The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 6 - I Am Begging You

I won't bore you with the details of my school life except to say that I attended a different private school than when I was younger, and that it was in upstate New York and secular. To my surprise, once I adjusted I found myself happy there, and of great interest to some of the other boys, who found me strange, tall, and cagey. At fifteen, I was ready to rebel and found other boys a great and divine distraction, and I am not embarrassed to tell you that at school I worshiped my body for two years in New York more than any book, and that it amused Laurent greatly, who visited me most weekends to take me out for tea in New York City.

He took me to a fine tailor and kitted me out for school and for our excursions, spending money as if it were just paper. I spent time in what he called his "New York garret" with much scorn, which was actually a brilliant suite of rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria overlooking Central Park. He loved to shit on America, and make Europe look glamorous by comparison. If I admired his fine things in New York, he would make little spitting sounds and laugh as if I were simple-minded. He would kiss me behind the ear and say, "After school, we will go to Paris." He would take me to bed fully clothed in black tie and kiss my neck, and mutter things at me, and play with my buttons until it made me angry and want to push him away so that I could shower. Between us, things never went beyond flirtation and petting. It would have been too strange.

As often I would find him sitting by the window dressed in white, looking out, and he seemed much older to me then, and I would remember what it had been like to seem him as a child, and know that he was not of this world. More than once I came upon him and seeing me he welled with tears and covered his face, and couldn't speak to me, and only once he told me that it was because when he looked at me he thought of himself at my age and living, and that he felt both sorry for that boy and envied him. "I want you to understand that if I abuse you I don't mean it. I am only thinking of myself," he told me, and covered his ears and screamed when I tried to protest until I promised him I wouldn't say another word. Sometimes he would let me hold him while he wept, and stroke his hair, and as often he would want me to go out and leave him alone. He wrote me blank checks. I still have many of them. 

Compared with Laurent, lovers at school were very simple to deal with, and often a relief. One weekend, in the spring of my junior year, Laurent picked me up and said, "Drive. You can drive, can't you?" I said, "Yes," and he never drove again. So I got to drive a white Jaguar sk120 all over, and I have never felt cooler than I did pulling off school grounds every Friday afternoon with the top down and sunglasses on. I believe that our family is still very rich but never as much as we were in those years directly after the war.

So I was in the Waldorf in the spring of 1959 waiting for Laurent to finish cutting his hair when the phone rang. It was an old crank phone, with the receiver in its perch, white and gold filigree. I said, "Laurent should I pick it up or do you want it?"

He made a sound in reply that can only be described as a yowl of annoyance, and so I picked up the receiver and said, "Hallo?"

"Oh dear, oh who is this?"

"Jackie. Who is this?"

A shuffling commenced which sounded like the renegotiation of clothing, and there came on the line another voice, smooth and velvety and British, that said, "What is the meaning of this? Where is our Laurent?"

"He's in the other room styling his hair. Who is this?"

"My name is Porter. We've come for the weekend and it's a long way, and will you not go and tell the little prick to come and pick up the phone? He is awfully rude in letting a boy pick up the phone. What are you, one of his prostitutes?"

I hung it up very rapidly, and said, "Laurent?" 

"What?"

I went into the washroom and he was powdering his nose with a puff. He had cut his hair to just below his ears, and it looked an organized mess of platinum curls. He had tied a black silk ribbon around his throat to hide his Adam's apple, and wore only a white slip. There was a large sable fur by his arm, and I petted it. He clearly intended to take me for cocktails, and had dressed the part of my lady.