Joe Vampire

by Steven Luna

  “You can’t go at night?” She was looking right at me, and her fingers didn’t miss a stitch… or whatever they’re called in knitting. “It’s a different kind of energy, but it’s still magnificent. You should go.”

  “I’ve thought about it. I don’t know if I’d like the vibe as much being there after dark.” Without Chloe.

  “You might be surprised. It’s worth a try.”

  “Yeah. Not sure it would be.” Without Chloe.

  She stopped her knitting, so I knew something big was coming. “Can I ask you a personal question? Not trying to pry here or anything… just wondering about something.”

  Oh, snap. Is she going to bring up the shy-gay shit, too? “Fire away, Louise.”

  “Who is Chloe?”

  I did a quick think-back, and I’m positive that I’ve never mentioned Chloe in any of our conversations. “Louise, are you reading my thoughts?”

  She blushed. “Oh, I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry. That name just keeps coming up in your head, over and over. And over.”

  True, this.

  “No big deal, I just thought the whole mind reading thing was like vampire sex, like something one vampire couldn’t do to another vampire because I… “

  “Tried to read mine?”

  “Ummm… yeah. That.”

  “And it didn’t work?”

  “Yeah. That, too.” Double bust.

  She didn’t seem miffed. “There’s a way to block it; you just have to learn to close your mind. It takes practice, but I can show you how.” She squinted. “And to be fair, you can read mine now if you’d like. I have nothing to hide.” She sort of loosened her posture and closed her eyes. “Take a look.” So I did.

  Her mind was filled with books and yarn and tea.

  Nope. Nothing hidden in there.

  Then I felt like I was invading her head, so I stopped. “Okay. Let’s call it square.”

  The knitting started again. “So who is she, if you don’t mind telling me? She seems awfully important to you.”

  I didn’t know how to put the something-nothingness of me and Chloe into words in a way that someone else would understand. I did my best, but it still sucked. “She was important, and then she wasn’t. And she still is.” That was confusing… not unlike the whole situation. I left out all the mess in the middle about the flirting and the Tool and the miscommunication, and the way that, even with no heartbeat, I can feel some kind of phantom fluttering in my chest when I think about her. “She was someone I wanted to love. Things didn’t work out.” That was as far as I could go.

  “I understand.” She didn’t push it, or show pity, or coddle me. And she didn’t get all Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow about it like she’s prone to doing. Probably because she knew exactly how it felt to be in my position.

  The sun ain’t coming out anytime soon.

  “If you’re anything like me – and we’re more similar than you probably want to admit – what you miss most is the potential. All of what could have been if you hadn’t happened upon this sticky wicket.” Her book obsession was spilling out all over her vocabulary. I knew her well enough by now to know what was coming next: a big fat philosophical talk about how I should never give up dreaming the impossible dream of tigers in the night that kill the badness of no dreams. Or something like that.

  She talks a lot. I let most of it just go right past.

  “There’s no reason your what could have been can’t still be, Joe.” Really? No reason? I flashed her a fang or two. “Well, there’s that – yes. It’s a complication, for sure. But it doesn’t remove the possibility from everything.”

  Maybe not. “It sure puts a question mark on having something normal with someone else, though.”

  “So Chloe doesn’t Know, then?” Know, with a capital K? As in Know about This? Hell no, she doesn’t Know. “Is there anyone in your life who does?”

  “Only one. And things are pretty rocky there right now.” I think she was waiting for me to tell her more, but I just left it there.

  “What about your family?”

  “Not them either. I’m trying to figure out a way to break it to them.” I’m just now finding some measure of good in this; they might never be able to do the same.

  “I have a small circle of ladies who Know… dear friends from before the change, who’ve seen me through my rough patches.” Really? A circle? “They’ve really brought me back my warmth over the years. We knit, we discuss books. You should come sometime.” Oh. That kind of circle.

  Great for her, but not exactly my ball of yarn.

  Or my cup of tea.

  Still, it did sound nice. I’m not greedy; I wouldn’t even need an entire circle. These days, I’d settle for a semi-circle, or a warped oval with wiggly edges.

  Even a point would be nice.

  I told Louise that I played keyboards, and until pretty recently was in a techno band, and what I’d like more than joining a coffee klatch of fifty five year-old knitting enthusiasts is to find someone to play music with. Having had no eBay bites on the synthesizer-leather pants package, I’ve switched on the keys a couple times since the Old Lady Oral Sex Gig Distaster, and what’s coming out of my fingers now is totally different from what I did in Vomiting Nonsense. It’s still sort of classical and melodic like it had been, but now it has sort of an ethereal edge to it, too. Not having Lazer to boot heel all of my ideas, I feel like I’ve been able to stop holding my musical breath. And I like what I’ve been exhaling. So I’m eyeballing the card I got from that Forever 81 guy. Given the right players to work with, maybe I could make a slow transition back into music. It would be a sweet first step toward balancing things out. Dark and light. Yin and yang.

