Joe Vampire (12 page)

Which was perfectly fine by me.

Then his new girlfriend Krissy walked over, towering above us all in her giant high heels. Each one looked like a shoe stacked on top of another, even taller shoe. The false height brought her giant breast implants to eye level, which I’m sure was her intention. And David’s. “Nice to meet you, Joe.”  I was just telling Davey how
crazy
it is that we’ve been dating for, like, three weeks and I haven’t even met his family until now. Isn’t that crazy?” No, it isn’t. Why would she have met us after only three weeks? Still, most of David’s relationships didn’t even make it past first orgasm afterglow, so three weeks was quite an accomplishment. But she was just the latest in a long line of tightly dressed, bumpy-haired, blow job-ready lip-injected sex fodder for my unprincipled brother.

At least she smelled better than the last one.  

Then came Amanda, my Sanity Buddy through this ridiculous emotional minefield. She saw me without pointing out my uneven coloring, hugged me without commenting on my thinness or my temperature. “You’re good?” she asked. “I’m good,” I confirmed, though after hearing my parents’ assessment she probably figured I was lying. But Amanda actually cares about how I’m
doing
, not just what I’m eating or how my Roth IRA is panning out. She cocked an eye as she looked closer, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to cover up with her if she asked. “You look… ” 

Crap. 

So she was going to call it out, too, like the others did. How did I look to her – gaunt? Pale? Like I’ve been slurping the blood out of every veal cutlet I can get my hands on? I was too nervous to peek into her head and pick up her thoughts. I would never do that to her, anyway. I respect her too much. I just sweated it out while she chose her adjective. 

“… happy, Joe. You look happy.” 

That was totally unexpected. It couldn’t have been from smiling too much, since I’ve been keeping my mouth pretty closed lately to avoid showing my fanglets.

But I was glad she’d noticed.

“I
am
happy.” And I told her – cautiously – about Chloe. And she told me to stay cautious. “You tend to take this stuff pretty heavily when things don’t work out… with the coffee table camping and all.”

“It’s all under control this time,” I told her, totally convinced that it was. And I wished her a happy birthday. Then we all headed for the dining room to chew on other uncomfortable topics of conversation along with the requisite spaghetti and meatballs, since that’s the only item on the birthday dinner menu. Ever.

And my mom questions
my
eating habits. 

And, of course, the TV was on. Because the TV is always on. It’s like a fourth child babbling for attention in the background, always more interesting than the three other children in the room. The three who happen to be real.

Even the one who happens to be currently undead. 

It all settled down into the superficial chatty brew of pop culture gossip and current events that these things are prone to turning into. Amanda caught me up on her fun times; with her PR job taking her around the world, she has the most enviable life of us all. In contrast, I’m pretty sure David’s girlfriend was giving him a hand job under the table, but he multitasked nicely by simultaneously grilling me about my stock portfolio without moaning out loud. Shithead. He knows I don’t have a portfolio, and that I’m not getting hand jobs from anyone other than myself. So our whole interaction was something of a slap in the face all the way through.  

I sound jealous. 

Maybe I am, just a little. 

Still, there he sat, getting his knob yanked while telling me his company’s stock just split and how he was worth twice as much today as yesterday. “Isn’t that
crazy?
” Krissy chimed. “It’s
crazy!
”

Seriously? 

Someone needs to start a hash tag for this woman and others like her:
#crazythingsthatarentreallycrazy
. 

“You wanna come work for me one day, Joey?” David offered. “You just say the word, and I’ll make it happen. I’ll set you up right, little bro.” It would have been nice of him if it hadn’t been a thinly disguised dig at how not adequate he thought my own job was. It was so difficult to hold back telling him about
This
, knowing I could blow away his one-upmanship with a single one-up. But I had no intention of doing that. I’ve been trying to fit all my shiny new vampirish tendencies into the context of a normal life. And this shit? It’s as far from normal as you can get.

There’s no room for vampirism in a house already full of
#crazy
. 

Though their interactions tend to be icky things to get stuck in the middle of, this time my parents actually ran a little unintentional interference with an escalating exchange about the proper way to make pasta without having it clump. “Add olive oil to the water – that’ll fix it,” said Dad. 

“What do you know about it? You can’t cook,” my mom replied.

“I’m eating your spaghetti, and I know this much: neither can you,” my dad tossed back. 

My mom clenched her fork and snorted like a Pamplona bull who’d just gotten an eyeful of red, scraping its hoofs and readying for the run. Then, in an instant, a glimmer from the Magical Fourth Child in the living room made everything all better. “Oh. My. God,” she gasped. “Is that Tom Selleck? I
love
Tom Selleck! He needs to keep the mustache, but he’s so good when he plays the mean guy on… what’s that show called?”

My dad glared. “What show? There’s five hundred channels on this damn thing.”

My mom rolled her eyes. “That one with the lady who used to be on the other show… pretty girl. Dark hair. Advertises eyeshadow sometimes.” 

My dad stuffed his mouth with a pasta clot and half a meatball. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” 

Oddly enough, I did. And I started to tell them both, drop a little IMDBidness on them to show I was still somewhat in the know about such things, but I bit my tongue before it could form the words. Not in the keeping-my-comments-to-myself sense of biting my tongue, but in the sense of truly, physically biting it – and not on one side or the other, where it would usually happen when you unwisely talk while chewing. I bit it on both sides at the same time, right about where the fanglets were hanging out. Pretty hard, too, which shouldn’t have been such a big deal… but the super-sharp double shot of pain told me something wasn’t right about this. I excused myself to the bathroom to see what damage had been done, and there they were in the medicine cabinet mirror, smiling back at me from my own undeniably vampirically-altered dental layout. 

