CHAPTER SIX
(SID'S DIARY)
……. I thought vampires were supposed to be cruel. But Joy……. Well, what do I really know. I don't watch her hunting and feeding, I only sleep with her. Sure, she feeds on my menstrual blood. But she is always so tender, she can be so passionate, even loving. Is she like that with every prey? She was certainly not feeling erotically inclined when Death gave her a man to feed on instead of me! She was actually rather angry. She probably killed countless times. After all, she is a predator (so are homo sapiens).
……. But, what about the cruelty of the vampire? Many books mix their cruelty with eroticism (I guess it sells), and a humongous sense of loneliness that the passing of centuries only increases. (Except maybe Carpenter's Vampires and the book that inspired it, and that, actually, were narrated from the (male) slayer point of view. Can’t remember about the book now, but the movie (and so did its first sequel) ended with a romantic turn from the freshly turned) Is Lestat romantic? No, purely selfish. A romantic veneer to hide the unbearable cruelty.
……. I just watched an entertaining TV program about animal bloodsuckers. The bite of most of these creatures is painless (the horsefly is an exception). Most of them are likely to be germ-free (but there is a list of exceptions including the tiger mosquito –and other mosquitoes, of course-). Some of them live at night: vampire bats (in Mexico only), fleas, bedbugs, body lice and kissing bugs. Some live by day: mosquitoes, tics, (legendary) leeches, deerflies, horseflies, lampreys and finches. Lampreys are fish from the American Great Lakes (and salted waters); the finches are birds from some Galapagos island. Like their human counterpart (at least in literature, I could ask Joy about the "real thing"), their saliva is anti-coagulant and they're mostly after the red blood cells as it is a source of proteins. Proteins?! What about vitamins and minerals???????
Moreover, what about the pain of a human vampire's bite? We're talking here bigger teeth…….
… I did a quick search on the Internet to collect some folkloric pearls about vampires. First, how to become a vampire: commit suicide, practice sorcery/witchcraft, eat sheep killed by a wolf (!), immorality (prostitution/alcoholism/raping/killing), death unsanctioned by a religious representative, a cat/wild dog jumping over your coffin/corpse, a shadow falling over the corpse, improper burial, violent death, drowning, etc. Also: being the 7th son of a 7th son (but not the 7th daughter of a 7th daughter?), having red hair, renouncing the eastern orthodox church ( ), excommunication from the Greek orthodox church ( ), and of course being bitten by a vampire……. I am surprised the planet Earth is not overwhelmed by vampires by now. That would probably mean the end of the human dominion.
In 1734, the word "vampire" was first recorded as "the bodies of deceased persons animated by evil spirits, which come out of the graves at night time to suck the blood of many of the living and thereby destroy them." (www.neworleansghosts.com/vampires.htm) In 1862, it was someone terribly boring(!). By 1911 it was "a woman who intentionally attracts and exploits men" (ibid.).
Garlic! Medieval doctors believed plague was caused by the corruption of the air, so they would fight "fire with fire", using garlic. Garlic is actually a natural cleanser. However, I've read somewhere else (Konstantinos' "Vampires", maybe?) that garlic is a natural etheric eraser and vampires are etheric beings. Well, Joy doesn't seem/feel etheric at all to me.
I also downloaded Montague's historical reference treatise on the subject but that's rather a huge volume (when printed out) to read. I'll see about it later.
… Vampires as sexual beings.
(silence on the paper)
Vampires and their mystic sexual quality, their fun flamboyancies…….
There seemed to be a contradiction of sort among all the sexual ambiguities in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, but I can't remember exactly, having not opened them for a few years. Can they or can they not? In Laurel K. Hamilton's series (Anita Blake), vampires –and most other characters– seem to have less and less sexual inhibitions from one book to the next. To the point that when Anita Blake had sex with her vampire boyfriend (it happened a few books into the series), Hamilton took TWENTY pages to tell the tale……. I skipped.
……. Bram Stoker's "Dracula"? A literary monument, maybe, just maybe. The 1930's movie "Nosferatu"? A monochrome comedy.
