from October 16th, 2002:
washing blood from my hands
There are days when I reflect on this little online experiment and I think, honestly, I wish I did have readers. It's the small bit of ego I have, fostered by a group of devoted admirers of my fiction. It makes me want an audience.
But for some things...for some things, I'm very glad I'm alone in this dark space.
This is one of those things.
This is one of those blood things.
I've talked with a lot of people, some who identify themselves as 'sanguinarians', some who identify themselves as 'vampyres', and some who identify, as I do, with the plain-old, plain-old, standard Hollywood term, 'vampire'. I don't think it matters, personally, what we call it. I think it matters tremendously whom we tell; and when that time came in my life to tell certain of my friends, I was in the lucky minority: for the most part, they handled it well, with a few questions, no fear, some unease, and then we went on with our lives.
My online friends have been a different story, and that's part of why this post makes me nervous. The worst case so far has been the girl that said she had some 'odd questions' after reading my page (in which I took courage in hand, and linked the page together as a unit: stupid, yes, unthinking, probably, but I'm a fairly unreasoning creature at times), and then a week later said she'd converted to Christianity and she wasn't reading a lot of things on the net anymore and she hoped I understood.
I don't say the two were connected. I just don't think it helped.
I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't crave blood. I've always been fascinated by vampires, but not necessarily to be a 'bloodsucking creature of the night'. It's always been more to understand parts of my own psyche, the same reasoning behind why I'm fascinated with multiple personality disorder and serial killers.
(Yes...)
Blood hunger. Blood. I used to come home from school as a child and routinely unwrap a pound of frozen hamburger, break off a section and eat it like a popsicle. I literally did this every single day, not even thinking about why.
I had plenty of time to think about why later, because unfortunately, I grew up in the 1970's, when this country wasn't as strict with meat processing guidelines. Sure, read "Fast Food Nation", it's still bad now. But back then, it was worse
California imported a lot of beef from Argentina, and--long after the Argentine Beef Scare, for which I was one of the cases responsible--everyone was later told to cook their meat completely, to render any harmful bacterium safe to consume. Kind of like the E coli thing now, and for all I know, it was one of the first strains of that deadly bug to hit the country's meat supply. To this day I don't know exactly what bacteria it was that brought me down; I only know it was from eating hamburger meat raw.
I got sick. I got very sick. I got so sick, I went into the hospital for 18 months. Thankfully, a) my mother was making fantastic money at that point, and b), I don't remember much of that period of my life. Between the ages of five and seven, the life gets kind of...blurry. I know I had my tonsils out, one of the brief periods I was at home when I got sick with tonsillitis on top of everything else. I know I celebrated my seventh birthday in the hospital, and there's at least one memory of losing a tooth and finding money under the hospital pillow for it. I remember getting chicken pox and having to go home again, because the kid who'd given it to me had just been checked out and they didn't want more cases in the childrens' ward.
I remember, when I was in the hospital, having blood drawn three times a day, and not being able to get up because I was so weak, and hearing my mother think over and over that her only daughter was going to die.
Blood. Blood that kills. It's not a new concept.
18 months of this, until by sheer accident, a fellow returning home to California from a trip through Argentina with the Peace Corps happened to visit a friend in the Auburn, CA hospital. And he was the doctor working on my case. And this guy talked about it with him, and then said, my God, that's all over Argentina right now, are the symptoms this?
He saved me. He saved me, and I slowly got better, and I only had lifelong fears of underdone hamburger and needles to contend with.
I was never as active after the illness as before it. I became very sedentary, because moving hurt for a long time. I put on a lot of weight. I never really lost it. Developing PCO didn't help.
I remember repressing a lot of the hunger after that, convincing myself that's how I had nearly died, and it was a bad thing, and...oh, a lot of complexes. Some of which I still have. So it wasn't until I was 22 that I actually had a strong enough attack of blood hunger to break through that wall of repression.
Blood hunger. Such simple words. Nothing like the reality of the situation. Nothing like suddenly realizing, I don't care if I go to jail, I don't care if I'm caught, I have to knock someone down right now and slit their throat if I have to and drink...and drink...and drink...
Gods. I still remember that feeling. It terrified me. I was sitting on a small, raised knoll under a pine tree in the center of the UC Sacramento campus, waiting for a friend to get back from the bookstore, and I...just...ran. I couldn't stay there, I had to leave, and halfway to safety (I thought) he intercepted me.
