Eternal Life Eternal Youth Eternal You

"Eternal life," he whispers into my ear, his breath a warm and honeyed moistness against the tender skin behind it. "You will never age," he continues softly as he presses his body into my back, rubbing his head against my own. "You will never die," he finishes as his lips dip to my neck and he nips it.

Such is the vampire promise. Eternal life. Eternal youth. What could be wrong with that? Honestly, in our youth obsessed culture, it sound pretty darn good.

The advertising is great. Usually it features a hot young thing offering eternal love and mind-blowing sex, at least in the paranormal romance field. It usually features companionship and willing blood-donors who are "special" in that they are allowed to know about vampires.

The package comes with super-powers also: super strength, enhanced senses, mesmerizing skills, ability to shape-shift and to heal from most wounds. It makes you more attractive since all the best predators are beautiful.

The problems do not appear in the disclaimer: You have to reinvent yourself constantly as fashions, social mores, and technology changes around you, and you don't physically change.

And you are yourself for all eternity. Can the dead change?

Think about it for awhile, and I will return to the conversation later. Meanwhile, a cup of blood.

Telepath as Vampire

The Sweet Goth has been spending a few hours perusing the Library of Congress holdings, looking for holdings of vampire books for young children, and holdings between 1897 and 1950, and she stumbled upon The mental vampire per telepathy; sketch and revelations to science of the invisible world, by August M. Becker (published in NY, 1928). It caught my attention because while vampire (and Zombie) economic metaphors are prevalent, as are gold-digger (pimp) metaphors and employer metaphors, Sweet Goth has never really considered the idea of telepaths as being sort of mental vampires.

I had always just considered the idea of being able to look into someones mind as somewhat cool and freaky. But as a metaphor, now that I think about it, it works. A telepath looks into someones mind without their permission (except Spock) taking away someone's very private view of the world. It again plays with a trinity (vampire, victim, blood) = (telepathic human, victim, thought), and what is more personal than thought? Our thoughts are as integral to us as our blood, because without either, we cease.

Bram Stoker's seminal Dracula of course does lead this direction with Dracula's ability to read the minds of the women he has vampirized. He is able -- as are they -- to share telepathically what they are seeing as they see it. This is seen most obviously in Mina Harker -- nee Murray as the slayers, through the hypnotism of Helsing, use Mina's connection to Dracula to trace his travels from England back to Romania.

Pretty cool that someone back in 1928 was making the connections for me. I will be all vampiric and use his/her thoughts send across the invisible time/space world in the form of a book, and spend some time communing in someone's brain. Cool.