[NEWSWEEK] DJ Williams says that for a while, he was only as interested in vampires as the next guy. I'm the next guy. I had no interest at all.
Then he met a woman who identified as a real-life vampire.
She identified as a black vampire, like Blackula.
“Up until that point I didn't know that there was such a community,” says Williams, director of the social work program at Idaho State University.
Actually she was white and ate mostly BLTs but being Blackula made her feel "special."
But then he discovered that vampires who feed on other people's blood exist, though they don't necessarily have fangs or capes.
I'm pretty sure some of them own capes. They hold them over their faces and peer over the top, like Bela Lugosi did in Plan 9 From Outer Space.
So he set out to learn everything he could.
Did that include reading the book? And watching all the movies?
“It took a few years.
Bram Stoker's prose wasn't all that thick, so I suppose the extended length of research time involved waiting for the movies to come up on Turner Movie Channel.
Real vampires are quite distrustful, for good reason.”
That stake through the heart thing is just so... permanent.
But once he published his early findings about what he called their “artistic, expressive and rather normal and healthy” practices, they opened up to him about what was really involved in being a bloodsucker.
Back in my day we had people whom we termed "delusional." Sometimes they thought they were Napoleon Bonaparte, or Emperor of San Francisco and its environs. Some thought they were black. It used to be funny to see a 60-ish white guy dancing like Cab Calloway until his back went out. That's not funny anymore, by decree of some liberal Keeper of the Public Thought Processes.
His latest research on the subject, published in the journal Critical Social Work, explores the unique issues those people who identify as vampires face when seeking counseling.
"Doc! Doc! It hurts when I do dis!"
"Don't do dat. Next patient!"
As Williams and his co-author Emily Prior explain in the paper, there are “real” vampires, who consume energy (as blood or otherwise), and “lifestyle” vampires, who emulate other aspects of vampire mythology, such as wearing certain clothes or sleeping in coffins. The researchers focused on the “real” ones.
Anybody can wear a cape or sleep in a coffin. It takes a "real" vampire to rip somebody's throat out and drink his blood.
Fear not—“real” vampires don't prey on the necks of damsels in distress.
Now, dammit, if I was a real vampire I'd be hunting up all the damsels in distress I could find. It's not like anybody'd do anything to me. All I'd have to do would be to sniff like Bela Lugosi used to do (how do you sniff if you're dead and therefore don't breathe?) and tell 'em it was my alternative lifestyle and they were oppressing me. "Be off witcher microaggressions!" I'd cry, waving my cape for emphasis and they'd disappear, gone back to their safe rooms.
Rather, they seek consenting individuals and use razors or scalpels to make small incisions in their chests and lick or suck out the blood.
Ewwww. I'd stick with leaving hickeys on the necks of damsels in distress.
The vampires claim they need to feed on “a willing 'donor' in order to maintain physical, psychological and spiritual health,” according to the paper.
I mean, I don't even like blood sausage. Head cheese makes me queasy. I've no idea whether I like beef tongue or not. I've never had the nerve to try it.
Without the feedings, the vampires believe “their overall health and well-being suffer.”
Poor things. They just sit in the corner and mope.
Often the donors are in committed romantic relationships with the vampires, Williams says.
"I vant to zuck yore blooood!"
"Dat ain't what I had in mind, but I guess it's okay. But only as foreplay!"
The Atlanta Vampire Alliance, a “real” vampire membership group, connected the researchers with 11 adult vampires.
"So! How long have you been a vampire?"
"1,232 years, come September."
The research doesn't dwell on the bloody aspects.
A paper on vampires that doesn't dwell on the bloody aspects? So it's really all about the cape, the accent, and the stake through the heart. I'll stick with putting hickeys on Mina Harker, thanks.
Instead, it explains how vampires feel that they cannot open up—or as the researchers write, come “out of the coffin”—to social workers.
I double-checked the date on this article. It's not April Fool's as far as I can tell.
The participants reported feeling that if they disclosed their vampire identities, clinicians would view them as delusional
"Quick, nurse! He's doing it again!"