Big guy. Strong guy. Stronger than he ever knew, or used. Had his own set of problems and a god behind his eyes that would turn his black eyes silver on occasion. That's why I first slept with him, that, and loneliness, because the boy I thought I loved, the one I'd been raped by, had gone away and I was the stupid fool who thought I had to be faithful to him.
This boy. Pale skin. Dyed black hair with a streak of pure, bleached, platinum white dividing it down the center. He actually liked it when people called him "Skunk". He caught my arm and asked me where I was going and I stammered something about it not being safe, about him not being safe around me.
"I want--I need--" I remember stammering.
"What?" he asked. Standing there, sun beating down in the way only California sun does, people all around us and yet feeling completely isolated, just him and I, just him and I in a big world full of whispers and dust.
I pulled at my arm. He didn't let go. His throat--
"Blood," I said, my voice locking up after I said it, and I pulled away and ran, ran from what he represented, ran from everyone else who were, as far as I was concerned in that moment of need, were just walking bags of blood. How does Spike put it on the Buffy show? "Happy Meals on legs." Gods, he's not wrong.
I ran to my car, fumbled the keys out, sat down, breathing hard. I pushed the keys into the ignition and couldn't. Start. The car. Gods. Gods. I couldn't move. I felt punched, I felt bruised, but I couldn't fucking move.
He circled up on his bike. He looked angrier than I'd ever seen him.
"Let me in," he said.
"No."
He looked at me. I still remember that look.
"You're just going to sit there? Hunger for it? When I could be in there?"
Fuck, who was this idiot? How much of a consummate fool was he to even consider this? How much of a consummate fool was I to think it over?
More than I thought, apparently, because I let him in. And he tried to get me to explain. And I can't even remember the scrambled hash of words that poured out. I don't even think all of them were in English. I know most of them said Go away, stay away, don't come back. I'm dangerous. Don't be here.
He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and held out his bare arm.
"Go on, then."
Clarity: Sitting in a black 1978 Chevy Chevette, black interior, windows rolled up on a summer's day. Shadows scudding overhead from clouds crossing between the earth and the sun. And wanting, wanting like I've rarely felt before or since, wanting, and fearing the want, and hating myself for wanting and fearing.
Blood hunger. It's not a big enough phrase for it.
He had to knock me down mentally, several times. The controls were too strong, the walls were too high. I wanted but I feared and I didn't want to hurt him and there was no blade and I knew, I knew, if I gave in, I wouldn't care.
But he was a master at subtle direction, and when that couldn't get me far enough, he just pulled my head down.
My lips touched his skin, and I drew in a long, shuddering breath, and licked my lips. And that did me in, I think. Licking his skin in that little gesture, and suddenly, my hands rose to grab his arm, seizing him and leaving bruises (I discovered later). And I bit into his arm.
For the rest of his life, there's a man on the planet who will have a half-dollar-sized scar on the inside of his left arm, just where the elbow bends. For at least one person, I'm forever. He'll never lose that mark without surgery.
Because past that point, I did not care. I bit him, and I wounded, and I worried at the wound. I sucked blood from him, warm and iron-rich and coppery and thick. I bit the wound over and over, biting out small pieces of his arm and swallowing them, trying to get to more, trying to drink more, trying to feed the hunger.
He was saying something, over and over. I couldn't understand it at first. It took a while to sink in.
"Enough," I finally heard him say. "Enough."
I pulled back, and looked down for the first time, and if there had been a bridge in front of me, I would have pushed him out of the car and driven off. I loathed myself. I wanted myself down. How could I...how could anyone do such a thing? Be such a thing?
The scar on his arm was raw, and livid, and there were little chunks missing, and I'd done that. And while I had done that, I hadn't cared.
I thought that was the worst of it, and then I looked up, seeing his face. He was white. His lips--normally, they were an almost artificial red tone, and they were barely pink. He was pale, and panting, and staring at me with wide eyes.
I'd hurt him. I'd taken a lot of blood from him. I wanted to die.
He asked me to drive him back to his house, and I did, in a daze, on autopilot, and that was the first time the hunger got away from me. It wasn't the last.
from October 17th, 2002:
strange brew
So. More on the loss of control. And need. And the blood thing.
