Joe Vampire

by Steven Luna

  I’ll even stick with her No Cocks in Mouth rule.

  Seems reasonable to me.

  Amanda looked at me for a long time, like she was getting a complete visual on Joe 2.0 and fitting it all into her head. There was a little pity creeping into her gaze, too, and I felt like I need to put the kibosh on it before it spread to the rest of her. “I’m still the same guy, Manda. I’ve busted my ass to make sure this didn’t get the better of me. And it hadn’t, until those fuckwads rang my bell. But it’ll be okay again… it’s like any other disease; I’ll treat it with respect, and it will show me the same consideration in return.”

  She kissed my forehead. “It’s so unreal.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, sister. But lucky you – you get to help me figure out how to tell mom and dad. And David. I think I’ve finally accomplished something he can’t beat me at.” Too bad it’s This.

  But a win is a win.

  Hube came in close on my other side, like he didn’t want anyone to hear what he was going to say. “Um, I kind of maybe told someone else, too… someone besides Lazer. You can hate me again if you want.”

  I had treated him like absolute garbage and he was giving me the latitude to hate him even more? The guy is a total mensch. I was suddenly totally serious, and my missing apology words appeared. “Hubert, the biggest mistake I’ve ever made – aside from, you know, that group date fiasco – was shitting all over you after you had my back again and again through the nasty, fucked-up weirdness of this whole thing. You’ll never know how sorry I am for that. And there’s not a chance in the world I’ll ever do it again, no matter who you tell.”

  “See who it is first… then decide.”

  I smelled her honeyed sweetness before I saw her, and he didn’t have to say anything else. “Good call, buddy,” I told him as he left the room. She came to the bed, and I fully expected her to turn her head to avoid staring at me when she saw the fangs and the eyes, and got a good whiff. It would have been completely understandable if she had. But she didn’t turn away for a second. “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” Chloe said back.

  “So, that chronic thing I’ve been trying to keep under control…?” I wanted to say the words, to admit the ultimate truth about myself that I just couldn’t seem to allow no matter how much I raved about it in my head or ranted about it on this blog. I wanted to tell her, I am a vampire.

  I just wasn’t bold enough to say it out loud to her yet.

  “Hube told me everything.” She took my hand. I almost pulled it away, to spare her having to feel the unsettling chill of my flesh. She kept it anyway, and laced her fingers into mine. I know it was freezing; I could easily find a contrast against the incredible warmth of her skin, so she must have, too. But she didn’t let go. She squeezed harder instead. “You could have let me in on this, you know.”

  I made myself sit up again, to face her and not let my fear minimize what I wanted to say. “Really? You almost didn’t want to hear how close I am to falling in love with you. Would you seriously have wanted to know about This?”

  “You being a vampire, I can deal with… as impossible and surreal as that sounds. What I can’t deal with is you wanting something from me that you knew I wasn’t able to give you.” That was unexpected. “I would have been completely into it from the beginning if things had gone a little differently between Micah and me. Maybe if I had been braver earlier on and told you how things were right up front, I could have saved us both a whole lot of heartache.”

  “Yeah… me, too.” Now this was the conversation we should have had from the start.

  She had more. “But I didn’t, and you didn’t. And here we are.” Okay.

  That part was a whole lot of nothing.

  My recently-returning bravery suddenly showed up again, with a scrap of selflessness stuck to its shoe. “And here’s where I wander past my limits for self-preservation and risk one last misguided broken heart… I know I screwed up, and I know I waited too long to tell you how things were with me. I’m sure I’ll regret that forever. But I hope you guys can have the rest of your fairy tale – really, nothing but the best for you from here forward, no matter how challenging it might be for you. You deserve a happily ever after, in whatever form you can find it.” That came out more jackass-y than I thought it would.

  At least I kept myself from calling him the Tool.

  “I don’t think there’s a happily ever after for me with him… and there definitely isn’t a happily right now.” She had my full attention at that point. Not that she hadn’t had it from the start. But I had the impression that she was leading somewhere significant now, and I didn’t want to miss a word. “I thought a lot about what you said the other day, about not getting a million second chances to have what’s best for me.”

  “That’s not exactly how I said it.” But at least I knew she’d heard me.

  “Let’s not split hairs here. The point is that I think you might be right. I’m not sure I’m ready to settle for less than exactly what I want.”

  My eyes were drawn to the notably empty ring finger on her left hand, the one that rested on the back of my own hand, all naked and diamond-free. “And what exactly is it that you want?”

  “I really have no idea.” Well. That sucks. “But I’m pretty sure it has something to do with us… you and me.”

  Better.

  I motioned to my face. “Even with all this being the way it is? ‘Cause it’s not going away any time soon. It’s part of the deal now.”

  That made her pause a beat or two. I had a feeling it might. “Does adding vampire to your resume make you any less Joe than you were before?” It had taken me a bit longer than it should have to finally understand that becoming vampiristic made me something other – maybe something more – than just the Joe I used to be. But I’m convinced that all of me is still in there along with the new stuff, and they’re just now learning to live together in harmony, like my own personal Ebony and Ivory. Except we both tend toward an orangish-gray.

  “Are you sure that’s what you want, Chloe? Even vampire-free, this much Joe might not be the carnival ride you think it is.” I wanted to give her every opportunity to back out. I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to run away this time.

  She stayed where she was. “I’m willing to give it a whirl and find out.”

  Okay, then. At square one.

  With Girl No. 3.

  I looked around the room. Everyone else was gone. It was just me and Chloe, and the best and worst of the Joe Vampire Affair suddenly mashed together into the same moment. It seemed that all of my alternate universes – even the ones I hadn’t thought to consider – had finally caught up with one another.

  And not a moment too soon, either.

  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 Fuck 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.