Joe Vampire

POST 26



Outreach



It took a while to put all my new vampire factoids on paper so I could deliver them to Don. I wanted to make sure I had it all straight first. It’s not like I’m the expert on this stuff; that’s Louise. I’m just transcribing everything that fell out of her mouth and landed in my ears. If she ever decides to write a how-to guide for being a civilized night-living freak, I’m guessing it’d go best-seller. Among vampires, I mean.

Everyone else would probably think it was some kind of satire.

I flip-flopped pretty wildly about whether or not this was the right thing to do, me handing down someone else’s vampire gospel to the ignorant heathen with the blood cravings. Being one of those heathens myself, it felt snobbish, like I was some yuppie crusader for community service whose “helping” almost always comes across as an attempt to earn a better cloud in whatever heaven they think pitying others will get them into. Even if they’re just delivering used books to the library, you never see them without Gucci shades and a venti Starbucks drip of the day steaming up their expensive gloves, like they want to make sure they don’t get any pitiful on their hands. It made me question my own intentions for wanting to help a brother out… especially a brother who knocked the legs out from under my life. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite.

So I made sure I’d be going in gloves-off.

And definitely no Guccis.

There was a solid chance that this wouldn’t go over well at all, that he’d take my outreach as a huge kick in the nards of his chosen lifestyle. We weren’t exactly buds; we had spoken – lucidly – little more than one full hour in our whole lives, and he hadn’t shown any signs of wanting help with anything. He hadn’t even seemed overly bothered that he’d taken to jonesing for blood in addition to everything else he used to get cranked. For all I knew he’d tear up my paper, or use it to wipe his ass. Or roll joints with it. It didn’t matter. I wanted to show him there might be another way to live this life, one that didn’t require biting vagabonds in the parking lot behind Pomme just to get a fix.

And I really think I needed to close the loop with this dude, once and for all.

I’m not even sure I was doing this because I care about the guy. Prior to our encounter, he was nobody to me, an incredible zero who just happened to shit-stain my world at the exact point where it was all coming back together. One poorly-advised drink choice on my part and he’s suddenly had the single-largest influence on my life – and in the worst possible way. Our Venn diagrams have intersected in a permanent, f*cked-up, football-shaped slice. So maybe now that I’m full-on vamping I can empathize with him in some roundabout manner, knowing how difficult it is to suppress This. Or maybe I don’t like to see other people pay for their afflictions by being devoid of true purpose for the remainder of their lives.

I know I don’t want to pay for mine forever.

So I typed up Twenty Things I’ve Learned from Louise, bullet-pointed in a Word document for ease of reading. I was careful to leave off any reference to vampires, just in case he’s not advertising it beyond his clientele. I even printed an extra copy in the event that he spilled bong water on one of them. And though I’m sure I didn’t succeed, I tried to do this in the right spirit, to leave the superior bullshit out as much as I could. But after seeing it all on paper, I felt even more like the people who bother me most in the world: the ones who love to tell everyone else how much better their lives could be if only they were living right. That is definitely not my thing; I think the example of my own upside-down existence is proof enough of that. My life was a ball of knots and boogers before I even knew vampires were real. Now? The knots are tighter, and the boogers just keep coming. So who the hell am I to judge what’s right for anyone else? This put a definite crimp in the outreach plans.

But I kept thinking about the unlucky recipient of Don’s next change. And the one after that.

And the endless line of others behind them.

It struck me: this isn’t about who might be inferior or superior. It’s not even entirely about helping the one who victimized me in the first place.

It’s about making sure no one has to go through the same crap I’m going through.

I really wish I would have been able to follow through on that.

At least I know I tried.

I made my approach at sunset, figuring Don would be waking up at about that hour to do… what – stalk bums? Prey on the homeless? Cut up his coke? Whatever it is that he does when night falls. I buzzed and buzzed, finally held the buzzer down for a solid minute before letting go. No one ever came to the door. A voice crackled over my shoulder. “He’s not in there.”

“I’m getting that impression.” I turned to find an older man standing behind me. He smelled of toilet and dumpster. His clothes hung on him, and he kept shaking and scratching his face the whole time we were talking. His skin was chalky; his neck was scarred with at least thirty ragged craters, some of them open and weeping. I don’t think Don’s feedings were always as voluntary as he’d made them sound. “Do you know where he is?”

The man shook his head. “I really wish he’d come back soon though… he has something I need.” His s sounds whistled.

“Has he been gone long?”

“A week or two. Maybe more. I don’t have a calendar on me.” He laughed, I think. I could see very plainly that while his two front teeth may have been missing, his eyeteeth more than made up for the absence with their large pointiness. “Do you have… ?” The man had nothing but a tattered flannel, a pair of filthy Dickies and a craving for chemicals that wouldn’t be satisfied anytime soon. The end of his question could have been filled in with almost anything. “I have this,” I told him, and I gave him what I had in my wallet without checking the denomination. “Use it as you see fit.” He didn’t thank me for it, and I didn’t tell him to buy food, or not to buy whiskey.

It wasn’t my place.

He asked me if Don was a friend of mine, and I told him he was as much my friend as he was anyone’s. “If you see him,” he told me, “let him know we miss him down here.”

I didn’t want my trip to be a total waste, so I handed him one of my lists. “This might be helpful to you.” I slipped the other one under Don’s door.

He took it from me and glanced at it for a second before stuffing it in his pocket. “F*cking do-gooder,” he muttered. Then he walked away.

I wanted to think snarky thoughts about him, to separate the two of us with at least three layers of sarcasm and biting wit. But I couldn’t do it. His neck was just a sloppier version of my neck; his life was just an alternate universe version of mine, one of the many that didn’t result in a happy ending with Chloe, or anyone.

He was me, and I was him.

And we are Don.

I think I’ve done my part to bring about closure with my Vampire Maker. I won’t be going back to check up on him again. I went; he wasn’t there. I left my words where he could find them, if he comes back. I get the feeling Don has moved on, though, and maybe not for the better. I know it’s likely that he’s still laying his trap, hooking junkies in exchange for their blood sacrifices. But in an uncharacteristic move for me, I’m choosing to hope he’s found greener pastures instead – not like ganja green, or dollar bill green. More like the recycling green, the green that tells you life is going to find way, even for the undead. And that you don’t have to take down others in the struggle to keep your own demons under control.

If he hasn’t figured how to do that yet, I sure hope he does sooner or later.

Sooner would be best, for all parties concerned.