……. However, who wrote the first ever vampire novel? Moreover, when? I do not think it was Bram.
……. The Vampire/vampiric concept seems so commercial these days that TV serials for kids and teenagers have been created and are currently shown on one digital channel or another. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, where the slayer has a thing for vampires with souls (first Angel, later Spike). In Vampire High, teenage vampires are normal night-to-night school kids. So much for the deeply cruel –and bitter– Claudia, the Child Vampire made by Lestat and Louis (or Louis, instigated by the manipulative Lestat) in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles.
Maybe I should ask Joy her take on it…….
……. Joy feels distant at the moment. I wonder what's up. I don't think she has any resentment towards me for preventing her from feeding on my friends at the lesbian benefit. No. I think it started slightly before. That night she showed up "for dessert" while I was writing.
Is it making love or is it sex? I think my feelings for Joy are changing or I'm starting to feel something for Joy, I think I'm becoming fond of her. What about Death, then? Death doesn't care…….
……. Sex and death, united in the house of scorpio. Homo sapiens loves to flirt with death, live on the edge. Well, some do. By the way, I am sleeping with a murderer. It doesn't matter if Joy kills with the intention of feeding, in human terms, she is a murderer. But so actually are millions of soldiers dead or alive, even if their kills were/are/will be sanctioned/deemed necessary/wanted/legalised by their respective governments.
What governs a vampire? Or are they anarchists? Besides the aristocratic origins often bestowed to them by writers. Decadence. Writers make vampires decadent to demonstrate that the undead have nothing to lose, as they have already lost life, thus they have already lost everything. But is life really everything?
……. Ok, but so far, I'm only talking about the blood drinkers, what about the psychic vampires? As Joy reminded us at the benefit, there are psychic vampires.
Moreover, if I believe in blood drinkers (Joy is one and I know her so it is my proof that there are blood drinkers and I –can– believe in their existence), then I can/could believe in the existence of psychic vampires. Even without meeting one. Without meeting one? Has Joy ever met a psychic vampire?
The existence of psychic vampires is as much a stretch of imagination as the immortality of blood drinkers / undead. In addition, the immortality of Joy……. By the way, when was she "made"? And by whom?
……. Feelings. Do vampires feel? I guess so. Anger is a feeling. What does Joy feel when she makes love with me?
(I would say we upgraded from sex to making love when we started sleeping together even when my body was not menstruating. Does it mean that if we go places together, i.e. the lesbian benefit, we are dating? What's my take on that one?! I wouldn't really say that we are having a relationship. Then what?)
I would say Joy is cynical. But so can I be.
……. I find myself thinking about Joy frequently. Wondering what it is like to drink blood. I find my writings influenced by my life (as it should be, I guess). I find myself remembering the taste of her skin, the feel of her body against mine…… the erotic sensation of her fingers slowly sliding down my back…….
Is it more exciting if she is a vampire?
……. Vampires, creatures of the night, the undead, blood drinkers. They kill in order to feed. Homo sapiens used to kill too in order to feed, and they still do, even if most of them only do it by proxy. It is so convenient for meat eaters that there are factories –a whole meat industry– killing on their behalf and selling them the flesh in shapes and sizes that means they don't need to s
ully their hands, they don't even have to think about the daily slaughter happening in their names, they don't have to look a fodder animal in the eye.
Thus, vampires, despite the possible hypocrisy inherent to some personalities, are more honest than homo sapiens.
I guess it takes a murderer to recognize one.
……. I haven't seen Joy this week, I haven't seen her since the night of the lesbian benefit, I think. Strangely, I'm missing her. Is it why I am writing/wondering so much about vampires? Who knows, if I don't. However, my body cycle is such that menstrual blood should start flowing any night now. –Maybe it's PMT triggering my various wonderings about vampirism! –
So, Joy should show up then and I'll be able to ask her the zillions of questions that have turned my mind into Trafalgar Square at rush hour.
