Joe Vampire

POST 19



Late Night Trouble in My Mouth



The rest of Amanda’s birthday dinner was noisy and troubling, as expected. To hide my new development, I just kept my mouth shut, laughing silently when something funny came up and trying not to show the undeniable proof of vampireship that had shown up unexpectedly during the party and made itself comfortable in my mouth.

Well. That sounded more erotic than I meant it to.

Luckily, just after the cake was cut I got a text from Hube. He and Lazer were headed out to a club called Damage, the place we’re playing in a few weeks, and wanted me along to figure out the set list for our pending gig. It’s our first real show at an actual club, and I was pretty psyched to check it out. So I quietly made my goodbyes, waving everyone off as I rushed out and telling Amanda I would chat with her soon about everything. And I really meant everything; I didn’t want to keep secrets from her, even if this secret required more than a little suspension of her disbelief. Everyone else in the family would just have to wait until I had a slightly better handle on the situation – that, and a carefully composed explanation that wouldn’t push them further into the need for group therapy. Not that they’d ever go. They sure as hell could use it, though, even without having a newborn vampire among their ranks. And with the fangs becoming the showstoppers of my dental world, I started questioning how much of a handle I have on things anyway.

When my dad finds out what This did to the orthodontia he opened a home equity line of credit to pay for, he’ll have a shit fit.

I found Hube at a table at the back of Damage, listening to an all-girl grunge cover band called Hervana and rocking out to the tuneage. Lazer was probably at least five drinks in, and it showed very plainly. He’s enough of a jerk when he’s sober; add alcohol, and there’s no telling what kind of shit might come flying out of that a*shole.

A graphic image, maybe, but entirely accurate.

“I didn’t think you were gonna show,” he slurred. “Kind of starting to question your place in this band.” I, having had nothing to drink and not intending on ordering anything, would have been more than happy to sling shit right back. But the moment my tongue hit my new teeth, I remembered that opening my mouth to speak would involve baring my fangs in the most literal sense. So I held back… and that ass crack just kept going. “We need our leather pants, too; you should have had them back from the dry cleaners by now. Make sure you don’t forget. And the flyers need to go up… ” I let my angry eyes do the talking. With a powerful combination of brow-furrowing and white-exposing, and a little touch of a manic squint, I have no doubt they did the trick.

Hopefully you picked up on the sarcasm there.

Eyes just can’t speak angrily enough to someone as infuriating as Lazer, even when the brows get in on the action.

I motioned to the back of the club. “Hube – private talk,” I said, as clearly as I could without opening my mouth. He made his wha? face, so I raised my upper lip to half-Elvis and showed him the issue at hand… or, rather, at tooth. “Oh, shit,” he winced, finally getting it. We pushed our way to the bathroom, and I opened wide to show him all the exciting stuff I now had going on in my mouth.

Again, that doesn’t sound quite the way I meant it to.

“Dude… those are bona fide neck biters. They look like animal teeth.”

“Yeah, I know.” I checked them out again in the mirror, kind of wishing the disappearing reflection folklore stuff was slightly truer than it had turned out to be. “I can hide most of the weirdness of this vampire trip, but there’s no way I can hide these babies. I’d have to go without talking.”

Hube agreed. “Like that would ever happen.” My angry eyes came back. “Sorry. My cousin just finished dental school… she’s a hygienist. I can see if she could maybe work on them for you.”

“I don’t want to have to explain them to my family, let alone yours.” But he did have the right spirit. “Maybe I could just grind them down myself.”

“That might not be a bad idea. Try working with this for now…” He pulled a pack of Extra out of his pocket. “Just chew big whenever you talk, and maybe the gum will hide the extra pointiness. Don’t bite yourself, though.” It was a decent plan, enough to get me through the night at least. So I took four of the little dudes at one time, pulled off their wrappers and just stuffed them in my mouth right there in the bathroom, sucking and chewing on them until they were all moist and mushy and my mouth was full of white.

