by Steven Luna
What I did instead was fingerhooked all my bags and pushed my way past him without making eye contact.
“It’s all good, Hubert,” I told him, moving toward my van with my deli cuts in tow. “There’s really nothing for you to worry about. If you see Lazer, tell him I still say ‘fuck you’. And keep your mouth shut about the vampire shit, please. I don’t need any more crap to deal with.”
Hube raised his voice behind me. I think I had finally worn through his patience. “You got it, boss man. I won’t mention you ever again – to anyone.”
Whoa. That stung.
I know I deserved it. But even being able to read his mind, I didn’t expect it.
I shouldn’t have unloaded on him like that, no matter how bent out of shape I was. The guy made one lousy mistake, but somehow I just couldn’t find it within myself to forgive him and let it go. All he’d ever done was try to help me figure everything out, and he’d done the best job anyone could have hoped for under such bizarre circumstances. I thought it through on the ride home, between screaming about it into the steering wheel and trying to steady my shaking hands. If Hube and I were still as we had been, he’d be where I’d have gone to blow up about someone else. He would have known my yelling wasn’t about him; it was about Bastard X, and he wouldn’t have taken it personally. He would have known exactly where I was coming from, and he’d let me have my fit. He would’ve even joined in on the bashing until I had cooled off, and we’d have laughed about the whole thing afterward. And if the situation were reversed, I would have done the same for him. That’s just how we are.
How we were, I mean.
I don’t even know if we are anything at this point.
Reading it back now, the way I treated Hube might just be my low point with the vampire experience thus far. Maybe even worse than the shitting and the sucker fucker date thing. He was trying to help me, and I was trying to hurt him in return. I wouldn’t blame him if he never forgave me for it.
It would serve me right for being such a prick.
POST 31
Breaking Don
Lately, I’ve been forcing myself to look in the mirror quite a bit, which isn’t something I’m used to doing beyond what’s required for my general morning defanging, hair prep and odor control. Not a big face attender, really… I’ve always been more concerned with taming the Breath of the Dragon, which existed well before This happened, although my new eating habits don’t help it any. But a tongue-scorching cocktail of Crest and Scope followed by a Cinnamint Dentyne chaser burns away the stench and keeps everything under control most days. To me, this is far more crucial to my physical presence than whacking down a five o’clock shadow or splitting up a perfectly happy unibrow. While an hour spent dude-grooming your face could serve to get you in the door, whatever stank might be coming out of the hole in the middle of it is likely to shut that same door a few seconds later.
It probably won’t open again anytime soon, either.
All breath issues aside, gazing at my own crooked mug isn’t something I’ve generally devoted much time to until recently. But I’m trying to come to grips with who I am now, outside as well as in, and the more I make myself look at me, the more I see where the idea of vampires losing their reflections comes from. Sure, you can still see yourself, but there’s so little of you left in what you see, you might as well have vanished altogether.
I make myself look so I remember the pieces that were there before the vampire parts showed up.
It hasn’t been without its challenges.
Even though it’s taken a while, I think I’m finally getting used to the New Look and all its freaky tweaks. I’ve been forced to figure out how to work with the materials I’ve got, if only to cover up what I didn’t have before. And what I’d rather not have now. But if all of those Nightfallers creaming over the cheesy movie versions of the novels are any indication, people still take to vampire chic in a pretty big way these days. Of course, they also believe in talking werewolves, so their judgment is sort of hard to trust overall.
That may sound funny coming from a vampire, but I can only swallow so much of this wacky shit at one time.
So as much as I trashed it all in the beginning, I’ve probably come to resemble Fredward Mullins a little more than I’m comfortable admitting. The Hollister clothes are still a no-go, however.
It’s a sacrifice I’m just not willing to make.