I think it's relevant currently that I'm losing a good half-pint or more of blood a day just now, and I'm obsessed with it, dreaming of it, hungering for it. Unfortunately, I'm much the same when I'm not hemorrhaging, so...
The second time I lost control. The second time I lost control, it was a week past the time I scarred the boy. I was trying to settle back into some illusion of normal life--which for me at that time was planning for the next SCA event, going to Rocky Horror Picture Show at Birdcage, and hanging out with friends. Only...something went wrong. Halfway through the movie--I believe Eddie had just emerged from the ice--I suddenly stood up and walked out, swallowing hard. It had hit again, whatever it was, and even after draining someone white, I was still thinking this was a phase or something. Some of my friends twigged, and followed me out, and...gods alone know what I looked like. It took me fifteen terribly painful minutes to convince them that I was fine, I just needed to suddenly leave for no reason, and oh, yes, when we started this conversation and I said it would be dangerous for me to stay, why, that was just me not thinking, and I meant nothing by it, now GO AWAY, please please please go away...
I did my best not to whimper. They seemed unconvinced. But they let me go and I drove very far from any sign of people and sat in my car, digging my nails into my palms so hard that the nails cut half-circles into my flesh. And when they bled, I sucked the blood from them. Shuddering.
Blood. Mine wasn't enough. No one else's was available. I thought I was seriously losing my mind.
The next time was about two weeks later, I think. There was another fellow I was interested in, I think mostly because he was afraid of me (he was a large and lovely boy, but he'd only dated stick insects, and I clocked in at that point around 250 pounds), but the codicil was that he was very attractive. In more than one way--he was smart, devastatingly funny, blond, rather angelic in appearance, and was perfectly fine partying with me in the SCA.
(Some months after this--miraculously, this event left us with the ability to still be friends--he walked up to me clad only in a pale mawashi and a nervous smile, and asked me to apply sunscreen to him for an upcoming sumo match. Ah. Yes, I thought, I could do this. I could apply a liberal coating to a mostly-naked Connor McVague and he's asking me to touch him. All over. Because he wants me to. Definitely a good day.)
The next attack happened when a friend of the idiot who'd raped me--who didn't know, at that point, about the rape as I hadn't told anyone--came over when I was shuddering through another episode of blood hunger. She asked me what was wrong. She was 12 and already had three dozen dead roses pinned to her wall, one for every man she'd broken up with. For some reason, I thought she could handle it, and I had to tell someone or just go barking mad. So I told her.
I fully expected her to run screaming from the house but she...she didn't. She tilted her head to one side, considering, and then nodded.
"That explains some things," she said, but never told me what things. I was mostly just relieved that someone else understood and didn't think I was a sociopath.
Then a friend of hers, and this blond fearful boy, came over, and...did I mention this girl had a terribly inventive mind? It was a long, slow process, but it started on one side with the two girls tickling Connor, and ended up an hour later with the two girls bracing Connor on the ground, halfway between the kitchen and the entryway, while I sliced narrow, easily healed stripes into his chest and sucked the blood from the wounds.
(There was a moment in the middle where I nearly ran away from the house, alive with tension and my own fear, because what she was privately suggesting to me was so completely nonconsensual, and...well. I didn't rape dear lovely Connor. But I did violate his will to say no and have it upheld. He suffered no great loss from it, but...it wasn't...right. Or what I needed to know about my capacity for acquisition.)
He said no. He said no several times. I...didn't care. That's the worst of it. The hunger hits and it gets worse every time and if there's any way I can talk my mind into it, I'll take what I want. I generally hide a lot from the world because of this. Because I can't take the possibility that I might seriously hurt someone some day.
Gods, it was good, though. His fear like electricity in the air, and his arousal that he didn't want to admit, and watching the girls lick their lips when I went down, folding like a reed, and licked blood from all that rounded pale flesh...and then the taste of his blood, copper wire and citrus, cloves and iron. Lovely.
He left with the girls. He probably slept with the girls. I never asked. It seemed a just payment, of a sort, for what I'd done.
It took a month for him to talk to me again.
from October 18th, 2002:
somebody save me
Friend of mine--let's call him [G]--wrote me a long time ago suggesting something that might help with the hunger. This is what he said:
"Chlorophyll is the main effective "ingredient" in supergreens (kale, spinach, etc.). It is truly the blood of the plant, and is used successfully by some people who would otherwise suffer from anemia, which is interesting because the main component of chlorophyll is not iron, but magnesium. Also very interesting is the [relationship] that chlorophyll shares with the sun...
