Joe Vampire

POST 29



Getting (Un)Lucky

Megan and I had more in common that just music:

• She likes reading; I’ve heard of books.

• She’s studying fashion design; I wear clothes.

• She volunteers at an animal shelter; I eat animals.

The similarities were uncanny.

Actually, what we had instead of overlapping interests was a similar sense of humor, and a willingness to treat our blind date as a fun experiment rather than a stab at finding love. Not that the outing was lacking in romance. But it was only a first try, for both of us. She had put aside actual living in favor of grad school when an internship for a design house in New York came along and changed her plans completely. She’d tried balancing both for a while, which meant she was either at work or holed up in her apartment. It had been months since she’d had any fun, and she was just now figuring out how to balance her two worlds. She was ready to add some life back into her life.

See? We had so much in common it was frightening.

What we didn’t share was a taste for Cabernet Sauvignon; that was hers alone. I can barely pronounce it, let alone bring myself to consider it a beverage. When the waiter brought a bottle and two glasses, I turned mine upside-down. “Not a wine drinker, huh?” Megan asked me.

I couldn’t help remembering the sake effect. “Wine and I have a bit of a history together – a tainted history.”

Wrong words. She probably thought I was an alcoholic.

“Maybe you just didn’t try the right stuff. You could give it another shot now.” Megan’s smile was hypnotic, and paired with her sea foam eyes I sort of melted into agreement. Wasn’t that what this whole night was about, anyway – giving things another shot? So I went with it. She reached across the table and I sipped from her glass. The other diners probably puked up their crab legs at how cute we were, her feeding me wine while I clinked my nubby fangs on the rim, trying not to grimace when the dirty tang hit my tongue. “Maybe I should finish this with a straw.” I righted my glass and we split the rest of the bottle. Once or twice we interlocked our arms in that non-realistic way that people in movies do sometimes.

So sweet, this Megan.

And there was no life-altering sake aftereffect, thank Dionysus… or whoever it is that governs drunk folk these days.

When we were both nicely wined-up and mellowed out, right before her lobster Thermidor and my Filet in the Raw arrived, the conversation veered toward the more personal. “Does it make you uncomfortable that I know about your… situation?”

The ice having been well-broken by then, I wanted to answer honestly. “It does, a little. The fact that you didn’t shout it through the restaurant just now tells me you get how it is, though. Thanks for that.”

She tilted her head… her honey-golden head… and her sea green eyes went all serious. “Can I ask you something a little deeper?” Uh oh. “How does it feel? To be how you are?” To be how I am?

How exactly am I?

Her question didn’t offend me. I just wasn’t sure what all she wanted to know. “You mean, how it is for me to be a lonely thirty-two year-old vampire trying to get on with his life? Or a half-drunk dude on a date with the most interesting girl he’s met in a long time, hoping he doesn’t make an ass of himself and blow the whole thing before dessert?” I made her laugh – a genuine, wine-scented laugh. I was used to making women yell, or cry, or douse my belongings in alcohol and threaten to set them on fire. Making one laugh was quite a step up from the norm.

“That was pretty vague, wasn’t it? What I meant was what does the vampire part feel like? Does it feel painful, or powerful? Or is it just kind of numb?”

Wow. Those were deep questions. And detailed answers were more than I was willing to give away on a first date. Megan seemed pretty sensitive to the whole vampire deal, and she was much, much hotter than either she or Louise had made her out to be. But I have standards.

Not many, but I have them.

And as I still haven’t nailed down for myself what this whole vampire situation really feels like, I gave as little an answer as I could without totally putting her off. “All of that. It feels like all of that.” She smiled. And she didn’t push it any further.

And when we walked to the parking lot, neither of us really wanted things to end. We sort of hemmed and hawed and made talk so small it almost didn’t exist. We were way beyond word clouds by then. I told her it would be fun to do this again sometime, and as I opened her car door she put the moves on me.

I know. I could hardly believe it myself.

“Listen, there’s a party that’s probably picking up just about now, not too far from here… a friend of mine is having a housewarming thing. Do you want to go?”

“Umm… yeah. I do.” More than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.

So we ran into a grocery store nearby and grabbed another bottle of wine as a housewarming gift (apparently that’s something you’re supposed to do) and I followed her to the place. It was in full swing, and the house was duly warmed by the time we arrived. She introduced me to her friend, and to their friends, and no one said a word – or uttered a thought – about vampires. A nice change of pace, to be among people and feel like a part of the group. The host had her hands full, so we wandered about on a self-guided tour of the digs. We peeked into the bathrooms. We nosed around in the library-slash-office. We glanced in the master bedroom.

And we locked the door in the guest room and started snogging the hell out of each other.

