I have a blemish, an old-fashioned teen-type blemish on my face. It was there when I woke up this morning, having begun to display a slight rising of the skin yesterday, like an early crocus but far less welcome. My face has not played host to one of these unwanted intruders for years, and now that it’s here, I can only hope it will leave soon. I am, in a sense, the landlord of my face and the blemish is an overdue tenant the only key.
Years ago, when I was in high-school, my Biology teacher used blemishes as a lesson topic. He said they were the result of youthful hormones and that old people were excited when they got one. “Look, look, I got a blemish! I still have young hormones.” My Biology teacher was an idiot, or a man, or both. No woman will ever want anything growing on her face until diamonds sprout from our hair follicles. Actually, that would be cool. We could all look like that scrawny vampire boy from Twilight. I watched that movie and his sun-sparkled face was the only appealing part of the film.
I confess I don’t see the attraction of vampires. I’ve watched them morph from undead grave runaways, to smarmy playboys in opera attire, to sexy male models with an eating disorder. Young women, and even a few of my generation who should know better, get all shivery thinking about the latest non-living movie idol.
Does anyone remember when this vamp-chic got started? It was the Anne Rice books about the Vampire Lestat and ‘Interview with a Vampire’. I read it, like everyone else, back in the 80’s. There was a series of books that followed with this same character showing up over and over again, like a literary game of ‘Whack-a-Gopher’. Much as I like that game, and I do, when I read about a character getting killed, I want him to stay dead. It completely messes with my suspension of disbelief when a dead character shows up again. May my fellow Trekkers forgive me but I didn’t even like it when William Shatner turned up as Captain Kirk for the tenth time. I mean, I get that Lestat is a vampire, and they do return from the dead, but he was chopped into little pieces and spread all over a swamp! That should be it, the final chapter. No one comes back from a swamp.
Terry Pratchett writes about this in one of his Discworld books. In Witches Abroad, a vampire turns into a bat and tries to fly through the window of an inn, into the bedroom of the witches. Now witches have familiars and this witch’s familiar was an evil cat named Greebo. This cat would eat, rape, or fight anything that moved, so a bat was a very bad idea. To a cat, a bat is a mouse with wings on. In this story, ‘…Greebo sat and washed himself. Occasionally he burped. Vampires have risen from the dead, the grave, and the crypt, but have never managed it from the cat.’
I’ll pass on vampire stories, and when one of my favorite characters dies, I’ll let him go. Please, no convenient resurrections, no waking up in the shower to find it was all a dream. If I lose a character, I’ll mourn, I’ll reread the earlier stories and enjoy them more because I’ll know they won’t be there forever.
Vampires and blemishes, may you disappear with the morning light.
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