Vampires

11/11/10

I read, love, and hate a blog called Jezebel. Recently they published this article on their site: Why Can’t We Get Enough of Sexy Vampires Having Sexy Sex?



The author, “Morning Gloria”, doesn’t get it, admittedly. She throws out a suggestion: “that the modern conception of the sexy vampire looks like a human but isn't constrained by human moral limitations. Their danger and disregard for social convention render them monstrous but sexually appealing- the ultimate rebel.”

Early in the summer, a friend who shall remain nameless and I laid plans to start a smutty book club. However, for reasons unbeknownst to either of us, it has evolved into a vampire book club. I didn’t think I was the vampire type, but I am. Also, being the overly-analytical type that I am, I have arm-chair psychoanalyzed this unforeseen aspect of my personality.

Stephanie Meyers has a literary gift for conveying the adolescent mind. I felt like I was 15 again. I experienced emotions I forgot I had. I remembered what it was like to want to love someone like that – where you create a world together, become lost in it, and don’t give a fuck about what anyone thinks.

For me, the vampire aspect wasn’t really about the sexual appeal of the “dangerous rebel” (although that’s perhaps a part of it). It had more to do with the fact that they were magic, something that, in my younger mind, love and romance where synonymous with. Love was the thing that would save the world. Even when confronted with divorce rate statistics and the relational difficulties evident even in my own family, I still believed love was this other-worldly gift. Somewhere along the way, I became a pragmatist and love was something 2, or more, people experienced when universes aligned and they shared a situational, emotional, or physical connection that was fulfilling and appealing in some way for the parties involved. Eventually, the connection would probably lessen or brake as lives changed, world-views shifted, or bodies morphed.

There is a kind of hopeless romance to this way of thinking, but basically, love is hormonally charged convenience.  I can’t pin-point the moment that love lost its magic and became a masochistic pursuit, but it did, and I didn’t really notice until the vampires. Rather than reading with the smug all-knowingness of someone who’s seen a thing or two about what love really is, the vampire aspect somehow enabled me to suspend my disbelief. I believed in their love because the factors were different enough to be unpredictable (although the story is incredibly predictable, but that didn’t seem to matter).  I wanted them to be together forever. I remembered what it was like to believe that love was magic and hope was a real belief of things to come, not a mollifying word you say to someone who’s going through a tough time. I can’t say that I have returned to my 15 year-old mind set, but something’s changed. I felt those beliefs again, for a moment.