"Stand aside, Dr. van Helsing! I'll get him!"
"I vant to zuck yore... Boobies!"
"[CLANG!] [Stuff!] [Stuff!] Gets 'em every time!"
or as a “threat to public safety.”
"You, there! Unhand that feral street child!"
"[CLICK!] [Slice!] Aaaiiieee! I am undone!"
"Don't forget the stake, Tyrone!"
They feared losing their jobs.
"I got a complaint to make!"
"What's that, sir or madam?"
"The teller in Window Three has blood all over his chin!"
One person worried that “the state would take my children away.”
...and with good reason.
The subject is prescient in a time when how one self-identifies is a topic of national conversation—from the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage to Caitlyn Jenner's coming out as a woman and appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair.
Yeah, yeah. And don't forget Rachel Whatsername, who thinks she's black. Fact is, my delusion that I'm a cowboy doesn't buy me a horse.
Williams says his research can apply to others who feel they too must hide how they self-identify. “Any little-understood minority group can be at risk for not being understood [by social workers]. So the same fears that these vampires reported would apply to other minorities.”
So if someone is convinced that faeries dance on their lawn in the moonlight a social worker will stop by to play the fiddle?
Other so-called vampires have emerged from out the shadows in recent years. A contestant on the Syfy reality show Mad Mad House named Don Henrie claimed to sleep in a coffin in order to deal with his fibromyalgia. Last year the Daily Mail profiled a married couple that drank each others' blood.
Ours is the Age of Understanding. The previous Age was the Age of Bluntness. I'm afraid I'm a holdover from that age. I'm calling the lot of them--vampires, social workers, and Rachel Whatsername--nuttier than fruitcakes. They should all be committed, preferably in the same crazy house, where they could give each other hickies, pretend to faint at the sight of a noose, a cross, or garlic, and otherwise "understand" morons who don't deserve a second thought.
One website lists 38 ways “to help you figure out if you are a real vampire or not.”
Item One: Are you dead most of the time.
Item Two: Do you turn to dust and blow away in sunlight?
Item Three: Can you turn yourself into a bat?
Item Four: Do you own a cape?
Item Five: Do you lack a body temperature?
The list includes having unusually pale skin, surviving an accident with only minor scrapes, rarely getting sick and having night vision.
Whaddya mean "do you have unusually pale skin"? What about black people? They can't be vampires? What about Blackula? You think he's just a blaxploitation movie character?
To identify other vampires, the website suggests keeping an eye out for people with shallow breathing,
They're just pretending to breathe because they're actually dead.
mood changes
"I vant to zuck yore... SQUIRREL!"
I'd call that short attention... whatever.
and fingernails that are as clear as glass.
What happens when vampires zuck the blood of people with AIDS? I guess it wouldn't be fatal if you were already dead.
The stigma against people believed to be vampires goes back at least as far as medieval times. In 2009, researchers at the University of Florence published a photograph of a 16th century woman, who they said was likely thought to be a vampire, buried with a brick in her mouth to prevent her from eating victims of the plague.
A photograph of a 16th century woman? Isn't that one of the tipoffs, not decomposing like the rest of us eventually do?
More recently, people in the 18th and 19th centuries exhumed bodies of people who they suspected were vampires because they had died mysteriously, according to Smithsonian magazine.
"Where's Grampaw?"
"He died."
"Well, that's certainly mysterious."
"Y'think we oughta dig him up?"
"I'll get the shovel."
The lives of Williams's vampires weren't as extraordinary. “Real vampires seem to be ordinary human beings with common, everyday human issues, such as trying to be successful in relationships and careers, managing stress, coping with daily living tasks, and adjustments to transitions,” the paper says.
"They're just normal folks who sleep in coffins and suck blood."
| Kind of like cutting then, only shared? Or taking up skiing? |
No,it's not. It's a clear-eyed perception. Our world has reached the point where a character designed specifically to embody evil, or perhaps capital Evil, is "understood." I have just one word: Ptui!