  Joe Average and Joe Vampire.

  “You’re a musician? I didn’t know that.”

  “You should have read my thoughts a little closer, Louise. It was right there.” She laughed. She takes a good teasing.

  “I know someone you might like, someone who… ” Louise isn’t one to leave a sentence unfinished, so I think all the yarn in her head must have tangled into a giant snarl at that moment. She yanked off a Post-It and wrote down the name Megan and a phone number. “The daughter of a good friend. She’s a pianist. She’s a bit reserved, and doesn’t get out too much.” Translation: she’s boring. “But she’s the sweetest thing, and very pretty. Maybe you two could get together sometime and talk about music… maybe over dinner or something.”

  “Like, go on a date? I don’t know, Louise.” I thought back to my last blind date attempt, and how it had lit the fuse on the whole shit bomb currently stinking up my life.

  I’d really like to avoid that kind of mistake from now on, if possible.

  “She Knows, so it would be easier for you; maybe you wouldn’t feel as self-conscious around her.” No. I’d be even more self-conscious, I’m sure. Did my fangs lose their roundness in the middle of dessert? Does she keep staring at my pointed Eddie Munster ears? Do my all-black irises make her want to puke?

  That is a lot to keep track of while holding up my end of the conversation and trying to sound sophisticated while reading the dessert menu.

  “Just think about it, okay? Maybe give her a call just to talk. I think you’ll really like her. She’s a sweet girl.” Not as sweet as Chloe.

  Louise frowned when she plucked that last part out of my brain.

  “Sorry. I’ll think about it.”

  Just as soon as she teaches me that Vampire Jedi Mind Closing thing.

  POST 28

  The Set Up

  As you’ve read in previous posts, up until recently I’ve been what I’d call a serial monogamist – if two relationships over the course of fifteen years can be considered serial. It’s more than one, so I’m going with it. Even more recently, I’ve been a total non-ogamist. I might even take the wordplay far enough to say I’ve been something of a self-ogamist, but I don’t want to put any more nasty pictures in your head than are absolutely necessary. Whatever kind of ogamy
I’ve been practicing, it hasn’t been with anyone else for a very long time. So I’m rusty. Plus, being a vampire has kinked my already-wavering self-confidence. I can only presume my skills wouldn’t pay the bills. My game is not the same. And my ocean has lost the lion’s share of its motion, regardless of the size of my boat. Which is basically a tug these days.

  Cheap joke.

  Flirting with Chloe wasn’t enough to sharpen my pencil for a real date. If she and I had picked up steam, I still would’ve been rehearsing smooth lines and throwing practice smiles so I could figure out how to not look nervous or pained. A lot of prep work goes into having a natural, spontaneous night out with someone. When it’s with someone you know, at least you have the safety net of common subjects to chat about in the event that you blow through all your smooth in the first ten minutes. But when it’s someone you’re hoping to impress, or someone you’ve only communicated with through three text messages, say, you probably want to have some sort of plan in place so you can keep things rolling. And if you’re a vampire, you need to toss in all the razzle-dazzle you can to stave off any uncomfortable silences.

  I could be wrong, but I would imagine silences tend to invite scrutiny of your night-dweller appearance.

  It might seem self-evident, but there is a delicate arrangement to the order of conversation in these situations. Start with the wrong topic, and you have nowhere to go but… nowhere. Start right, though, and you have a steady flow of date talk that moves from one subject to another with ease, and in a way that eliminates the awkwardness variable.

  It’s best expressed in the form of a simple yet effective word cloud:

  COMPLIMENTS

  WORK/CAREER/JOB

  HOBBIES/INTERESTS

  FRIENDS/FAMILY/PETS

  POP CULTURE

  CURRENT EVENTS

  CLIMATE CHANGE

  There are no time limits on any of the levels, though it’s best to move on from compliments after a reasonable duration. You don’t want to come across as a kiss-ass right away. But there’s no reason you can’t linger on WORK/CAREER/JOB if there’s a lot to say before you move on to FRIENDS/FAMILY/PETS. It’s also no crime to skip down a level if you hit a dry spot at any of the in-between levels. And unless you want to look like you have no idea how to handle yourself on a date, it’s best to not move back up the beanstalk, so to speak. Return to a topic that, in all likelihood, has already been adequately covered, and you risk appearing desperate and underprepared. A move like that could end a date before the breadsticks even make it to the table.