The hair is much shaggier by now, moppish and unkempt for the most part. It’s long enough to curl up right at the lobe of my ears, which hides the points at the top pretty completely while imparting the impression that I’m more in touch with current styles than I actually am. After keeping up with the carrot juice like Louise suggested, my skin tone is finally starting to mellow out, though it’s not close enough to a natural flesh color for my liking yet. It is much better than my alternative shade of Near Death, though, so I’ll take it. Still can’t make the contact lens thing happen, so the eyes remain black in the center and somewhat lacking in their former shine. I don’t quite know what to do about it, other than allow the Ray Bans permanent residence on my face and hope that no one asks to have a look. And the teeth? Judging by how quickly they grow in, I think those little savages want to be left alone to do their own thing. So now I just knock the points off and leave the rest whatever length they choose to be. I think eventually they’ll blend in… as much as protruding incisors can blend into an otherwise geometrically-pleasing mouthful of Chiclets.
It is, no doubt, quite a look.
In order to not seem like a total douche, I should explain that all this mirror gazing isn’t as shallow as I’ve probably just made it sound. Because more than any of the physical rearrangements, what I see every time I look at myself is not the Dude Who Turned into a Vampire; it’s the Guy Who Turned into an Asshole, the one who blasted his best friend for nothing more than making a stupid mistake in an attempt to save him from further misery. You can’t cover guilt with extra hair or a sweet pair of shades; that shit shows through no matter what. Which is fine, because I really don’t want to forget it.
It reminds me that no matter how the mug shot might change, there’s still some Joe left in there. Even if he is a jerk overall.
But I’m going to have to do something to fix it soon.
Louise agrees. She’s sort of become a Jiminy Cricket of the undead, a moral compass for when my Vampire Conscience Map gets all creased and wrinkled in the wrong places. When I told her about Megan and the quick, ugly dissolution of our first – and last – pairing, she nearly had a coronary. She kept apologizing for the mix-up with Freaky McBiteMyNeck, even though she was in no way responsible for what happened. “Oh, Joe! If I had known she was like that, I never would have suggested that you see her.”
“I know. She hid it well. And we did have a really nice time, too… right up until the part where she swept her hair back and asked me to dig my fangs into her jugular. Things took a definite nosedive after that.”
“Such a disappointment. Well, I’ll be speaking to her about this, believe me.” Not necessary at all, but I appreciated the sentiment. Then I told her about Hube and the verbal throw-down at Sal’s that may have trashed everything… which meant I had to tell her about all the other Hube stuff leading up to that point. It wasn’t easy to do without getting all lumpy throated and watery-eyed. “You can’t leave things like that, Joe. He’s your friend; he was trying to help you. You have to make it right.”
“I know, I know. I will.” Thanks for confirming, Jiminy.
And since it was such a blast to discuss Who Knows What About Joe, she just kept rolling with it. “Have you talked to your family about it yet? Your sister, at least?”
I had only mentioned Amanda a few times, but it must have been enough to clue Louise in to how things were with us. “Nope,” I answered, to her resounding lack of approval. “Still working up the nerve for that, too.” I’m also working up the nerve for something else, something slightly more old school
that might restore my sense of okay-ness in the upside-down world I’ve come to occupy. Something I knew I would find my way back to eventually.
But as hopeful as it is, it all came about in a much darker, much more disheartening manner than I would have expected.
While I was catching up on e-mails the other day, among the expected ads for Viagra and cheap watches and an influx of taunting, faux-nonymous shit-mail from Lazer, I found a note from Michelle. She didn’t send me e-mails out of habit, and this wasn’t a forward and had no LOLs or OMGs or BTWs. It was a brief note with an attached link in the body, and a somber semi-spamish subject line:
I thought you’d want to know about this…
Something about the starkness of it set my teeth on edge. And that is not a euphemism.
I wish it were.
The last time I spoke to her, she had told me where I could find Don; this time, she was telling me where someone else had found him – or most of him, at least. The link led to a news story telling about a man’s body having been discovered near an industrial area about twenty miles outside of town. He had been killed in a style similar to the way foreign drug cartels execute dealers who can’t hold up their end of the bargain. It was the stuff you hear about all the time on CNN, and I wouldn’t have thought much more of it than that, except for Michelle’s note about she and her Pomme friends from our group date having to be the ones to identify the body as Don’s. By his tattoos.
Because his head was missing.
Apparently you can kill a vampire in ways beyond the traditional heart staking.
I know we weren’t friends, and I know he was the one who turned my life on its now-pointed ear and set me on this downhill course that I still don’t know will end up okay. Still, Don’s death spun me out a little. If he could be killed, even in what amounts to an occupational hazard, then there’s no such thing as vampire immortality, no matter how undead I might be. It may take some violent circumstances to get the job done, but vampires can die.
