The trick to selling your blood, Hank said, is to arrive early.

Twice a week, Hank catches the bus from Arleta to Van Nuys to sell his blood.

Out of work and out of luck, Hank has made his body his currency, earning $12 for each pint of plasma he gives up. “Twelve dollars is nothing to sneeze at,” he said.

So on a cloudy morning Hank and two other men waited patiently outside a defunct dentist’s office converted into a plasma center, the industry’s name for private blood banks that pay people to open their veins to earn a little cash. The center would not open for 25 minutes. The two men--one in his 30s with bleached-blond hair and a sunburnt face, the other a portly gentleman in a straw hat--hunched down by the locked office door. Hank stood on the sidewalk, staring at traffic.

The trick to selling your blood, Hank said, is to arrive early. There are forms to fill out, and there’s always a line. “If you come late, there’s a long wait. It takes two hours if you’re late.” He had not yet eaten that day. He wouldn’t for hours.

A pawnshop is a short walk down Van Nuys Boulevard, but the men who gathered this morning at the plasma center--and at centers throughout Los Angeles--chose to barter in fluids and cells, not rings and watches. Perhaps their blood is all they have left.

For Hank--he wants to be known only as Hank--the $24 he earns each week at the plasma center supplements his savings, his only source of income. He was laid off from his job at a warehouse six months ago and lives in a small apartment in Arleta. He can’t find work.

“Put in applications, but it’s kind of tough right now,” he said. Part of the problem, he admits, is his age. He’s 54. “That goes against you in looking for a job.”

He discovered the plasma center by accident while passing through the neighborhood. “I just saw it here,” Hank said. “It seemed kind of reasonable.”

This particular center pays $12 for plasma, $15 for whole blood. Plasma is the pale, amber-colored fluid of the blood that carries red cells through the body. After the plasma centers draw a donor’s blood, they separate the red cells from the plasma and then pump the cells back into the bloodstream. The plasma is often used to produce pharmaceuticals, and even the Red Cross admits some drugs would be in short supply if commercial blood banks did not conduct their daily harvests.

It’s better to sell your plasma, the experienced donors say, because plasma donors are allowed two visits a week. The body replenishes its plasma supply in 24 hours. Red cells, maybe because they work harder, take longer. Under federal guidelines, whole blood may be donated only every 56 days.

Hank did not talk with the other men waiting for the plasma center’s doors to open. He just stood there, a vacant expression on his face. A thin man with a few days of gray stubble on his chin, he wore a short-sleeved madras shirt, untucked, and light blue pants. A white corduroy baseball cap hid his hair. Above the bill, stitched in blue thread, were the words “Santa Anita Race Track,” embroidered in incongruously cheerful lettering.

Hank doesn’t know when, or if, he’ll land a job. “It’s rough,” he said.

Not all the donors are down on their luck. Or at least they won’t say so. The sunburnt man said he visits the plasma center twice a week just to earn “a little extra spending money.” He has a job, working in the shipping and receiving department of a firm that bills itself as the “nation’s largest manufacturer of maternity clothing.”

The sunburnt man laughed at his employer’s claim to fame. If he’s to be believed, they apparently can make anything. “Ever see a 44-G bra?” he asked.

What?

“Forty-four-G,” he said again with a chuckle, envisioning an immense double-cupped parachute. “You could probably jump out of an airplane with that thing.”

His joking seemed out of place, unsettling as someone gabbing in church. Silence was more appropriate. Silence spared the donors from having to talk about the tricks of fate that had brought them there to sell their blood.

By now, two more men had joined the scene, but they, like Hank, just stood silently. Cars and trucks whizzed past. The sunburnt man talked about selling blood as if it were a hobby, like gardening or collecting stamps. “I work in the evenings and don’t have anything to do in the day,” he said. Isn’t it depressing selling your blood? Not at all, he said.

He discovered blood banks in December under less carefree circumstances. “I spent all my gambling money in Reno,” he said. He was stranded. A pint of blood helped him make it home.

The money is not important, he said. Maybe his blood will save a hemophiliac’s life. Maybe science, armed with his plasma, will create a new wonder drug. Maybe his blood, rushed to the operating room, will save the victim of a car crash. He smiled at the thought. He didn’t seem to know that, by law, hospitals may use blood from commercial banks only if donated blood is not available.

“It’s not really just the spending money,” he said. “I get a pretty good feeling out of it.”

Suddenly, about 8:30 a.m., the plasma center opened for business and the donors quickly but politely filed through the door. The sunburnt man, seeing he was being left behind, hurried to catch up. “Well, it’s time for me to sign up,” he said.

Hank was already at the counter, waiting to fill out a form.