  You can tell I’ve thought about it a little.

  But I’ve never had a chance to put the Cloud into action.

  Not being known for my relationship prowess, I wanted to have all my soldiers lined up for Chloe. So I spent a fair chunk of time on working this fool-proof plan for once we were on a deeper level. Reading it back, it looks a little overly thought out.

  If you feel the need to create a formula for “spontaneous flow”, you probably don’t have a proper grasp of the concept.

  A lot of rambling about dating here, I know. Maybe you can see where all of this is leading.

  I took Louise up on her offer to introduce me to Megan.

  I thought it was time to dip a toe in the social waters again while I had the whole assimilation thing going for me. Not ready to swim, per se, but a little wading shouldn’t have been beyond my capacity. And if she already Knew, then it would be one less thing to have to make excuses for. Plus: it would be a chance to take the Cloud for a test drive, since I wouldn’t be using it with Chloe as originally intended.

  Maintaining comfortable conversational transitions turned out to be the least of my concerns, by a long – and I do mean loooooong – shot.

  But it didn’t start out as bad as all that.

  We found a restaurant halfway between her place and mine, non-Italian, since she and I both know the unappetizing aroma that garlic has for me. A first date has enough pressures without having to cope with the lingering smell of boiled crotch while you eat. We went with something more surf and turf instead – heavy on the turf, light on the surf. It was a happy compromise.

  That’s really all I’m looking for anymore.

  Rather than fumbling our way toward each other, we agreed to meet there instead. I somehow reached the place first, thankful that the GPS on my phone got me there with only three wrong turns in total. To keep things interesting, we chose not to send each other photos of ourselves, but instead thought we’d describe in words how we felt we appeared to the outside world, and let each one figure out who the other was once we were there. My description of me was:

  Slightly tall, somewhat nice-looking, average build, average hair, average taste in clothes. And fangs.

  Very honest; no exaggerated bullshit adjectives to disappoint her when reality showed me not to be as real-world studly as the text might have implied. And I knew hers was similar, and that the visual next to the words could very easily go either way. She described herself as:

  Semi-petite, dishwater hair, conservative dresser, eyes the color of sea foam. And the lips of a professional whistler.

  At least she had the vampire aspects of me to fall back on, even if they were wanly hidden by my date wear. I, on the other hand, had so few puzzle pieces to work with that I honestly had no idea what to look for other than some dirty-blonde chick with big lips and green eyes. To make things safe, I pictured a younger version of Louise, but without all the wool. If I were wrong, so much the better; if I were right, no high hopes to be shot down in flames by the truth.

  I reiterate: I’m all about the middle ground these days.

  As intently as I scrutinized every woman walking through the door, they all must have thought I was stalking them, or waiting to serve them a court summons. I’m surprised the hostess didn’t kick me out. Nobody seemed to fit the profile… not even the tall, slender, lovely sort-of catalog model-looking young lady who figured me out for who I was before I had a chance to do the same.

  She was no Louise.

  She was also not semi-petite; she was willowy and statuesque. She wasn’t dishwater blonde; she was sort of radiant. The whistling lips, though? Those were right on the money. But that was a very good thing. “Joe?” My mouth went all dry as I stood and shook her hand. “I could tell by the Ray Bans. I’m Megan.” She sort of looked me up and down, and the smell of her skin made me too fuzzy-headed to be self-conscious. “I almost didn’t spot you from your description… there’s really nothing average about you.” She smiled when she said it, which I took to mean she scaled me on the above average side rather than the below.

  That brought the rest of the self-consciousness through all at once.

  I wanted to answer with some flattery of my own, but my language skills had switched off altogether. I sort of squeaked from the back of my throat, something like, “Me, too.” It made no sense, which was fine, I think, since it also came out sounding more like I had choked on my gum.

  “Are you okay? You seem sort of… uncomfortable.”

  My reply was so very unrelated to her question. “Weird about the polar bears losing their home to global warming, huh?” Shit! I had skipped over all the other topics and started at the bottom. That totally crapped up my word cloud. There was no way to go back and start over.

  “So tragic, I don’t know how we’ve let this happen to our planet, but I’m sure it won’t end well if we don’t do something about it soon.”

  Whoa. Good save.

  It looked like someone had been working on a word cloud of her own.

  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 intere
sts 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?”