Vampires!

Sure, you’ve pushed it to the furthest recess of your mind. You might be drinking just a little more than you used to in order to sleep. ‘No,’ you say ‘Today just isn’t the day for thinking about this.’ I admire your stiff upper lip and enviable posture, Olivia Optimism, but the simple fact is that, during our lifetime, someone, sometime will totally turn in to a Dracula.

Got your attention? Good, because the Mayan calendar or Nostradamus or some kind of vague yet pinpoint accurate predictiony thingy has posited that this Dracula (or perhaps even Draculae) is about to hit high school right fucking now! And yes, I will accept your roses and paypal donations due to being the first to analyze the odds of which overly stereotypical social group this threat to freedom, happiness, low oil prices, and um…internal bloodiness will germinate within. My ratings are from 1 to 10, and completely fucking scientific. Please sharpen multiple stakes during your read, as it is the least you can do.

Suspected Group: Goths.

Dress: (4) Black jeans and graphic T’s do not a Dracula make. The OG Dracula was super obsessed with looking debonair, and even if a Goth stole an actual Dracula’s outfit that fit the Goth perfectly, you’d still think something was sloppy. Color scheme isn’t enough, Goths, but you have my permission to write poetry with Chaucerian spellings about how wrong I am.

Manner: (6) Dracula was a successful socialite. Um…yeah. He would not have assumed that receiving an introduction from someone in your dorm meant that this person desperately wanted to see your Ren Faire pictures. However, the whole musing in simile thing is a pretty nice match.

Lifestyle: (5) This is a tough one. Were there an actual opportunity to drink blood, many Goths would probably go for it, but when is that going to happen when you’re a computer programmer by day and playing World of Warcraft by night? Honestly, the only reason Goths score this high is the fact that a few of them hope to quit their day job and become Dracula. For real. And then maybe battle other Draculas to become King of the Draculas. Damn, that’s going to be a good day for the winning Dracula.

Obsession with dark stuff: (10) Yes, yes. You’ve done well here, Goths. Cover yourselves in candle wax as a reward.

Obsession with virgins: (2) Unless you mean SELF-OBSESSION!!!! Ha ha. No, really, since most of the gothy people I was around in high school would obsess over pornography, and when you see gothy folk at clubs they’re usually dressed in ways that are…shall we say…not concealing, I don’t see this as a good match.

Weakness: (9) The aversion to sunlight is spot-on, and you know that any Goth worth his or her salt would desperately try to turn to dust if staked.

Total: (36) This may seem low, but Draculove is only a panel in the rich tapestry of Goth existence. If you want to know more, go start chanting in a cemetery and make some new friends!


Suspected Group: Hipsters.

Dress: (7) If you’ve ever been to a hipster party, there’s always some asshole trying to pull off the three-piece-suit-and-pocketwatch-holy-shit-have-you-seen-anything-so-dapper-yet-achingly-ironic look. Even though that schmuck is the obvious match, anyone who will go along with the trend of pastel skinny jeans could be in a cape and tux by tomorrow afternoon…and working like fucking hell to pull it off.

Manner: (3) Dracula was pretty into himself, but certainly not aloof with strangers, especially when there was delicious blood to be had. If all vampires did was schmooze with each other, their kind would never propagate.

Lifestyle: (9) Hipsters wear not having a nine-to-five like they would a bracelet made out of Lou Reed’s foreskin. Factor in the fact that many of them have trust funds, and you’ve got your ass some nocturnal mansion dwellers!

Obsession with dark stuff: (2) Pretty much every hipster has gone through a goth phase, but it’s usually been replaced by the posturing phase, and, once this nugget of pure pretense is found, even the most fickle are ready to settle down.

Obsession with virgins: (8) Disturbingly young girlfriends are pretty common among the hipster community.

Weakness: (5) I could totally see a hipster turning to dust, but that would only be if his or her vinyl collection were stolen. A stake through the heart would probably just elicit some sort of slightly arcane pop culture quip that had been planned for such a moment. (i.e. “Morrissey is so jealous…” :dies:)

Total Score: (34) While it’s not too likely that a whole slew of hipsters will Draculize, it’s more of a match than you may have thought, since all you do is think about who might become Dracula, weirdo.


Suspected Group: Jocks.

Dress: (0) This simply does not work. It doesn’t matter which jocks you consider. By the way, jocks, I went to my high school reunion and…well…I still wish I could have hung out at your end of the quad!!!

Manner: (8) Constantly looking around for someone to do something horrible to is both a jock and a Dracula trademark. The only reason this wasn’t a perfect score is that Dracula would NEVER tell a drunk girl that every interest she had was “badass” as a means to engage in the sanguinary; Dracula was above that weaksauce shit.

Lifestyle: (2) Outside of the “living to party” element, there isn’t much overlap. Dracula isn’t about to work for his dad’s construction company after a few half-assed years of community college.

