Joe Vampire

POST 45



Onward



It doesn’t seem so long ago that I started this blog as my attempt to set the record straight about what life is like for a real vampire, one without rakish movie star appeal or legions of tweenage fans who assemble in cleverly-named obsession groups. My intention was to inform the world, sing from the virtual mountainside that despite what the entertainment industry has mesmerized us all into believing, this condition is not a clever storytelling device or a prettified marketing ploy. It won’t keep you young or make you hung, if you weren’t those things already. It doesn’t come with a locked-down, sewn-up guarantee of eternal hotness or absolute immortality; you’re better off selling your soul to a plastic surgeon if you’re looking to secure that kind of foreverness. And it sure as hell isn’t a jumping-off point to start up any star-crossed, unrequited romantic entanglements. Although in my case, it ended up being a springboard to a fully-requited romantic entanglement instead, even if it took a few hairpin turns to get us there.

Requited is actually a word, right? Not just something I made up?

Doesn’t matter.

My point has been made.

Recently I wondered if I had accomplished what I had set out to do on this site, if I had made it evident enough that there is no way to sugarcoat the existence of a half-alive creature who thrives on stealing the life force out of the living in a vain and futile attempt to restore his own lost vitality… though that description could just as easily apply to investment bankers and Hollywood agents, and for them there’s sugar all over the damn place. In the case of vampires, though, this sort of situation comes wrapped in a bitter shell and encased in several layers of radioactive nuclear sludge to keep things from being simple at any level. So to put it all in perspective, I reread the posts from the beginning just before writing this one.

Damn, was I ever angry back then.

In the course of a lifetime that might never end, I guess it wasn’t such a long time ago. In the context of all that’s happened between here and there, it might as well be a million years since I was the man I started out as – the man I’ll never be again. Given a choice between the two, I’d rather be who I am now than who I was before. That Joe was someone I just happened to be.

This Joe is someone I earned the right to become.

Vampire parts and all.

Sounds a little syrupy, maybe, but in my best interpretation of contemporary pop psychology, I might as well own my truth.

Especially considering how much I had to pay for it.

There’s a whole new array of vanilla-flavored circumstances for me to tend to, regular life-based things that have put my vampirility completely in its place for the time being, each one tied to a significant player in my personal Cast of Characters. Luckily for all of us, my recovery from the Forever 81 Incident has thrown me back into an itemizing state of mind, just in time to catch you up on everything. And now, the bullet points:

• Amanda – After my wounds were all healed, Amanda helped me concoct an explanation for my parents. With the help of a Power Point presentation and a well-chosen adult contemporary soundtrack from the seventies, we were able to explain it in a way that mitigated any undue anxiety required of them by their demi-Jew status. And yes, there were bullet points up the wazoo. But something – the feed, the vitamin therapy, the sleep, or all of it, maybe – has brought me back a little color, and I’ve committed to fang-grinding three times a day like clockwork, which meant they would at least have a visual that wouldn’t prompt them to worry so much about my overall health. I’ve even bitch-slapped my contact lens aversion and put my eyes once again to their original hazely-brown instead of their recently altered jet black. So the Face of Joe is much as it was back in the day, instead of being some frightening reminder that their son has big stuff happening in his bloodstream. Still, the news hit them pretty hard. My dad wept a little – the first time I’ve seen that happen since he watched Brian’s Song – but he didn’t run in the other room and fall asleep in his recliner like he ordinarily would have. He actually stayed and listened to me tell my tale the whole way through. Total progress for him, and I couldn’t have been prouder. My mom insists that she understands how it is because she, too, has undergone “the change” and knows what it’s like when your body turns traitor on you. I keep trying to tell her that becoming a vampire and hitting menopause aren’t exactly equivalent experiences, but I think she feels like we’ve bonded over our compromised physiologies. If it helps keep her in the Here and Now about things, then I guess I can let it slide. And David? He was a freaking mess, way more emotional than I would have imagined him to be over a situation that hadn’t directly affected his investments or his ability to bag chicks. As a result, we’re closer now than we’ve ever been… which really took the steam out of my F*ck You, Big Brother – I’m a Vampire and You’re Not choo-choo train. But I like this outcome much better.

