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01/30/2004: "David Parker's Journal: 8"

Music: David Grisman
Mood: Hungry

I left Border’s with a David Grisman Quintet CD, buzzing with a powerful blood high.

A decade before in Chicago – a lifetime ago – I had developed an unhealthy attraction for cocaine. I supposed there are many reasons people get hooked on drugs. Deep-seated unhappiness. Overpowering guilt. Anxiety. An addictive personality. Bad luck. Bad company. Stupidity, either overall or in the way one deals with life. I don’t know which of those applied to me. Perhaps they all did, in some respect.

Cocaine has no effect on a vampire. Neither does alcohol nor any other mind-altering substance. The vampire’s system is too powerful. There is no poison the vampire’s super-efficient body cannot process as quickly as it is ingested.

Blood is a different story.

The feeling you would get from snorting enough good coke to kick-start a dead horse’s heart is nothing compared to exhilaration a vampire experiences after drinking blood. I think it must be a little like why sex feels good. God (yes, I do believe in the Creator) made sex pleasurable since, along with eating and drinking, it is essential to perpetuating life. The greater the imperative, the bigger the carrot at the end of the stick.

I do not know whether God had a hand in creating vampires. Some would say only the Devil could be responsible for designing a being comprising such a contradictory collection strengths with one overwhelming weakness. But in that respect, the vampire is just like man, from whom the vampire arises, emerging from a dark cocoon as a moth with one peculiar need.

* * *

Leaning back in the car seat, I closed my eyes and let the power roll through me. I was still at that plateau, after satisfying the Hunger, where I felt as if my body were streaking through the cosmos, flying through galaxies and nebulae at one hundred times the speed of light. It was as if, for a few brief minutes, I was able to see enough of the vast workings of the Universe to understand a small part of what it all means.

The Audi filled with light when a car pulled up behind and parked. I opened my eyes and fumbled with the CD still in my hands. Two girls walked by my door. I felt the familiar tug of desire, smelling their blood’s subtle perfume. I forced myself to resist the impulse to get out of the car and take them, there in the parking lot.

The cellophane came off the CD, but I had trouble getting the narrow strip of tape that holds the jewel case closed. Some things are as maddeningly difficult for vampires as they are for humans. If Satan had a hand in creating anything, it was the way CDs are hermetically sealed.

Once the music was pouring from the speakers, I turned the car onto the boulevard and pressed the gas pedal to the floor, enjoying the way the acceleration pressed me back against the seat. I drove aimlessly for nearly an hour, nowhere to go, nothing to do, enjoying the afterglow of the blood, the music, the drive. Tatiana, William Benton’s book, and the weird nexus between Freemason symbology and the Vampiri momentarily forgotten.

The blood high began to fade.

I suppose I knew all along in the back of my mind that I wanted more blood, although I had already taken what I needed to slake the Hunger for the next two weeks. The Illuminati take a vow to feed no more often than is absolutely necessary. Me, I have always been a sensual creature, even when I was human. While I am loathe to harm people – and how much does it hurt an attractive young woman to surrender to me enough blood to fill a wine glass or two? – I sometimes find it impossible to deny myself the elixir that gives such pleasure. My weakness had cost me my affiliation with the Illuminati, but then perhaps I was never really meant to belong to the brotherhood of vampires. Some like the crowd; I prefer more solitary pursuits. I have never been a joiner.

It was, I thought, a good night for a little night music, and for a little more blood.

I turned the Audi toward the river, the fog lamps slashing through the swirling mists as the road began to plunge down over the bluff, toward the downtown and whatever pleasures the night had yet to bring.