Joe Vampire

by Steven Luna

  We’ll get to that. Just not right now.

  Baby steps.

  I will admit that, although I was less than psyched once I learned that This had taken place, there was a brief, hopeful moment when I swallowed the hype and let myself imagine the cool mystery of what my life might soon become. It was a dream-fed hallucination, like some slow-motion ad for designer cologne, in which all of the mundane clutter I’d surrounded myself with was suddenly gone, replaced by sleek CGI architecture and cars from the future. I was taller and fitter, naturally great-smelling and the thinning spots on my scalp had filled back in without a single trip to Bosley.

  My penis had doubled in length and girth.

  My testicles appeared to have fully descended. Finally.

  Italian suits covered my flesh like a second skin, never again to know the feel of online catalog clearance cotton. It was inevitable – I would become darkly suave, fashionably dressed, dangerously hung and supremely focused on what was important in life: sucking on babes. I would do nothing more than appear in their presence and they’d draw to me with their mouths moist and slightly open, as if I were a Coach outlet. Suddenly, I’d be the guy women searched the room to find because they actually wanted me, not so they could alert security in order to avoid being flashed on their way to the parking lot. Suddenly I’d be able keep an erection for long enough to cause an orgasm for someone other than just myself. Suddenly I would be… someone. And not just any someone – a vampire someone, cool and seductive and expected to be so. No excuses necessary for my erotically-charged questionable public behavior… not anymore. I would feed and seduce and leave a trail of female flotsam in my wake as I moved on to find more. Somehow I believed that becoming a creature of the night would make me more of a man.

  That was just before I started making bargains with the diarrhea fairy. Instead, as it turned out, This made me shit out my humanity over the course of a week and a half while leaving behind a slew of craptastic parting gifts, including (and mostly limited to):

  • Sensitivity to Natural Light – I can totally relate now to the idea that sun exposure will reduce a vampire to ash, though we don’t actually incinerate; we hardly even char. What does happen is more of a savage blistering irritation, as much as an irritation can actually be considered “savage”. It’s like a sub-surface second-and-a-half degree burn that defies all SPFs. Think anal itch over every inch of your body that Gold Bond couldn’t even begin to ease, and you’re almost there. It’s a killer. And instead of just peeling in the manner of an irresponsible sun worshipper, your skin eventually creates a flaky ashen husk that allows you to molt like a Biblical leper. A burn that can’t be comforted followed by the sloughing off of all of your skin – who doesn’t love that? And for the record, vampires don’t sparkle in the sun; that is a bunch of bullshit.

  • Loss of height – Screw any hopes I had of being taller; it feels like I’ve actually shrunk instead. Pre-This, if I threw some Dr. Scholl’s in my cross-trainers and remembered not to slouch, I could maybe graze the far side of six foot one. Post-This, I’m lucky if I make five eleven in double Chuck Taylors with my hair in a fully gelled spike. Maybe it’s some sort of physical deflation that comes with having your mortal soul removed and replaced with spiritual mush; maybe it’s just the posture of General Defeat. Either way, not cool.

  • Flatulence – Oh. My. God. If you ever thought your dog was capable of doing permanent olfactory damage when he let one go, you ain’t smelled nothing yet. Try sampling a Silent But Deadly sneaking out of the ass of a vampire. It’s the scent of rotten corpse times five, and it comes with no regard for what you have or haven’t eaten or how hard you squeeze your sphincter shut. Gross, I know, but we’re going for honesty here, folks, and I would be remiss if I didn’t bring it up.

  • Telepathy – Reading this back, it sounds pretty stupid. But it’s true. More than anything, it’s an annoyance, since you can hear EVERY thought that EVERYONE has at ALL times. Grocery shopping is sometimes like being in a high school cafeteria wrapped in a disco shoved up the butt of a Super Bowl party and being forced to listen to every conversation simultaneously. Maybe not quite that bad. But close. I’ve spent a tremendous amount of energy these last few weeks learning how to tune out most of the noise while trying to hone in specifically on only the women who might have an interest in getting laid. By me. Which equals none of them, really. So telepathy sucks.