• Hube – My boy and I had several clear-the-air talks while I recovered, and I did my best to glue the friendship I’d smashed into a thousand pieces back together again. Not that I’d have known this, since I hadn’t given him a chance to tell me, but he quit Vomiting Nonsense about two minutes after I did – right after he cracked Lazer in the jaw for using my vampire shit against me. He was sticking up for me even when I had no idea he’d done so, and even when I didn’t deserve it. And when he realized that Lazer had spread the word to Lucas, thereby putting me in total jeopardy for my life, he broke down for being thoughtless and unintentionally throwing me under the bus, even though he had no idea that it would end up the way it did. I told him he was the only one who’d seen me through the entire excursion into Vampireville, and that I couldn’t have asked for a better wingman – and not just for This; for everything, for life in general. I suggested that we just consider the occurrences of the last few months a wash and go forward from here. He was good with that. Still, every time we talk I feel like I need to apologize to him again, like no matter how much I tell him I’m sorry that I effectively threw him away it won’t be enough to fully express my regret. And every time I do that he blows it off, as if helping me sort out my bizarre paranormal mess before catching total hell from me for making an honest mistake and still tracking me down post-abduction to pull me out of the clutches of vampire hunters is just part of what he signed on for when we buddied up all those years ago. I honestly don’t know how I ever doubted him. It feels good that we’re back on track. He’s also moved forward with his return to school, and will be educated in the ways of music production and engineering by the time he finishes his program of study in two years. In advance of that beauty of a development, we’re putting together a musical project of our own, music without the invasive influences of ego-driven dickheads or blue-haired mouth hookers or criminally insane mullet-headed cover bands. It’s strictly a Joe and Hube joint, and we’ll figure it out all by ourselves. Just like we always have.

• Louise – My Vampire Godmother stays on me all the time about my vitamins and my electrolytes, which is totally unnecessary since my eye-opening Days of Deprivation came to a close. I’ve been on the other side of the electric vampire fence and I know the repercussions if I backslide even for a day. But I’ve come to appreciate her concern. She even helped me start my own little hen house to see how feeding from chickens might work for me. I’m easing my way in, trying to invent a way to sanitize live poultry from the outside before giving it a go. I know this much so far: they like baths about as much as cats do. She and I have also begun exploring some of the deeper topics in the spectrum of our shared condition that our prior conversations seem to have skipped, topics such as How Do We Keep Living If Our Hearts Don’t Beat? and Vampirism: Virus or Bacteria, Friend or Foe? Even she in all her wisdom doesn’t have the skinny on some of this, so I’ve been putting my Googlorithm to the test. But it’s still a dicey process, even with that in place. Sometimes we happen upon an obscure study or an anecdotal telling of someone else’s experience that gives some small amount of information. But no one’s blogging about it like I have, so there’s no complete data set to pore over. Everything is a guess. The biggest question for both of us – one with a thousand possible answers but none that make sense – is How Does a Vampire Turn Someone Else into a Vampire? Don didn’t seem to know exactly how it worked before he tried it, and Louise has never even wanted to… not that I do. Lack of desire doesn’t quell the curiosity, though. I’m sure it ties into the fang tingle somehow, and the fresh-baked smell of the human circulatory system. Since I don’t intend on sampling people blood ever again, I’m content for the moment not knowing whether it’s a conscious exertion or a process of instinct. I’m sure eventually my Need to Know will overtake me. I can’t stay innocent forever; someday I’ll have to find the answers. For now, it’s enough to keep track of the questions as they come.

• Bo – My personal handyman still comes around, and I can honestly say that my humble home has never been more put together or Extremely Made-Over. I’m now wired for sound like a cinema, multi-media’ed to the max, and swimming wall-to-wall in handcrafted furniture the likes of which I never knew human hands could create. I try to keep him well-beer’ed while he works and listen intently as he explains his process. To hold up my end of the conversation, I’ll throw out new words every once in a while to expand his vocabulary, something he’s asked me to help him with. He won’t let me pay him for anything – not even materials – so I’m all too happy to offer him this in exchange for everything he’s done for me. It seems to be more give than take for him, but I think that’s how he prefers it. I think it’s really all about the friendship for him, anyway. For me, too, actually.