INTERLUDE: "FALLEN ANGEL" (By courtesy of the author Sid Wasgo)
"There's a black moon tonight
Ain't shining down on the western neon lights"
("City of Angels", The Distillers)
"Changing Rooms. Pink décor and wooden seating", she was reading aloud from a TV guide spread on the floor. "Thank you for letting me know!" She commented without smiling. The current collective TV only gave black and white and various shades of gray. She got up and got back to the settee, to the great relief of her knees that found the linoleum floor rather hard. She sighed, her sigh echoing of boredom and despondency.
When she got into the open air of the nearby estate just before dusk, Brixton stank of hell. Kids had rediscovered spy guns and ring caps. Paper caps had quickly lost the plot. She plugged earphones into her sensitive ears and Brody Armstrong started to distill for her a tune reminiscing of L.A. She did not need to face the world. But the world watched the lone character pass by. She was wearing a black dinner suit, the trousers legs hiding the tops of her blazing New Rock boots. Dark shades masked her tired eyes. Her blond, spiky short hair lent an even paler shine to her tight skin. The wild singer blasting her eardrums made sure that no other voices could reach Jo Davenport's brain.
Teenagers who noticed her looked on the verge of freaking out. Was she for real or was she…… Hey man, we're talking Hallowe'en tonite!
X X X X X X X
She found the fallen angel on her way back from the superstore with a light load of tequila and seasonal goodies. She thought "fallen angel", not just because of the Distillers' tune (was it "City of Angels" now or their Patti Smith cover "Ask the Angels"? The new colour-coded medications had a tendency to confuse her), but because, like many people that year, she had been at least slightly influenced by the second "Charlie's Angels" movie produced by Drew Barrymore.
The fallen angel, who looked a lot younger than Madison, like barely out of her teens, was laying on her right side, crushing her black wings, in the stinky corner just after the railway bridge, matching the bags of rubbish, discarded clothes and other unwanted items, with her own ragged and torn clothing. Blood a bright red on the rice paper skin.
Jo Davenport stood there for a minute, her brown eyes watching above the dark shades still garnering her nose. Then she kneeled down, her left knee touched the dirty concrete, and daintily put a reluctant index finger on the first wrist available, searching for a missing pulse. Missing because not even faint. She was about to get back to a totally upright position when a set of fingers curled around hers with a weak tugging that made her second knee hit the ground. No pulse but a movement. Was it, a last postmortem reflex or was there still something passing for life in the winged woman?
She knew it was Hallowe'en, the night where the fine line between the many Worlds was so thin that it was just a vague gray blur.
It never occurred to Jo to call an ambulance or take the unknown woman to a hospital. She did not own a mobile phone, the most important people in her life were not of this world. Jo did not believe there really were any hospital where a winged woman would be really looked after properly. Ask Max the "Dark Angel", she'll tell you how tricky it is.
Jo's fingers, released, moved to the strangely crooked tip of a wing. The bruised wings appeared to be a cross of bat's and dragonfly's, with a rubbery feel.
The unconscious or dead woman moved again. It was so slight that Jo thought she might be hallucinating, courtesy of her psychiatric prescription. Brody Armstrong uttered into her eager ears: "I love you Baby", signaling the tape was nearing the end of its B-side and the world would soon crash into the listener's consciousness. She thought about her friend Alkor, healer and seer for the People in the Other World. "Your Hallowe'en is total chaos in our world. You better stay in yours; it is safer. Too much could happen you wouldn't know what to do with." Her usually broody dark eyes holding concern.
The ears of the unknown woman reminded Jo of the People. The high cheekbones and general features reminded her of Alkor. "Similar genes," she innocently thought, with a burst of gratitude for the auto-reverse function of her walkman. In the temporary silence of the Distillers, she heard the faint sound of wings' joints rubbing against each other. Alternatively, was it the mechanics of her pocketsize music machine.
"Sick Of It All" hit her eardrums and Jo Davenport made up her confused mind. Her muscles flexed and she grabbed the wounded under the armpits.
People who saw the odd couple only thought it was a bit early to get so trashed and honestly, those who couldn't hold their liquor should keep away from it.
