Emotional Support Vampire
“Do you find there’s something magical about going to a place that someone else has visited, like if you go there, you’ll find some trace of them that they’ve left behind?”
I recently asked my friend Olive this question in an attempt to unburden as we sat in a New Cross greasy spoon.
“Yes, that’s why I write historical fiction. Is that what you meant?” she responded.
If I had told the truth, I would have said something like, “No, I just find myself going to Greenwich all the time because nearly twelve years ago, the Australian actor Sam Reid filmed some scenes there for Belle, and as things are a little crazy in my life right now, I just need to feel close to the man who plays Lestat de Lioncourt."
But what I really said was, “Yeah, sort of.”
Hello, my name is Lily, and I love vampires. My fate was sealed when I was nine years old and first saw Clare Thomas as Ingrid in Young Dracula, and my teeny brain computed that no woman in CBBC broadcasting history had slayed as hard as she did1.
Before Ingrid’s arrival, I was a sombre, serious child. Shy and awkward, I already felt out of step with the world, and seeing someone so ruthlessly uncaring when I cared so very much was revelatory to the point of being aspirational. I never felt more alive than on Fridays at 6:00 pm, watching Ingrid kick and growl her way through her eternal existence. Was it, therefore, any surprise that I found my haven in the undead?
From that moment on, all I wanted to be was a vampire, have black hair and wear Emily The Strange merch - pretty lofty aspirations when you’re a natural blonde and have parents that dress you in Petit Bateau and Jigsaw Junior.
Once, when I was eleven, some child psychologists from a local university came to give my class a questionnaire. Because this cut into my precious learning (again, I was a sombre child), the only way I could feasibly get joy out of what I considered a waste of time was to pretend I was a vampire in my answers.
Some girls have horses, others have creatures of the night, that’s just how it is, but looking back on this sixteen years later, all I can say is…thank God that questionnaire was anonymous.
At twenty-seven, I still love vampires. As a writer, I feel immensely drawn to them and their vast possibilities of adaptation. I’ve written a charming short story about a vampire working as a spy, would love to adapt Angela Carter’s The Lady of the House of Love for the screen, and have big plans for a YA novel, that is brave2 enough to ask the question, “What if there were vampires in Sir Gawain and The Green Knight?”
I pitched the last one to my agent, and she said, “Ooo!”
Ooo! From a literary professional! At long last, a competitor emerges to end the heinous reign of Rowling and Walliams with an axe in one hand and a bough of Holly in the other. I promise to rule over the world of YA literature fairly - an iron fist in a velvet glove, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear etc. etc.
On a personal level, I continue to find great comfort in vampires. It’s not that I’m an immoral person (allegedly), but when I’m tired, lost in my own worlds of writing, or a little too conscious of my humanity, there is a certain pleasure to be had in being presented with something so thoroughly and proudly other.
So when Sam Reid flounced onto my screen as Lestat de Lioncourt in AMC’s Interview With The Vampire, with an obscene waist-to-shoulder ratio and a joie de vivre that could only come from being undead, I felt a satiety I hadn't known for a long time.
A lot of contemporary vampires falls short for me. There are contextual reasons for this; within the Gothic genre, transgressions of nature or morality rarely go unpunished which means that vampires are seldom allowed to thrive, and we live in times where there is an increasing desire for media to have an overtly didactic message of evil = bad. But quite simply, vampires aren’t vampiric enough right now.
I do not have time for vampires that walk around in the day or survive on animal blood, which is why Twilight and Louis de Pointe du Lac fail to meet the mark.
I want full-out immorality; evil for evil’s sake, cunt for cunt’s sake. If you make a fan edit of a vampire and you couldn't set it to Boss Bitch by Doja Cat, the vampire is a flop.
For reference:
All this is to say, Sam Reid’s Lestat, who smokes, sucks and fucks, swears in French and tears out throats with aplomb, is single-handedly upholding the noble vampiric tradition of serving cunt. To quote Reid’s compatriot, Mr G, “Thank God you’re here. Where have you been, bitch?”
Women loving vampires is not new. When talking about playing Dracula on Broadway, Bela Lugosi said of his female audience:
They hoped that I was Dracula. They hoped that my love was the love of Dracula...It made me know that the women of America are unsatisfied, famished, craving sensation, even though it be the sensation of death draining the red blood of life.
So, what does my love of vampires really mean on a psychiatric level? Did vampires, representations of a burgeoning desire for centuries, just happen to enter my life at a pivotal moment of my development?
Yes, I watched Contrapoints’s video on Twilight, but I have also watched every episode of Frasier. Therefore, as a qualified psychiatrist, I will say that I don’t think my love of vampires has anything to do with sexual desire, but rather one to be at ease with myself and my place in the world, and the control I have over it, and my own circumstances. Though I will concede that Sam Reid is very pretty, if a little short.
Also, if I really wanted to connect with his character in Belle, I would go to Kenwood House, but I have to take two trains and a bus to get there, whereas Greenwich is fifteen minutes away and has a Gail’s, so…
For now, I roam Greenwich Park. As my coat billows behind me in a sharp wind underneath a clear blue sky, and I feel the sun upon my face, there is a pleasure to be taken in how human I feel.
But, if you can see that I’m watching a lot of vampire movies on Letterboxd, please do check in on me.
Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this and would like to support my work, please consider subscribing or sharing with a link.
If you want more vampire content, paid subscribers will get a post about the worst vampire movies I have ever seen on Wednesday.
Have a blessed Interview with the Vampire Season 2 premiere day!
See you soon,
L
For reference, the man that served the most in CBBC broadcast history is, of course, Raven, though Oucho T. Cactus comes a close second.
Read: Autistic