutes I’m heading across the street to plasmanate for the first time.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Update: It all went fine. People were super nice, the technology behind the “suck out his plasma and give him back his blood” is nifty. It didn’t hurt. Lots of questions about sex with IV drug users and trips to the Congo, but that’s understandable. They’re all super-careful about double- and triple-checking everything. It was a good hour away from telephone, television, cell phone and other stresses. I’ll go again.