Obsessions with dark stuff: (5) Higher than I expected, but I’m making this list, so that makes no sense. Anyway, mixed martial arts, NASCAR crashes, bar fights, there’s a lot of pent-up aggression here. Also, jocks listen to metal a lot of the time, so this isn’t that far off.

Obsession with virgins: (10) There is no fucking way I’m going to write on this nastiness. Instead I will compose a non-threatening 5-line play:

RABBIT: Hey, mister turtle.
TURTLE: Hey, mister rabbit. What’s the word in the forest today?
RABBIT: Um…I just meant to say ‘hey,’ I don’t really feel like going into detail, it’s not like we know the same animals.
TURTLE: Yeah…good point…sorry.
RABBIT: It’s cool.

(Scene.)

Weakness: (0) An ACL tear and a metabolism crash are pretty much the last things a Dracula worries about.

Total: (25) Too many low scores for the jocks…just like when we got our SAT results!!! Take that, jocks!!! I’ve saved all my venom for this article you’ll never read!


I know this may have been difficult to process, not due to my questionable sentence structure, but because anyone that reaches the conclusion understands the gravitas with which this was composed. I hope that opening this door was as comfortable as one could wish. Now, I believe that there’s a certain matter of arbitrarily staking people. Understand that while my contribution is limited to derisive evaluation of absurdly categorized demographics, I will be there in spirit. Godspeed!

North of Grosvenor Street

In November of 2008, the inedible happened. My 96 year old grandfather passed away in his sleep. One month later I stand in his kitchen, armed with boxes and garbage bags faced with the daunting task of emptying out his personal belongings. I have been assigned to throwing away most of the items in the 1960’s linoleum kitchen. It is a cold December day and the house has no heat. The kitchen is dark and my grandmother’s cigarettes are still in the candy dish, although she has dead for three years. I can hear my mother in the living room cursing while she frantically tosses candlesticks and broken 1980’s digital alarm clocks into boxes destined for the Salvation Army. I hear a cacophonic crash, she has obviously dropped something. I wonder if the stress of clearing out the estate has finally caused her to have a nervous breakdown. After all, she has not been right for years.
My friend Byron stands next to me, obviously not interested in helping me clear out the cabinets as much as he is excited about claiming the Bone China tea sets for himself. He is oblivious to his assigned task. Earlier, he instantaneously fell in love with the house and proclaimed that it had “good bones.” He is contemplating in his head if he can afford to buy it. I tell myself that he is here more for support anyway. So far we are the only volunteer cleaners. My father refuses to step foot into the house as well as both of my uncles. I have not heard from my cousins in over two years, although their framed childhood pictures appear all over the living room, a shrine created by my late grandmother. Unsurprisingly, no pictures of my twin sister or I can be found. This explains why my grandmother never invited us over for sleepovers. She obviously liked my cousins better. “Where are your favorites now?” I ask my dead grandmother as I quickly stake out the room. Establishing that there is no loot to claim I proceed into the next room. Recently my cousin appeared on the History Channel acting as a tour guide assigned to the task of leading the overly excited show host into the forgotten world of Los Angeles’ basement speakeasies. My TVo recorded the episode. One can imagine my surprise when my estranged cousin magically appeared on my living room flat screen the following week. I ponder if he is brave enough to lead the potential house buyers into my grandfather’s basement. There is not telling what one might find down there.
I proceed back into the dark empty kitchen. I am sad, sad at the solemn realization of death and the reality of growing old alone in a cold dark house lined with Vaseline and adult diapers. I am sad that once you are gone you are gone and your belongings, those that define you, end up tossed in Salvation Army boxes or in the trash (an eerie reminder from Jimmy Steward that you really “can’t take it with you”). As I begin wrapping my grandfather’s mismatched “made in Taiwan” tea cups in newspaper (meticulously hand selected as a present for my grandmother at St. Vincent De Paul’s goodwill) I come to the haunting realization that I may be the only remaining family member drawn to this house and to my family’s past.
I can’t help wonder how we all got here. I glance up at the dry rot walls and down at the stained carpets. I am convinced that there is more to this house than what it appears. There are stories here, life experiences concealed in time, heavily weighted down by dark tormented emotions. I sense that the past longs to beak free and be realized. I know that these stories will remain long after the house’s walls are freshly painted over and hearth once again warmed by the presence of a new family. Yet, these stories are silenced by death and the awkward stillness of a cold empty house.
The only witnesses to these memories are my father and uncles but they remain terse and astute. They want nothing, no furniture, no pictures- no memories. All they want is the check when the house sells (for way under value I might add due to the 2008 Californian real estate market crash). I smirk a little at this realization. The truth in the matter is that the all the living under this roof (good or bad) has molded who all of us are today. Haunted or not, there is not way to escape this. My Father and uncles are foolish if they think they can simply escape life by avoiding it. As if it could be that simple.