So I Might Be a Vampire - Book 1 (Original Version)

59: After the Afterlife

It's funny: I really didn't want to get into the whole "how I became a vampire" thing since it's always the first thing everybody wants to know. Personally, I think the whole situation with the vampire support group is a hell of a lot more interesting. I mention the support group and about Stanley and Benjamin and Frankie, and people actually get interested, you know? It's me introducing an aspect of being a vampire that they'd never considered. It seems to make it more real... or maybe to them, more like a story they could sit down and listen to, so I guess it's not really real to them?

Argh, too many thoughts running through my brain to process here.

Look: my point is that I never wanted to tell the story of how I became a vampire and especially how I got kicked out of HTDK and became persona non-grata in vampire society. That shit is just plain embarrassing, and it's not a story that I can remain dispassionate about. That shit is my life. I made a lot of bad choices, many more bad than good and I can freely admit to it, you know? But it still hurts on a deep level to look at myself in the mirror like this and go into detail about exactly how I fucked up.

Besides, the whole addiction thing is seriously fucked up and not funny at all, so if it's all the same to you, I'm going to skip past some of the most embarrassing bits. You really don't want to hear about a sad, lonely vampire suddenly realizing how much he had fucked himself, do you?

Oh, you do?

Seriously?

Goddamit.

***

Sobriety!

Have I mentioned how much sobriety sucks? Well, it does! It was back in my life with the kind of vengeance usually reserved for laying waste to entire cities, and it wasn't taking any prisoners. It made me look at my reality in a completely different light and all of a sudden I had a lot of questions. I mean, like a shit ton of questions. The type of questions you don't ask when you're deep in the shit because you're just accepting your bliss and going with it, but for the marginally curious mind, these were questions that just had to be asked.

"How does the whole blood thing work anyway?" I asked.

Of course, there was no answer coming forth since I was on the toilet, and Claude definitely wasn't around to ask. If anyone had been around to talk to, they certainly wouldn't haven't been in the bathroom for me to ask since I definitely can't take a shit while someone is in the same room. When using public bathrooms, I usually have to close my eyes and pretend--

What? You were the one who wanted all of the dirty details here.

I actually do some of my best thinking while taking a nice leisurely shit, in private, with no one watching or judging me, so you know: deal with it. Taking a shit is the most vulnerable act that any of us can ever take. We have no defense against attack unless some of the more brazen have learned how to weaponize their shit, and that lack of defense tends to open up the mind in ways that it wouldn't usually be. Abstract thought is not just possible, but happening right there, exciting and alive. Taking a shower or a bath is similar, but taking a shit is where magical thinking occurs. It wouldn't surprise me if Archimedes hadn't been actually taking a bath before he ran out into the streets yelling "Eureka," but instead had been taking a shit. The bath story was just a cover, because last I checked, shit displaces water in the exact same way that dipping a toe into the bathwater does.

There was no Eureka moment for me, just the realization that I was asking a question out loud to an empty house and in effect talking to myself. A reminder that I had most definitely pissed off Claude to the point where he had no words to say to me. That was something I had never accomplished before, and it was a weird feeling.