DRACULA

posted by Joan Ashton

Last week we went to see Dracula…live (so to speak)…on stage.  Holy Phlebotomy!  Talk about blood drive.  This guy could single-fangedly bankrupt all the blood reserves in the country.  He’s one scary dude!  Our seats are in the third row back…dead center.  I found myself wishing for triage and a spatter shield.

Really, I never understood the public’s current infatuation with vampires.  I tried valiantly and finally triumphed in reading “Twilight,” but was singularly unenamoured. There is a glaring lack of literary sense.  But somehow it has caught the imagination of hopeless romantics, so I suppose that validates the tale in spite of erudite arguments to the contrary. 

Actually, vampires are intriguing. Their history pre-dates even Bram Stoker’s iconic tale.  Folklore from the ancient world among Hebrews, Greeks, Romans and Indians, as well as Greek mythology tell of vampires who drank the blood of those foolish enough to go to sleep when the moon was full. 

I hope I’m not misunderstood.  I don’t want to appear to be racist or ghoulishly profiling “the children of the night,” or suggest that I have a cultural bias against the feeding habits of the undead who haunt graveyards in search of meals as if it were some sort of grisly Chuckarama!

But there is something slightly macabre about the suggestion that one could fall in love with a creature, suave and charming I agree, who looks at you as his next meal.  Of course, a vampire with a conscience is still a vampire, even if he really, REALLY regrets violating your jugular.

So I decided to compile my top ten reasons why I’m not in love with Dracula…we’re just friends.

10.    Dracula seems to have a certain animal magnetism for flatliner women who wander vacant-eyed around some creepy mansion in gauzy gowns and whiny voices.  A fifteen-year-old thread-bare Minnie Mouse nightshirt is singularly unqualified as a garment of seduction.

9.    I’ve never found someone whose gaunt pallor is as pasty as pizza dough a particular turn-on.  A lighter shade of pale is fine as a color on a paint chip, but not as a lover.

8.    It’s hard enough to tell a fellow his fly is open, but there is no socially acceptable way to tell him there’s a blood clot between his teeth.
 
7.  If I cut myself shaving, it would be like ringing the dinner bell.
6.  I’ve never been attracted by anyone whose fingernails resemble a full set of Ron Popeel’s paring knives.

5.  How alluring is a guy who measures his caloric intake in corpuscles?

4.  You know a man is of questionable character when his alter ego is a corpse.

3.  I was never any good at geology.  Where is Carpathia anyway?  Aren’t Carpathians mostly farmers?  Tillers of the soil?  I could never fall in love with someone whose sanctum sanctorum is a wooden box filled with native dirt…a composite of detritus and yak dung.  Ooooh, think of the dandruff!

2.   For me to be attracted to a guy, he has to have more going for him than a well-developed set of incisors.  People that flash their canines as their eyes are glazing over cannot be considered orthodox persons of interest.

1.  Dracula doesn’t romance.  He forages.

Of course, there is a certain efficiency to dining with a vampire.  No dishes.  But it does put one off one’s appetite to have a quiet dinner with someone who impales his guests after dessert.  Besides, breath that is over 400 years old gives the term, “fetid” a bad name.

Which all brings me to this one point.  Brodi has written a book in which the main character is human.  His name is Jack.  He has no interest in desiccating his fellow classmates.  He is not reduced to dust particles upon solar exposure.  He’s just had braces, so no inordinate pointed teeth protrude for puncturing, ripping and tearing apart one’s friends and acquaintances.  His menu is varied enough to allow for fruits and vegetables.  He can guzzle anything from energy drinks to soda pop without triggering the gag reflex.  He travels by car, bike or foot.  No need to metamorphose into a disgusting night creature that flies around the gargoyles of haunted mansions.  And he never arrives or exits in the midst of mist.  I guess it’s a by-product of growing up along the Wasatch Front, but I have a terrible aversion to inversions. 

Bottom line:  Drac sucks.  Jack doesn’t! 

So look out Edward, et al.  Chick Alert!  Jack will be arriving in January, 2012.  And he has charisma without halitosis.  Boo Ya!