That realization really kicked me in the fangs.
Not that I ever thought I’d really live forever. But finding out that I can’t is something of a shock.
And finding out the details of Don’s gory death was tragic, for lack of a more appropriate term.
Knowing nothing more of him than the little I had seen, I’ve been imagining what his back story might have been, a tale about how his life was pre-This. In my version, he had been a successful day trader, and something of a playboy, with women who had a thing for hair band-looking dudes. He rolled some mad bank running stocks online, and while making his way through a parking lot after a hot night out on the town he was attacked and bitten by his Maker – someone he never even got a decent look at, let alone met up with again. In his own words, he was taken. Three weeks later he was a vampire, and two years after that he was a drug-dealing vampire making his rounds in the warehouse district. Everything just slides into the mud from there, and instead of trading stocks for cash he ends up trading cocaine for blood feeds, biting total strangers in nightclubs to test his Power to Change Others and living off of the life force of the indigent. Until his run of bad luck reaches a grisly finish in an empty field twenty miles from home.
Game over.
I may not have liked the guy, but the conclusion his life came to is not sitting well with me. It seems so hopeless, and probably was all along, but definitely in the final act. One thing I’ve resisted losing through all the ups and downs of vampiracy is hope that I’ll find a way through, a work-around to a livable life. This development threw a definite hitch in that prospect; it also spurred me into some serious action toward that end, regardless of how short-lived it might be. Living or undead, hope is really a now-or-never kind of thing; you can’t put it off for very long without diminishing your potential return. So I’ve decided there’s no better time than now to jump into the most hopeful thing I have left.
I want my music back.
I called that guy Lucas and set up an audition for Forever 81. He’d actually left me a few voicemails, among the ones from Hube that I deleted without listening to. He didn’t sweat it though, when I finally got ahold of him. The band’s gimmick may not be exactly me, and their look is so definitely not me. But they’re a tight unit, and pretty well-established. And while the eighties aren’t my favorite decade ever, I don’t entirely hate the music. Not that it matters; at this point, I’d settle for a place in a jug band if it means I can play. So I’m taking a chance on it. Maybe it’ll be a decent new start for my tune-smithing. And maybe it’ll help my story have a sweeter conclusion than Don’s did.
I’m not a drug dealer, so I know: we’re apples and oranges. But still.
Rest in peace, dude. Truly sorry that you couldn’t have had an easier life. Hopefully you’ve found some semblance of closure wherever you’ve gone.
Wish me luck with the audition, folks.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
POST 32
Plays Well With Others
When my ex-band Vomiting Nonsense came together, there was no formality to the process. It just happened, like a horrible, mangling accident involving three dudes, a few electronic musical instruments, and a whole lot of unpleasant noise.
That’s kind of how it ended, too.
Much like an accident, it was also filled with carnage and mayhem and a nagging feeling that things hadn’t happened the way they were supposed to. Hube and I were already playing together, and had been for years. Lazer was a friend of a friend of Hube’s who at that point had run off six other sets of players with his shitty attitude and unrealistic demands. I think because Hube and I had each other for support, we were able to tough it out better than some of the others. But looking back, it was never a real partnership among the three of us. There were really only two members overall: Me-and-Hube, and Lazer. I was hoping for a lot more when I met up with the guys from Forever 81.
I wasn’t sure they’d be what I was looking for, but they had to be more than what I was used to.
The audition was a rare daytime outing for me, but it worked for them so I went along with it. Wise not to make waves before you’ve even boarded the ship, I thought. I just made sure to keep everything well-covered so I didn’t hit the tryout with my skin all a-bubble. When I showed up at Damage, where the magic was to happen, Lucas met me at the door, thankfully dressed in street clothes instead of his Duran costume. He was much more approachable that way, and friendlier than I had expected. “Thanks for coming out, Joe. Really appreciate it.” He reached to shake my hand, and I completely spaced off that my skin would be less than room temperature even during the day. “You seem kind of chilly… do you need something from the bar to warm up? They pour Grey Goose, and Patron… the bartender makes great margaritas. Or there’s microbrew on tap. Whatever you want, my treat.”