"I've kept a bottle on hand for immediate consumption and absorption when necessary.
"Since iron is part of the package for most sanguines, it is best to use chlorophyll in combination with beets or beet juice. Ideally, one could juice at home so as to take more liberties in tinkering with flavors -- beet juice does not appeal to everyone. However, I did find I began to crave it specifically, which led me to understand that I was on the right track. And [Tabasco] helped.
"These websites are very small vignettes of the whole picture of these simple foods. I find that the public library is the best resource for nutrition, and I like the lack of advertising there."
The two sites he sent were sites on chlorophyll and juicing your own red beets.
To date, I haven't had the money to invest in a home juicing system, and I've been too distracted to explore this path of systemic support. I do know that I feel better when I drink algae-based drinks, like Nantucket Nectar's Green Angel and Odwalla's Superfood, or even the powdered "Ultimate Green Drink". I don't know whether, as [G] proposed, it's the level of magnesium in the mix, or if it's the level of vitamins in general. All I know is that I craved it like nothing else when I was in Kirkland, being massaged daily and moving more. And now, when my joints ache so that I move very little, and I'm not getting daily massage, I only know that the algae drinks help.
Will they stave off hunger completely? Is it just a stopgap measure? Is it all self-delusion? I don't know yet. But pranic energy, life energy, seems to be carried in algae and live bacterium, and I feel better when I drink algae drinks and consume live yogurt. And the hunger seems partially lessened.
But my cycle, or whatever it is, is speeding up. I used to have four-year breaks between six to eight month patches of extreme, blind, driving, blood need. Now, it seems like every twelve to eighteen months, I suffer a terrible attack of blood hunger for about two months. And the rest of the time, in both instances, I'm hungry, but not...homicidal.
I can tell when the hunger awakens and gets strong again. In fact, that's why I'm bringing this up now. I can feel it coming. I can feel it getting stronger, day by day. All I want is to feed until I'm no longer hungry and I know no one, no one, not even my love in life, who is willing to let me feed that long.
I think that's why the early memories are coming back--this time bids fair to be the worst in more than ten years. Gods. I don't know what I'm going to do.
Next up: the incident with the Skunk and the pain of rejection.
from October 19th, 2002:
exegesis
exegesis
\Ex`e*ge"sis\, n.; pl. Exegeses. [NL., fr.Gr., to explain, interpret; out + to guide, lead, akin, to lead. See Agent.] 1. Exposition; explanation; especially, a critical explanation of a text or portion of Scripture.
There's a lot of ground between 22 and 35. I know I've built up more in the way of personal defenses than one body should have. I know I have more scar tissue, internally, externally, and emotionally than is normally healthy. And I know a psychologist would probably schedule me for a year's worth of appointments, or more, just reading through the last few entries.
But over the past 13 years, I've learned a few things. I've made the decision that vampires are real, at least to the extent that there are individuals who, for whatever reason, do not adequately produce the life energy that drives other people, and they need to acquire it by other means. I've made the decision that I fit the general category of one of these people. I've made the decision that I can't live my life completely undercover; I have to tell some people, some things, and hope they understand.
Not everyone knows everything. As honest as I intend to be, there are things about me that will never be spoken or written aloud. I'll go to my grave holding those secrets. The heart needs some secrets; those are mine.
The rest is...something I part out in sections. Certain friends get surface, then, the longer the association lasts, the less of the surface they see. Eventually, they're on the inside, or at least, as inside as anyone who's not me can be.
(Though this is still a flawed process--something one of my friends said still rings through me on occasion. It's deeply disturbing. She said that she's just had to learn to cope with the fact that I'm not always there. Not in the sense that I'm that vacant, or that I don't see her that often, but that on occasion [and not rare occasion], all she sees is surface gloss. On those days, she told me, I'm impenetrable, and she felts helpless and alone, wondering what she can do. No amount of trying to draw me out ever works on these days, she says. She might as well be spending time with an articulate rock for all the companionship my friendship can offer at these times.)