  • Insomnia – Forget what you’ve heard about vampires sleeping by day so they can feed by night. Most days I’m happy to catch a twenty minute power nap. Maybe with meditation and a fistful of Lunesta I could come close to relaxing enough to get in a full eight hours. I haven’t gone that far, but I might soon. For now, every innocent sound and innocuous smell and harmless change in air current sets me on high alert. I’ve never been a sound sleeper, but since This happened I tend to vibrate more at the exact moments when others would relax. It’s probably from the combination of my vampirism mixed with my pseudo-Judaism. There’s nothing like being a neurotic Jewish vampire to keep you awake all day and all night worrying about, oh, everything.

  • Instantaenous Non-surgical Penile Enlargement and Advancing Hair Line – Just kidding… my dick’s still as little as it ever was, and my hair is just as thin – a great combination for working on the ladies. But hey, my farts smell like the dead now, so at least I’ve got that going for me.

  Those are the highlights, but truly there’s not too much more to it so far. I can’t fly, and I’ve never turned into a bat, though I keep hope alive for that one… because, how sweet would that be? My teeth are still the same; it must take a while for the fangs to show up. I can’t run any faster or jump any higher, and I haven’t yet mastered the rumored hypnotic power that pulls women under my control with a mere look in their eyes, although I have been working at it. So far I’ve only managed to scare them away even more than I usually would with my captivating small talk about the state of the Eurozone and Linkin Park trivia. So things haven’t turned out to be so different for me after the occurrence of This. Not yet, anyway.

  Except for the ridiculous need to consume blood as a means of survival, that is.

  That one is a definite game changer.

  I’m sure there’s more crazy shit coming for me down the pike. I could be wrong, but I can’t imagine it’s going to be any better than what’s already shown up. You’d think there might be something positive in all of this to counter the lack of inches added to one’s pecker. But nope. There’s no shape-shifting, no flight, no increased sexual magnetism. I turned into a freaking vampire and all I got was this stupid blood lust.

  The bumper stickers don’t lie, people; sometimes, life really is a bitch.

  And sometimes, you don’t even get to die.

  POST 4

  Girl No. 3

  As any self-respecting man-child should, I take my share of responsibility for my failures with women. It would be easy to blame it on my attraction to women who use my eagerness to please against me, and that this had inevitably become a source of friction. But I don’t think it was a problem for either of them; I could tell by the way they “let” me do everything for them all the time.

  And by the way I just went along with it.

  Since they were the ones who broke things off, that couldn’t be it. After a great deal of thought, I believe I finally understand the issue: the common tipping point in both situations is that my idea of the proper comfort level in a relationship was the exact opposite of theirs. In each pairing we threw huge heat at the onset, and we were able keep things at a rousing boil for a good long while. But just when we got to the Soup Stage, the place where everything had simmered down to a comfortable warmth and excitement became more of a rarity, they bailed. As if excitement and arousal are supposed to be a permanent state.

  If that were true, Cialis wouldn’t need to broadcast their Four-Hour Wood warning.

  Don’t get me wrong; I’m as much for emailed crotch shots and indiscriminat
e sex in IHOP bathrooms as anyone else. But what I really dug was the phase after that, when everything mellowed and the pressure to impress one another had dissolved. I was as happy in the chilled out moments as I was in the moments when we were all heated up – happier, even. For me, it was the Soup Stage that made all the needy pleasing worth the effort; those moments gave us substance and deepened the bond created by all the prior excitement. Coincidentally, these were also the likeliest moments when screwing someone else became a viable – and preferable – option for both women in question.

  Bitches.