X X X X X X X
Jo's flatmates, a bunch of crazy women, were out for a Hallowe'en party promised to be wild. Jo had been invited too, and would have gone, curious about human behavior in connection with ignorance, in that case, the ignorance of the reality of Hallowe'en, but she had gone moody with the recent change of medication and gone against her curiosity. To stay home alone with a bottle of tequila, she thought. Not generally recommended in combination with psychiatric drugs, but sometimes she just felt like rebelling.
Well, her evening was not going according to plans, and her new curiosity did not mind. There was a half-naked winged woman on the settee in her living room. Jo Davenport was used to extraordinary and she liked her life better that way.
At that very minute she was debating with herself about taking the stranger to the People's healer. Alkor would surely know what to do and on Hallowe'en night the Davenport needed no cat to cross over to the Other World. Alkor's warning was also echoing in her mind. What could be so bad she mused, and noticed the woman's eyes had opened a thin slit, enough to show the vertical lines of the irises. Consciousness flashed at Jo, compelling consciousness, mesmerizing consciousness. Jo had never read Wendy Rathbone's poetry; she did not know anything about "Winged women sleeping upside down with bats".
Still wearing her black jacket, she almost unintentionally walked to the settee, the strange irises following intensely her approach. When the pale hands grabbed her, she became aware of the sharp nails. When the winged woman snarled, Jo saw the shiny white fangs, and when the teeth sank into Jo's neck, Jo felt overwhelmed by the uncanny similarity with Alkor's features, if Alkor had been some kind of vampiric creature……. She involuntarily grabbed at the small firm breasts barely covered by the dark rags, and, powerless, let the could-be-Alkor creature suck blood out of her artery. Before losing herself into oblivion, Jo Davenport really wished, in a twisted kind of way, that it was her friend, healer and seer to the People.
X X X X X X X
Jo's flatmates walked into their living room approximately 20 hours later, and discovered Jo seemingly asleep on the settee, the collar of her white shirt stained with real blood. Unconscious and dreaming of Alkor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Some people love Death to death, some people love Life for life." W. FreedreamerTinkanesh.
Antoinette was 19 when the Bastille fell in 1789 and the nobility started to really run, or suffered beheading, or turned coloured coats, or were already lazily sipping wine with their wealthy cousins and allies in countries watching the French Revolution with great curiosity, but from af
ar. The peasants were still at the bottom of the pile and intellectuals were trying to run the roost. Some men were stabbed during a daily lengthy bath, some saw the new citizens turned on them. Marie-Antoinette's pretty head had rolled in the basket, and Antoinette looked like a 16-or-maybe-17-year-old tall scarecrow of a teenage boy, hiring his services from farm to farm, and going under the name of Antoine. He played the lute deliciously and his features were angelic enough to make the farm girls giggle, but he was always too shy to follow them into dark barns and roll in the hay.
It was 1789 and the summer was smoldering into harvests. Antoine, slender muscles shaped and hardened by five years of passing and hard working, was one of the hired hands collecting basketfuls of grapes after basketfuls in Burgundy. The day had been hot and sweaty and she was welcoming the chill of the evening, alone at last, in the obscured light of a barn. Suddenly, a human shape cut out its shadow in the wide open door, disturbing the incoming remains of the darkening daylight. It had the stature of a man and the poise of nobility on the run. She almost stopped breathing. Paris was far away from her life, politics unknown to her daily routine. Like everyone else, she knew, she had heard. Whatever was throwing the French capital into turmoil didn't make their life any easier. Uncannily, the man looked straight at her and started walking in her direction. She did not like his possible intentions. She started to scramble up the bales of hay, relying on her natural agility to escape. Unbelievably the man was already on top of her, even if hardly breathing on her neck. There was cruelty in his deep laughter when his right hand grabbed her crotch. Then he froze. Now silent, he roughly turned her around and pulled down her trousers, revealing pubic hair and a tender vulva. He threw her against a wall with blatant rage. So hard, her left clavicle shattered.
Outsider Page 15