Classy guy, despite the mullet. “I’m good, thanks.” The bar was by no means full for a weekday afternoon, and I didn’t see the other players milling about. “Is the rest of the band in the back somewhere?”
“They’ll be coming along in a little while. I wanted a chance to chat you up before they came, kind of give you an idea of what F81 is all about and where we’re headed.” I sort of felt like I was about to be asked to buy a vacation property, or a magical blender that turns ordinary cheese into nacho sauce in three seconds or less. He told me all about their individual musical backgrounds, and how they had met up while playing college bars. He explained that they had recently been drawing up plans to expand beyond playing covers, and were putting together some tunes of their own. There was a producer lined up, and studios were being researched, as well as venues for touring and merchandise production. “We’re really working toward taking things a step beyond. I know we’ve built our following playing the Duran Duran catalog, and that’s probably what hooked you into auditioning.” Not really, but okay. “We’ll still do the covers, but would you be interested in joining up if we were to start working on original s
ongs and record those also?”
“You’re not planning on adding any part-time geriatric hooker-rappers, are you?” Not likely, but worth asking before I climbed aboard.
I didn’t think he got it at first. But he pretty quickly remembered the Hell Gig that took place scant yards from where we sat, and he laughed. “Um, no. Definitely not.”
“Then I’m good.”
I had spent a week or so limbering up on Hungry like the Wolf and Rio, and the truth is there’s not much keyboard magic on those songs; one or two notes with sustain and effects, and a few chords changes at most. That wasn’t going to make me happy for very long. “I would love to get in on something original,” I told him. “Vomiting Nonsense was all originals – not well-done originals, but all our own stuff. And I’ve been writing stuff since seventh grade, up until… yesterday, actually.”
We discussed my influences a little, and my training – or lack thereof. He didn’t seem concerned at all. “That’s kind of why I targeted you. You have something more than what we’ve seen in the others we’ve spoken to.” Whoa.
He targeted me?
While I was in a techno-sleaze band?
Because he and his band saw something more in me than just my synth bass gurgling beneath Lazer’s mess?
I think this may have been exactly what I was looking for.
So I hooked up and played him a few of my melodic sketches. He seemed to watch me as much as he listened, as if he were sizing up the whole image and not just the music. “I really think you could be what we’ve been after, Joe. I hope the other guys agree.”
Finally, a break; people to make real music with, not the silly clicks and pops that my work with VN amounted to after Lazer breathed his poison all over them. Now I just had to impress the other guys as much as I had Lucas… and that’s when the nerves started kicking in at full tilt. “I think I’ll have a shot of something now, if the offer still stands.”
The other two showed up minutes later, both without their costumes as well, and I hoped that this was a sign that maybe I could avoid having to buy a puffy shirt and jazz boots. “Kyle, Jeremy – this is Joe.” I wasn’t clear on which of the two was Kyle and which was Jeremy, but they looked like they were brothers anyway so it probably didn’t matter who was who. Unlike Lucas, there were no handshakes from them, and no discernible warmth or interest in me as a person. They were a little intimidating, to be honest, each a head taller than me and way broader across, sort of built more like athletes than musicians. I suddenly had the impression that, without boots with substantial heels as a New Romantic dress code requirement, there would be no way for me to fit in physically with the rest of the band. I hoped my height wouldn’t be too much of a liability. “Let’s go in the back so we can have some privacy,” Lucas decided. So we headed for the office, and I sat on one side of the table while Kyle and Jeremy sat across from me. Lucas stood in the corner, arms folded, letting the other two run the show for a while. Suddenly the audition felt more like an interrogation, or a job interview. With the mob. I knew after talking with Lucas that there was a lot riding on me, so I didn’t blame them for taking it as seriously as they did. I tried my best to keep my smart mouth in check and not let it blow this for me, as it had done on so many occasions in the past. Where Lucas had been the perfect soft sell, these guys were all business, hard-edged and blunt-nosed, asking pointed questions that seemed designed to confirm my ability to commit to the band. I wanted this to be honest, so as much as I would’ve liked to look into their minds and read what they were thinking, I made myself resist. I just answered their questions as they came:
