When I was very young, I read a horrendously abridged version of Bram Stoker's Dracula in my school library. I didn't check it out and I was very surreptitious about what I was reading. The classic tale struck my young mind as something naughty on a very pornographic level. Being both adolescent and insomniac, I began imagining what if there were vampires in my closet. The idea both frightened and excited me.

I wrote my Honors Thesis on Cross-Cultural and Historical Vampire Legends as a Paradigm for Aggressive Human Sexuality. Because the vampire anthropomorphizes the overlap in the human construct between aggression, fear and sexuality, it possesses the spellbinding power of archetype. There is the notion that one should not entirely give in to these urges. Movies like The Lost Boys intend the viewer to feel the greatest bond with the half vampire characters, those who have tasted blood, but have not yet made a kill of their own. These half vampires

reside in a liminal state where they have not yet ceased to be human nor have they really begun to be vampires. But, from ancient Babylon to modern America, the widespread existence of vampire legends demonstrates that vampire imagery, rather than giving form to deviance, speaks to people on a very important, very human, very basic level. Somewhere in our lizard brains is both the desire to be irresistible ourselves and to be possessed by someone strong, beautiful, powerful and thoroughly irresistible.

The vampire mystique has been merchandized to undeath, but there is still an underlying feel which appeals to me. Some of this bubbles over into the Gothic aesthetic. I always considered Gothic a spice, a depressed yet well-dressed sort of punk rock. I love the busty vampire babes and the angular spooky boys. And everyone looks better in black eyeliner.