• Chloe – How do you explain what it feels like when your love dream comes true at the tail end of your life being turned upside down and thrown against a wall sideways? I won’t lie to you: it’s not all coffee talk and copy machine flirtation. We’re both a lot more complex than that… one of us way more than the other, for obvious reasons. Of course, we’re still working through the ins and outs of being friends while riding a bullet train toward couplehood and trying not to skip over any of the sweet stuff on our way to the Soup Stage. Neither of us wants to make assumptions or hold unrealistic expectations about how difficult things are likely to be. But isn’t that what every couple goes through when they’re coming together in the beginning, figuring out how to be themselves while being with each other? In that respect, we’re no different from anyone else with a meet-cute story, aside from the littering of corkscrew plot twists and supernatural complications that go along with my vampire status. But she is just as awesome as I had imagined she would be all along, and there’s nobody I’d rather be figuring it out with than her. She understands what we’re up against, and she’s willing to fit my altered reality into her perfect normalcy. Aretha and Dionne were never willing to compromise like that, and I wasn’t even a vampire when they were in the picture. So I can safely say that, no matter where Chloe and I end up, I will never need an insulting Motown name for her, because she is nothing less than Supreme. That’s a groaner, I know. Doesn’t mean I’ve lost my edge.

And lest I forget the bringer of my almost-demise:

• Lazer – Dude can go f*ck himself, for all I care.

As for me, with all the other space my ramblings have taken up on this site, I don’t need another bullet point to summarize my situation. I can do it in a single sentence: In trying to pull back the curtain on what it’s like to be a real-live vampire, I’ve figured out how to be a real-live human being again. I didn’t do it alone, and I would never make that claim. Credit given where it’s due, to all who picked me up when I had fallen low and carried me along when my feet failed me.

You are the wind beneath my pointed ears, and I am forever grateful to have you in my corner.

And with that, I’m pretty sure I’ve said everything I need to say. It’s time for me to start living again, regardless of how half-dead I may be. So I’m shutting down the blog to focus on re-starting my life instead – out from under the metaphoric coffee table, out of the proverbial coffin. Unto the world reborn. Hallelujah. Amen.

Word, yo.

I thought about leaving the already-published posts up and just not adding anything new, on the off chance that someone down the line would still want to know how it really is. Maybe this would even be a resource to someone who ends up in the same set of circumstances as I did. But I’m not stupid; I know there are other psychopaths out there like Lucas and his dipshit friends, scouring the world for imaginary scourges to drive their stakes through and rip the fangs out of in the quest for good, old-fashioned Homogeneity. And as I learned in all too vivid a manner, I am terrible at telling the shit from the shinola. This forum might make for great therapy, but it’s just not worth the risk anymore – not for me. Not for the ones I love.

Not for the ones who love me in return.

And if I’ve gathered anything philosophical from this whole vampire experience, some gem of wisdom that would summarize the underlying truth of how this all went down, I think it would be something as simple as this: Shit is always going to come along to ruin your best-laid plans. You can make it into as many metaphors as you can think of – a whole blog’s worth, possibly, as I’ve pretty clearly proven along the way – but even if you never figure out a fancy way of saying it, it is yours. And it doesn’t make a lick of difference how you got it. Cover it up with hoodies all you want, block it out with Ray Bans or grind it down to a nub with a mini-Dremel and hope that it goes away, but it won’t; it will be there no matter what. Hell, you might even be the only one who notices most of it, anyway. Doesn’t matter; it’s still there. It’ll still leap out and sucker punch you in the back of the head whenever it wants – probably at the most inopportune of moments, too. And not just once, but over and over again. But if you call it by its name as soon as it walks in the room, look it in the eye and shake its hand, maybe you’ll have a better chance of seeing it come at you when it finally decides to beat you into submission.

With any luck, you can talk it down to just a severe bruising instead.

To everyone who has followed along and has listened to my story unfold, I offer my sincerest thanks and deepest appreciation. It’s been a wild ride.

To anyone who hacked me and used what you found here to make my life hellish – or sold me down the river to those who did – I offer my middle finger.

Make that both middle fingers.

And to everyone wondering who the man-pire behind these words might really be, I have no problem telling you now. In a minute, when I sign off for the last time and shut down this blog forever, it won't make a difference, anyway. Maybe it never did; maybe I’ve been making too much of everything this whole time.

That would be so like me.

So, then, for the sake of completion – and for the sake of finally owning my truth – allow me to put the issue to rest once and for all: my name is Joseph Aaron Asher.

I am Joe Vampire.