By Suzanne Carré
This is not to ask the question if vampires are real or not, but if they are believable. Vampires belong in our dreams. We make them real to us through our writing and films. Vampires embody our deepest and darkest fantasies and they are always so willing to supply this demand. But do we do the vampire justice when we craft them into our fantasies? Are we merely satisfying our selfish motives by making the vampire any less than a denizen of the preternatural domain?
Supernatural or Not?
The mystique of the vampire captures our imagination. The vampire’s appeal lies in their seduction for a perfect release from all the shortcoming of being mortal, if only we dare. No matter the corporeal form we imagine the vampire, their sexual potential enthralls us. The magnificent vampire fangs charge the fires of our desire, when we want to possess those vessels for drinking blood. As sexy beasts, the vampire’s perfect bodies offer us sexual pleasure beyond our physical capacities, but we want to indulge, no matter we know it will mean our demise. Oh, how delicious the thought, to take our last mortal breath in the arms of a vampire —our vampire, the one we created in our minds.
So we create the vampire, the way we want, to fulfill our erotic dreams. Our sordid fantasies require a powerful creature of the night, lurking in the shadows of our minds, to tempt us with all manner of sensual gratification. No matter how far we are willing to go with these images, the vampire never disappoints us. We envisage the vampire approach, to take from us our life’s blood, and we wait breathlessly in the night for the prince of darkness.
Material barriers cannot prevent the vampire. With their powers, vampires enter our locked bedrooms, find us curled in our sheets, and dressed for the night. With a wave of their hand, the vampire dismisses our feeble attempts at preserving modesty. They are here to thrill us, mind, body and soul, so they don’t hesitate once they prepared us for their physical pleasure. Natural forces cannot restrain the vampire, and to defy all laws, they hover over our exposed flesh. With the fluid nature of vampire sexuality, they accommodate to our gender, and satisfy any sexual appetite to realize the highest level of sensations.
The vampire has us where they want us. They have sexual access to our physical form, intimacy with our minds, and with one bite they can seize our souls. We crave their blood lust. Our desire to be one with the vampire means we play this scenario time after time. Our need of the vampire proves insatiable. Our anticipation of fulfilling the vampire’s lust for blood, drives us to the pinnacle of our sensations, so with the mere pressure of fangs on our flesh, we arch from the bed into the embrace of the vampire.
But are we happy with our nocturnal affairs? It seems not. We are unfaithful lovers, when given the opportunity we betray our vampires.
Cheating in our Vampire Relationships
When I talk of our infidelity, I do not mean we betray our vampire by embracing our lover and pining for another nocturnal beast. No, we are not so fickle. We are calculated in our mistrust of the vampire, in that we promised our heart to the vampire, and we do everything to steal it back. We contrive our literature and film to destroy the vampire once we have lured them to our necks. We want the vampire, but we want the vampire too much. It is human behavior to crush all rivals to our self-appointed supremacy, and when we evoke the vampire, we must control this supernatural entity to vindicate our existence.
In the early films, no matter the strength of the vampire, we glorified our dominance by defeating this irreligious beast with flimsy trinkets. We drive the vampire to the inner sanctum of their power, the vampire’s coffin, and yet even here we prove dominant to successfully drive a stake through the heart of our vampire. The scene almost played out with a directors cue, and on seeing the vampire hunters, our supernatural vampires suddenly lose all will to exist, and don’t resist the intentions of their human conquerors.
But we also pitted our vampires, in some compensation for their valiant self-sacrifice, by allowing our vampires to rise from the ashes of their destruction. After all we can’t completely destroy our vampires, not when we have so much emotional investment in these alluring creatures. We allow the vampires time to kill their victims, spill blood in dedication to the vampire’s fangs, and then we demand payment by vanquishing the supernatural, until the next vampire movie, of course.
Time allowed us to evolve our vampires. Our attitudes have changed towards our vampires. We still want the ability to control the vampire, but now we do it by writing less than perfect vampire traits into our fantasies. We want our vampires to be good, exemplars of all the virtue we know we lack. We want our vampires to only attack the evil of our species, after all, who will care if a vampire kills a murderer? We want our vampires to express remorse, guilt, and sorrow for the blood they take. We want our vampires to apologize for their habits. Ultimately we want our vampires to be more human.
Vampires reflect our nature, in all it’s raw and crude character. They act as measures for our very worse, while they demonstrate what is pure and good, by providing a negative scale. We owe much to the vampire, yet we can’t see it, or we refuse to accept this. It is only when we open our eyes, and admire the lover we have evoked, will we come to some understanding of the vampires of our minds.
A powerful vampire is one capable of providing all our supernatural needs. When we create our vampires, we cannot betray ourselves by denying the otherworldly realm their right to be vampires. If we continue to forget what makes the vampire true to its nature, we endanger our privilege to know what it is to be truly human.