I'm learning about the hunger, about the need, about the pain it can cause. I'm learning about the side effects. I may never understand why I feel it, what physiological or psychological component I'm missing that makes me feel it, but I don't deny anymore that I feel it. Denial leads to injuring friends and I have too few friends as it is. Also, I don't have that general, loose and friendly crowd around me anymore--my friends are generally individuals with their own unique complexes who are not, at this point, sexually attracted to me, and that's fine with me. Save that I can't just fall on the nearest body and cut a little line with my knife. It won't work.
My lady-love feeds me on occasion, not as often as I'd like. She also feels the hunger, but for the most part she's channelled it very effectively into energy draining, and mostly non-human objects. Me, I can drain energy at times--usually when I don't want to, usually unintentionally--but for the most part, I'm stuck on the blood. Stuck wanting it. Stuck needing it. Licking it off my hands if I do happen to injure myself. Licking it off my lady if she happens to get a scrape or a scratch.
And, over the past 13 years, I've watched the cycle of hungry-in-general spike to hungry-ALL-THE-TIME, and back down again, and mostly managed to discern when it was going to be bad, and stay inside for those few days when I could, potentially, be dangerous.
Yes, it bothers me. I had a fic fragment going through my head of Mercy, my vampire character, making yet another brave sacrifice for the world at large, and when she comes back from that, she's discussing it with another character.
"I have no limits," she says. "I've come to realize this. I won't stop unless I want to stop. I'll throw myself into grave danger, or kill 35 people in a night, or run a sword through the woman I love...and if I feel it's necessary, no matter how I know I'll feel afterwards...I'll do it. And I won't look back. I won't stop. There's nothing to stop me. There's no one that can."
I wrote that out and suddenly felt that ringing chime, deep inside. It's true, I've never killed anyone. I don't know how my personality would alter if I did. I have injured people, both as a defensive move and for fun. I used to give knife massages to people, and on rare occasion, carve designs into them. I used to whip people for fun. Once, one of my slaves irritated me, and I cropped her ass 200 times. She had bleeding welts the next day, and had trouble sitting down for a week.
No limits. No limits unless I impose them. No restrictions unless I put them in place.
I frequently dream about individuals dripping blood from wounds. Sometimes it's me; sometimes it's other people. There's no shying away from the pain, but there's also no shying away from my desire to see that, in real life, preferably with my hand on the knife.
How can I have these thoughts and be sane? Bram Stoker's Dracula, the film with Winona Ryder and Gary Oldman, is on my 'porn shelf'. The first ten minutes of Blade is about the single most erotic thing I've ever seen in my life, and I made the mistake of telling one of my friends that. She was horrified. It suddenly occurred to me that not everyone thinks this way.
Oh, I'm not a complete idiot--I know I'm a a minority of the minority, but--I suppose what I wanted was something more along the lines of, "Ah, that's not my thing but I might understand what you mean by it", instead of, "Oh, gross, that is sick!"
Blood. Blood hunger. Images of blood. Desire for blood.
I've learned, over the past 13 years. I've learned that I can't tell everyone everything and have them understand. I've learned that I have to be as open as I can or I stop talking to people. I've learned that it's not the death of the victim I desire, because if they die, there's no more of the lovely red to run out of them. I've learned that some of my desires don't deserve to see the light of day, and probably never will.
I've learned I am dangerous. I think that's one reason why I'm afraid to get thin, why I don't exercise, why I don't work out. I have a disease that causes muscle bulking and I could have the ability to lift a Buick again, as I did when I was 22, if I really wanted it. Even with the weak wrists, even with the joint pain--if I wanted that strength, I could have it.
I'm afraid to have it. What would I do with it?
And the other thing is, there are people out there I could cut if I wanted to. They exist--I've spoken with some of them. But their desires are as dangerous as mine, and shouldn't be exposed either. Some day, one of their patrons is going to take them too far, and they're going to end up in the hospital, or the morgue.
(But...oh...the thought of it. Gods.)
I've learned. I've learned in 13 years. I've learned to back off, I've learned to hide, I've learned to pull the hunger back, pull the desire back, pull the need back, until all I'm left with is a shell to show the world. There are days I think I'm shouting my emotions to the world, and later, my friends and family tell me they thought I was calm, collected, maybe a little amused. The maelstrom of pain and anger swirled within, unseen, unremarked, unnoticed.
I've done that. My strength of will. I might be...just might be...too strong for my own good.
Write me.
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