Wow.

It’s just going to keep happening like that, isn’t it?

As we came back to the table, Lazer was finishing up chatting with an elderly woman who looked strangely not so out of place with her bluish hair and her far-too-many ear gauges for someone of her advanced age. As if there’s a good number for something like that. “Who’s she?” Hube asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lazer answered with his expected level of consideration for others. “Let’s get to work, bitches. We’ve got a gig to plan.” Hube’s gum ploy worked perfectly. I just chomped away and threw in my two cents about the set list – all of which Lazer promptly dismissed and replaced with his own less-articulate version of exactly the same things I had said. Hube, in full-on peacekeeper mode, did his best to make things smooth and deflect all the conversation away from me so I didn’t drop my gum and show my gnarly chompers. Aside from all the times I accidentally stuck myself in my own lip it was pretty painless keeping the vampire teeth hidden from view.

Did any of that have a dirty double-meaning about oral sex?

No?

Ha.

I made a stop on the way home to a twenty-four hour Wally World and bought a mini-Dremel to work on the problem. I’ve never been much with tools, and I think it showed when I turned the thing on without any bits attached and tried to flatten my teeth with an empty nib. Idiot. I made test runs with all the heads until I found one shaped like a cone that let me keep the general contour of the tooth while knocking off the point. Other than grinding a little enamel off of the neighboring teeth it was a rocking success, if I do say so myself. I could run my tongue over my fangs without slicing through the skin, and they looked only slightly longer than they did when they had only been eyeteeth. Score one for the unintentional handyman. I flossed out the grit, polished them up with toothpaste and hit the sack for what little sleep I would be lucky to get, pleased to have solved at least one problem.

And when I saw myself in the morning, those f*ckers had grown right back into vicious little points again.

So now, right next to my floss and my electric toothbrush is my handy-dandy defanging tool. Just before I brush every morning, I grind them down to a manageable roundness. And every night when I come home, there they are again, sticking out of my lips like I never even touched them. They fall into the same category as everything else at this point: something I obsess over even when nobody else would probably even notice. And though it wouldn’t seem likely, this makes it worth the extra trouble to manage them. I keep waiting for the day when the haze lifts, and all of this is finally seen by everyone. There I’ll be: pale and cold, with pointed ears and a mouth like a human piranha.

I’d rather the fangs be kept in check for that moment.

It’s not just about self-preservation, either; ultimately, carving down my monster nibblers will help others, too. You see, I have this daydream about me and Chloe, and what happens on the day after she realizes how perfect we are together. I’ve had it since shortly after we started our drive-by flirtation at the copier, which has given me plenty of time to work through the details and refine the flow. It’s a slow motion rom-com montage, schmaltzy and clichéd as anything you’d find on late-night cable. But I don’t care how schmaltzy and clichéd it is.

It’s my dream and I’ll have it the way I want it, thank you.

At any rate, as the dream goes: during an afternoon in the park across the street from our office, while chasing our rascally retriever Baxter and the Frisbee he’s snatched away, after we make our mad dash into the corner café to get out of the sudden unexpected downpour that has made us laugh like madcaps as we cover our heads with newspapers, and while we’re waiting at the counter for the barista to bring us our cappuccinos, our eyes lock, she leans in and goes for The Kiss. But now, instead of The Kiss she’ll be caught up in The Bloody Freaking Mess That Permanently Disfigures the Lips I Love. Now instead of ending in a slow fade as we amble home love drunk, hand in hand to our two bedroom walk-up, it ends with a trip to the ER when she slices her tongue wide open on my goddamned teeth, sharp as woodscrews because I forgot to grind them down and buff them smooth before we left for the park.

Bastards.

So, I’m keeping myself defanged. I can deal with just about anything This has to throw at me, but if it blows my Hollywood kiss with the woman I love, vampirism and I will have some seriously messy shit to sort out. And it won’t end pretty.

For vampirism, that is. I should be fine.

I think.