The wine packed way less punch than the sake had, but it still made my head spin a little – a good spin, when paired with the sexual charge of my hand climbing from Megan’s ass to the warm skin beneath her sweater. She shivered when my flesh touched hers, and I remembered how cold I must feel. So I halted. “Keep going,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

It was like she knew she was deflowering the vampire part of me.

The smell of her neck was as dizzying as the wine. Actually, I think I could smell the wine in her blood coming through every time her pulse jumped. We fell on the bed, and things intensified. Things heated up.

Things hardened.

Not just things in the lower regions of my anatomy. Things up high, too.

Right around the fang area.

Now I not only had the challenge of having her not be creeped out that my hard-on was rubbing against her leg whether she – or I – wanted it to. I also had to figure out how to keep from slicing open her lip or skewering her tongue with my savage teeth. I pulled back a little, just to make sure I was being careful with it all. “Don’t stop. I want you.” She locked her legs around mine.

“I want you, too,” I told her, in the lamest, most porntastic voice I could. “Just thinking about protection.”

All kinds of protection.

“I don’t need protection. Just suck me, Joe.”

Wow.

Green light: go.

Wait. Was there an s at the beginning of that second word, or an f? It had come out in sort of a breathy whisper, so I couldn’t tell right away. “Sorry… what was that?”

“Suck me… ” She threw her head back and gave me a wide berth to her slender neck.

Seriously?

“It’s okay; you won’t hurt me. I’ve done this before.” At least she was reassuring. I looked down, and sure enough there were six pinkish dots, scars from her other vampire lovers, I guess. As if there weren’t enough thoughts about the sex swirling around in my mind, her thoughts came bursting out of her head and spilling into mine. Suck me, vampire boy… suck me… suck me.

Shit.

I was more than halfway to sexing someone I really liked, and who I thought really liked me, and then this. The vampire parts sort of seized control for a second, and I pushed my mouth against her neck, tempted to take her up on her request. My tongue flicked out and licked her skin, tasting the wine in her blood rising to the surface like liquid sugar. I was presented with the dual opportunity of getting laid and satiating my thirst for blood all in one super-hot intertwining, and I was seriously thinking about going for it. My crotch was ready to explode, and now my teeth were, too. I had one hand pulling down my zipper and the other caressing her tender throat, and was ready to dive in at both ends when the most intrusive thought that could ever have occurred showed up.

Louise.

My hard-on was a little less hard after that.

Her voice sounded in my head like a playlist of a single Louise-ism stuck on replay: They’re called sucker f*ckers… they don’t have our best interests at heart. They’re like vampire groupies.

Yeah. Megan was one of those.

Everything sort of froze right where it was. I had to know for sure. “Are you… are we just doing this so you can have the whole vampire sex experience?”

Megan sat up. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” She was genuinely confused about it.

“No – I mean… no.” I wasn’t sure for a minute. It had undoubtedly been a long, dry season for me, and here was a hot woman who really seemed to want me, and whom my penis was certain I wanted in return. But I don’t think we wanted something equal from each other. “That’s not what I want, not to bite you. I wanted to… ” I would have finished the thought, but I was pretty sure the moment was over for us both. “You’re a sweet girl, Megan, but this isn’t going to work out. Sorry.” I zipped up and tucked in as I made for the front door, trying to conceal an erection and a wicked set of pumped-up eyeteeth.

I didn’t have enough hands.

I thought sexual insecurity had left me back in adolescence when I hooked up with Dionne. Then it made a smashing return appearance with the crazy ass whack-fest that was Aretha. And it sure cranked up to a new level of What the Hell? with Girl No. 3, even though that never resulted in so much as a hand shake. But this? This made those look like Sex by Numbers. I drove around for a few hours, just clearing my head and hoping my vampire fang equivalent of blue balls would eventually die down.

It didn’t.

My phone buzzed while I drove. It was a text from Megan:

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought we were on the same page. Good luck with everything. S:>{

A vampire emoticon. Beautiful. At least she had the decency to use actual words and leave in all the vowels. But I still took the whole messy incident as an insult, I guess.

I wouldn’t have minded at all being used for my dick, but I have all kinds of problems being used for my fangs.

Without really thinking about where I was going, I headed to an all-night store called Sal’s. Hube and I used to hang there after practice, to split a six pack and talk shit about Lazer and his god complex. Maybe I was drawn to the comfort of a familiar place, or maybe I just went because I could get there on auto pilot. I don’t really know. What I do know is that they have a twenty-four hour deli counter with meats butchered fresh by Sal’s uncle every day. It was close to morning by then, and if anything was going to drown the sorrow of a date gone disastrous, I figured it would be some MGD and a slab of raw Angus.

Then Hube walked in as I was walking out.

The night turned out to be more than beer and beef could fix.