  My last girlfriend – let’s call her Aretha Skanklin – was kind enough to explain her own narrow view of the issue for future relationship reference: I was too childish to know how to sustain a stimulating connection with a grown woman. I was halfway through a Doctor Who marathon on SyFy and a box of Cap’n Crunch when she dropped the bomb and stormed out the door. Otherwise I probably would have helped her pack and driven her to her new guy’s place. Sure, I would have cried the whole time, but I would have helped.

  See how sick that is?

  The fact that she had already shagged two other guys in the months leading up to that moment led me to believe that she herself might be a little unclear as to how this commitment thing was supposed to work. So I let her walk, without doing much to stop her.

  A solid three days passed before I realized what had happened and took up residence under the coffee table.

  This was an almost scene-for-scene replay of girlfriend number one – let’s call her Dionne Whorewick – only it was Stargate SG-1, not Doctor Who, Cocoa Puffs instead of the Cap’n, and she had only screwed one other guy… whom she eventually married. And I actually did cry while that one was ending. But she gave no explanation, other than telling me she wasn’t happy anymore. It was a much different feeling when she left; she was the first girl I had ever associated with the word love – not just like or wanna do it with, but actual love. I think it might have been that sort of interrupted attachment that latched me firmly to Aretha, who was the next woman who showed any interest… most likely so I’d lend her the three thousand bucks she needed to get her boobs done. I’ve often wondered if Dionne didn’t ruin me for other women. Not that there’s been a line outside my door, but it would be nice to find at least one who looks forward to the Soup Stage as much as I do. Maybe then I can have a relationship that won’t end in sub-coffee table spelunking and rug burns, with me sucking cheese product from a can. Really, though, that was only two women out of the whole female race. The odds are squarely in my favor. Two down; every other unattached woman in the world to go.

  Enter Girl No. 3.

  Her name is Chloe, and she hasn’t earned a clever R&B-themed ho’ name yet. From what I can tell so far, she is likely never to. She was possibly the next big thing for me, my muse to rejoin the world of the unheartbroken, to find meaning in something beyond Netflix and frozen dinners for one. She’s an office mate, in merchandising. We’ve had several witty pass-bys at the copier over the past few months. I can tell she’s nothing like Aretha or Dionne, and I’m pretty sure she’s into me (at least a little bit, anyway) based on three specific yet not terribly representative indicators:

  • She has never once asked me to help her move furniture, care for her pets while out of town or fund any elective plastic surgery

  • She strikes up conversations with me even when it’s clear that I’m not in need of immediate medical attention, and

  • She linger looks as she leaves, which means her eyes are the last thing to turn away when she goes. This one is the most encouraging.

  I should mention that she’s semi-involved with someone else, mostly because I’d like to think that this is what has kept things from progressing for us. But he’s widely known to be a tool and the two of them are tenuous at best, by all accounts. Still, she’ll have to make the first move, and only after she’s uninvolved, since I know all too well what it’s like to be on the other side of the cheat.

  Even a tool doesn’t deserve that kind of mess.

  In what I consider one of our more memorable pre-vampire exchanges, I was heading toward the copy nook to send off a fax when she beat me to the machine. “I’ve got next,” I said, and smacked a quarter on the cover like it was a pool table.

  She smiled without turning her head. “Isn’t that just an excuse a guy uses so he can buy a girl a drink?”

  I smirked, hoping it was sweet and sort-of seductive and not smarmy or stalkerish. “There’s coffee in the kitchenette… freshly brewed three hours ago,” I told her. “I’d be glad to bring you a cup. With a spoon, of course, in case it’s taken on the consistency of pudding.”

  “That’s the best you can do – three hour-old free coffee?” She looked sidelong, her chestnut hair hardly veiling her creamy blue eyes, and I sort of lost my concentration.

  “And pudding… bonus, right? Like an after-dinner beverage and dessert in one swoop. That has to count for something.”

  She finished her copies and looked me straight on. “It definitely does.”

  So sweet.

  It was a thousand moments like this one that came together to form our connection, a connection I’ve always hoped she feels as much as I do. And oddly enough, she’s the one girl I don’t feel any hesitation about speaking to, and I have no doubt that this confidence stems from the knowledge that she is nearly unattainable.

