My Bloody Little Secret

Yes, the banner above says vampires, and I have given my blog the name Blood Mother, but I haven’t written about them here.

My blog is white bread. Well, more like sarcastic whole wheat with extra fiber. So, where are the vampires? Be patient, dear blog reader. Be like Dracula coming back night after night to taste the virginal Mina.

Like most vampire fans, my affection for them began with old Dracula films starring Bela Lugosi. When a child, I slept with a rosary under my pillow and a hand clapped over the side of my neck. I read the Bram Stoker novel upon which the film is based, and vampiric poetry by Poe and Byron. While my high school peers were smoking reefer and making out behind the gym, I cut school and haunted musty bookshops where I found collections of vampire literature which included works by Fanu, de Maupassant and Neruda. Read those, then made out behind the gym. Naturally, I thought about vampires while my boyfriend gave me a hickey.

In college, I was introduced to Nosferatu, a much scarier and less classy vampire than Dracula, but other than debating the relative merits of Christopher Lee over Lugosi (the latter unfairly suffered in gray tones while Lee swam in a technicolor tsunami of blood), my interest waned. Out in the working world, a close friend gave me a first edition of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire. It had been out for several years and I’d completely missed it. Not so the other two books in her vampire trilogy. I haven’t read all her vampire books, but I did go to the Second Annual Anne Rice Vampire Lestat ball in New Orleans. As far as I know, Lestat wasn’t there.

I moved onto post-modern vampire fiction, too numerous to mention here, but I never thought I’d actually hang out with a few. Vampires, that is.

My bloody little secret, you see, is

Vampire Rave

a site dedicated to "the ultimate vampire resource and directory." There is a great deal of information on VampireRave, but not all of it has to do with vampires. There are also Wiccans, Shamans , Lycans , people with broken hearts, teenagers , AARP members, and some who say they must have blud (thunder roll).

People sign on from all over the world. At its core VR is a social networking site, or as they prefer to describe it, "industrial networking." When you join, you’re instantly part of a community, and you are given the ability to express yourself and your views in ways the PTA would not countenance. It’s an opportunity to be creative, which is encouraged and commented upon. Other members rate your profile, and some of them are very hard to please. There’s a messaging system, a journaling area, and you befriend people much like on MySpace. The similarities end there. You can "bite" other members, and "stalk" them, a fundamental in-your-face connection that MySpace is sadly lacking.

People hook up over a mutual interest. For some, it’s metaphysical, for others it’s fear, pure and simple. I like people who can spell, and who say real things. Well, as real as you can get on a vampire site. In the Forum, I’ve posted the following topics: Vampires and Evil; Soul; and the ever popular, Bloodsucking, a primer. There’s something for everyone in the Forum — Vamps as Pets, The Seven Circles of Hell, The Pharoah’s Curse.

Members are ranked from Whelp at the lowest level, to Sire. I am currently an Unclean Spirit, a status for which I have long held deep yearnings. You level up based on scoring others’ profiles, reading and rating articles, and giving your opinion via the rate to the vampire database, which includes advertising for a multitude of goods and services. Becoming a Sire is cool because you get to start your own coven. There are many covens to choose from, or you can do what I did which is turn down a coven offer in order to experience induction.

As the Prince says — oh, yes, there is a Prince, the founder of VR — induction is the essence of the vampire experience. I’m all about the gist, the nub, the bloody marrow, if you will, and eagerly looked forward to induction. Appropriately, I was inducted into the rapscallion BlackKnights. According to Wikipedia, a black knight is a soldier or knight who is not bound to a specific liege. We are outlaws.

The painting above is Le Vampire by Burne-Jones