Joe Vampire

POST 2

The Personals

Here’s a little more about me, in case you’re interested in the man – or whatever I am now – behind the blog:

• I’m thirty-two years old, but on a good day I could pass for a twenty-nine year-old with a receding hair line.

• I’ve been told that my prominent chin, perpetual smirk and kind eyes make me look like the love child of Dustin Hoffman and Flo from the Progressive Insurance commercials. Since this description is often followed by the adjective cute, I generally take it as a compliment. Really, though, it could go either way.

• I’m a data analyst for a financial service company. It’s slightly less sexy than it sounds.

• I play synth bass in a techno-sleaze band called Vomiting Nonsense… also not so sexy, as the name will attest.

• I’ve had exactly two full-fledged relationships in my life – both with real, live women and both of which ended painfully in scorching adultery (them, not me), several weeks spent under a coffee table eating spray cheese and Nutella (me only) and a greatly increased chance of developing a chronic STD (them and me). The first one started in high school and lasted six years; the last one started shortly thereafter and ended earlier this year. Genital warts have yet to mound.

• My family – mother, father, sister and brother – is terribly Jewish… and by “terribly”, I mean “not good at it”. They’re at their most Jew-esque during Hanukkah, Passover, and on occasions that call for gross displays of guilt and unqualified suffering. Funerals and family reunions are always a treat. The rest of the time they’re vaguely principled people descended from actual Jews, but with no inclination toward any real spirituality at all. I’m closest to my sister; my brother is something of a douchebag.

• I'm more of a homebody than an out-and-about body… less and less by my own choosing.

• I’ve been a vampire for a little less than three months. The training wheels are still firmly in place.

I wouldn’t say everything in my life up to the vampire part was spectacular, especially after the second break-up, so it’s not like there was much to be ruined. The two relationships were nice, but obviously for me only. My career doesn’t make any dreams come true, though I get by pretty comfortably on what I make and I like most of the people I work with. My band is mediocre, by no fault of my stellar bass playing or the rhythmic finessing of my best bud Hube; it’s our self-appointed leader Dwayne – or Lazer, as he christened himself using his Rock Star Name decoder ring – who tends to shit everything up during our creative process. I try to tip the scales in mine and Hube’s favor by designating my basement as our rehearsal space, and by having a van big enough to haul our set-up to gigs. I also print all our flyers, make our snacks and keep track of everyone’s leather pants because I live closest to the dry cleaners. I also set up our rigs before and clean everything up after our shows, so either I really love the idea of being part of a middling music group, or I’ve let myself become the band bitch…

Where was I going with this?

Anyway, it was my version of a decent life, if uneventful and not particularly noteworthy. I was happy with it, at least. Maybe a little less so since the current womanless phase began, but you can’t be into someone else all the time, right?

Sometimes, it's enough just to be into porn.

I'll admit that from the outside I might've looked a little like a shut-in. I might've looked like that from the inside, too, come to think of it. But what is a shut-in if not a person who truly appreciates the comforts of home in a way that eludes the general populace? I appreciated the shit out of those comforts, things like twenty-four hour sweatpants, spontaneous napping and the narcotic effects of cream-filled snack foods and soft drinks. Just because my style of interaction with others has become slightly more removed than most would think is healthy, does that diminish my ability to interact face-to-face without making a total ass of myself? No.

Not mostly, anyway.

I’d probably know better if I actually interacted with people face-to-face on a more regular basis.

At this point, with my romantic history I’m way more comfortable getting to know people from a distance. I don’t think that necessarily makes me antisocial. And who really cares if I let my gym membership lapse because it was easier to sit on the couch streaming all eight seasons of Full House than it was to schlep three blocks just so I could walk to nowhere on a freaking treadmill? Without a sense of history for where the Olsen twins began, one can never truly appreciate how far those brilliant little style moguls have come. And what difference does it make that I’ve turned down every happy hour invitation, every guys night opportunity, every blind date set-up arranged by my many well-meaning co-workers to stay home by myself instead?

I’m not really making a strong case here, am I?

That’s fine. I’m not an idiot; I’ve watched Dr. Phil. I know it’s completely possible to be alone without being lonely… though judging by what I’ve just written it seems far less possible to be alone without seeming like a borderline sociopath. But you can definitely give lonely a solid kick in the balls. Having the Tanner family in your TV for moral support doesn’t hurt. And, as I have discovered over these past few months, there can be more than one definition of alone. It all depends on how willing you are to delude yourself about the level of loserhood you don’t believe you’ve descended to. For instance, it’s much different to be alone because you’ve had a bad run of luck with women who’ve turned out to be lying, psychotic whores than it is to be alone because you’ve been turned into a bloodsucking freak.

It’s all a matter of self-delusion.

To illustrate further: one kind of alone is self-imposed, a sort of refuge you create out of fear that your presence among others will only cause repulsion and heartache. Even in the most casual of social situations, people can sense the changes you’ve gone through no matter how much you work to cover them up. Some will be kind enough to put up a brave front for you, going out of their way in an attempt to sympathize with your condition. But you know they’re just pretending they aren’t thoroughly terrified of you. You know it isn’t how you chose to be; it’s just something that happened, something beyond your control and now you’re stuck with it, unsettling though it is for you or anyone in your vicinity. But it doesn’t matter how you rationalize it – you’re not who you used to be; they know it, and you know it. And so, you keep your distance to spare everyone the horror of interacting with the sub-human ghoul you’ve turned into.

The other kind of alone happens when you become a vampire.

See how that is? Two entirely different alones.

Actually, that’s just lame. There's only one definition: alone means alone. It doesn’t matter what kind of disconnected loser you become. And though it may not be much fun staying at arm's length from practically everyone, it hurts a hell of a lot less than the alternative. If you’ve been through some rough shit, there shouldn’t be any shame in being a little gun shy afterward. And who knows? Maybe you’d be open to being a little more social eventually, if all the right elements were to fall into place. But it might take something really special to make that happen. Meanwhile you have your laptop to keep your crotch warm and a box of Star Crunches that isn’t going to eat itself. And that’s fine, too.

I’m determined to not have it be this way forever, though. For now, it is what it is.

It's sort of difficult to explain in writing, but I can’t help feeling that the Olsen twins would understand.

Mary Kate? Ashley? If you happen to be reading this, hit me back.