  How ironic that the impossibility of having a thing with her has made me comfortable enough to pursue her, even in my own hopeless, misguided way.

  I’d been working up the nerve to give her my number to put the ball squarely in her court should anything change. I’d even composed a few self-protective follow-up comments just in case my forwardness freaked her out. But in some parallel universe where the Alternate Me doesn’t get all spazzy around smart, pretty women once the flirting becomes something more, I wouldn’t need any follow-up comments because she would happily take my digits. In that universe, she’s already called me, and she’s already ditched the tool and turned down other offers in order to spend time with me instead, so we can burn through the exciting moments on our way to the Soup Stage. I would imagine we’re not quite there yet, but in that universe she’s already making my life fully magical.

  In this universe, however, I recently became a vampire.

  That kind of dropped things in the crapper.

  Even before the transformation I made myself come to terms with the idea that we might only be office friends. As much as I would have liked to be outside-of-the-office friends, office friends would be better than nothing. But I might want to hedge my bets, just in case. So with Aretha out of the picture, Dionne not coming back anytime soon, and Girl No. 3 a remote possibility at best, I was seized by a rare moment of confidence in which I psyched myself out of my whole shut-in mentality.

  For a minute, the world was my slut-free oyster.

  This was why I had decided to take the invitation to Pomme when Michelle – another office friend, and only an office friend, though not even much of that anymore – told me she had a nowhere-near-the-office friend by the name of Dawn who I might be interested in meeting. I figured that aside from band practice and our shit gigs at birthday parties opening for eighties cover bands, it had been a very long time since I’d gone anywhere remotely fun. And I might as well have a back-up plan, in case this universe never catches up with the other and Chloe remains a non-thing. And Pomme was supposed to be a hotbed of Exciting First Moments. This could have been the shot in the arm I needed. As it turned out, it was more like a sleazy, saliva-soaked shot in the neck.

  Well… what do you know?

  I guess I’m ready to talk about how it happened.

  POST 5

  Those Crazy Homophones

  So I met up with Michelle and her friends at Pomme that Saturday night. It’s one of those ultra-hip places that serves drinks made of ferret tears and gold shavings served in glasses with no real bottoms so you can’t set t
hem down on a table; you have to commit to carrying them everywhere you go. The club is actually an abandoned mattress factory long known as an underground flop house for modern urban hobos, but Michelle’s cousin bought the place a few months ago and turned it into a nightclub after running the hobos off.

  Judging by the oil drum fires and the aroma of roasted cat outside, I think he might have missed a few.

  Inside, the music was too loud for me to hear Michelle’s introductions, so I just smiled and shook hands with everyone. There were three phenomenally hot girls who looked pretty happy to meet me, a relatively angry sort-of hot girl who barely made eye contact and a guy in a fedora with a way-too-unbuttoned shirt and a sizable chain dribbling down his neck. The whole group looked far more prostitutional than I had imagined. Since the noise level was three decibels shy of shattering my eardrums, I spent the first half of the evening pretending I could hear the conversation, and that I knew which of these ladies was my date. I started to get the impression that instead of a one-on-one set up, this might be some sort of group style situation, one of those modern things that keep you from getting stuck on a date with someone you might not gel with. That way the whole group can sort of pair up – and hook up – as needed. It may have sounded like a wet dream come true, but my interpersonal skills were shaky when there was only a single woman to deal with; a small brothel’s worth could have easily caused deep psychological damage. It might have been the ferret tears talking, but when Michelle screamed that everyone was headed to a sushi bar up the street and wanted me to come along, I was completely in… and as surprised as anyone that I would be. I downed the last of my third round and laid the glass on the table as everyone sort of clustered together like a fleshy molecule. We drunk-danced our way to the door in an amorphous sexual cloud, drifting off toward the sushi bar.

  My next memory, however, does not take place in a sushi bar.