Son of a bitch.

The fanglets have become full-on fangs, ladies and gentlemen. 

Fangs.

So much for keeping
This
on the down-low, now that it has its pointy little teeth sticking out of the way-up-high.

POST 19

Late Night Trouble in My Mouth

The rest of Amanda’s birthday dinner was noisy and troubling, as expected. To hide my new development, I just kept my mouth shut, laughing silently when something funny came up and trying not to show the undeniable proof of vampireship that had shown up unexpectedly during the party and made itself comfortable in my mouth. 

Well. That sounded more erotic than I meant it to.

Luckily, just after the cake was cut I got a text from Hube. He and Lazer were headed out to a club called Damage, the place we’re playing in a few weeks, and wanted me along to figure out the set list for our pending gig. It’s our first real show at an actual club, and I was pretty psyched to check it out. So I quietly made my goodbyes, waving everyone off as I rushed out and telling Amanda I would chat with her soon about everything. And I really meant
everything
; I didn’t want to keep secrets from her, even if this secret required more than a little suspension of her disbelief. Everyone else in the family would just have to wait until I had a slightly better handle on the situation – that, and a carefully composed explanation that wouldn’t push them further into the need for group therapy. Not that they’d ever go. They sure as hell could use it, though, even without having a newborn vampire among their ranks. And with the fangs becoming the showstoppers of my dental world, I started questioning how much of a handle I have on things anyway.

When my dad finds out what
This
did to the orthodontia he opened a home equity line of credit to pay for, he’ll have a shit fit. 

I found Hube at a table at the back of Damage, listening to an all-girl grunge cover band called Hervana and rocking out to the tuneage. Lazer was probably at least five drinks in, and it showed very plainly. He’s enough of a jerk when he’s sober; add alcohol, and there’s no telling what kind of shit might come flying out of that asshole. 

A graphic image, maybe, but entirely accurate. 

“I didn’t think you were gonna show,” he slurred. “Kind of starting to question your place in this band.” I, having had nothing to drink and not intending on ordering anything, would have been more than happy to sling shit right back. But the moment my tongue hit my new teeth, I remembered that opening my mouth to speak would involve baring my fangs in the most literal sense. So I held back… and that ass crack just kept going. “We need our leather pants, too; you should have had them back from the dry cleaners by now. Make sure you don’t forget. And the flyers need to go up… ” I let my angry eyes do the talking. With a powerful combination of brow-furrowing and white-exposing, and a little touch of a manic squint, I have no doubt they did the trick. 

Hopefully you picked up on the sarcasm there.

Eyes just can’t speak angrily enough to someone as infuriating as Lazer, even when the brows get in on the action. 

I motioned to the back of the club. “Hube – private talk,” I said, as clearly as I could without opening my mouth. He made his
wha?
face, so I raised my upper lip to half-Elvis and showed him the issue at hand… or, rather, at tooth. “Oh, shit,” he winced, finally getting it. We pushed our way to the bathroom, and I opened wide to show him all the exciting stuff I now had going on in my mouth.

Again, that doesn’t sound quite the way I meant it to. 

“Dude… those are bona fide neck biters. They look like animal teeth.” 

“Yeah, I know.” I checked them out again in the mirror, kind of wishing the disappearing reflection folklore stuff was slightly truer than it had turned out to be. “I can hide most of the weirdness of this vampire trip, but there’s no way I can hide these babies. I’d have to go without talking.” 

Hube agreed. “Like that would ever happen.” My angry eyes came back. “Sorry. My cousin just finished dental school… she’s a hygienist. I can see if she could maybe work on them for you.” 

“I don’t want to have to explain them to
my
family, let alone yours.” But he did have the right spirit. “Maybe I could just grind them down myself.” 

“That might not be a bad idea. Try working with this for now…” He pulled a pack of Extra out of his pocket. “Just chew big whenever you talk, and maybe the gum will hide the extra pointiness. Don’t bite yourself, though.” It was a decent plan, enough to get me through the night at least. So I took four of the little dudes at one time, pulled off their wrappers and just stuffed them in my mouth right there in the bathroom, sucking and chewing on them until they were all moist and mushy and my mouth was full of white. 

Wow. 

It’s just going to keep happening like that, isn’t it?

As we came back to the table, Lazer was finishing up chatting with an elderly woman who looked strangely not so out of place with her bluish hair and her far-too-many ear gauges for someone of her advanced age. As if there’s a good number for something like that. “Who’s she?” Hube asked. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Lazer answered with his expected level of consideration for others. “Let’s get to work, bitches. We’ve got a gig to plan.” Hube’s gum ploy worked perfectly. I just chomped away and threw in my two cents about the set list – all of which Lazer promptly dismissed and replaced with his own less-articulate version of exactly the same things I had said. Hube, in full-on peacekeeper mode, did his best to make things smooth and deflect all the conversation away from me so I didn’t drop my gum and show my gnarly chompers. Aside from all the times I accidentally stuck myself in my own lip it was pretty painless keeping the vampire teeth hidden from view.

Did any of that have a dirty double-meaning about oral sex?

No? 

Ha. 

I made a stop on the way home to a twenty-four hour Wally World and bought a mini-Dremel to work on the problem. I’ve never been much with tools, and I think it showed when I turned the thing on without any bits attached and tried to flatten my teeth with an empty nib. Idiot. I made test runs with all the heads until I found one shaped like a cone that let me keep the general contour of the tooth while knocking off the point. Other than grinding a little enamel off of the neighboring teeth it was a rocking success, if I do say so myself. I could run my tongue over my fangs without slicing through the skin, and they looked only slightly longer than they did when they had only been eyeteeth. Score one for the unintentional handyman. I flossed out the grit, polished them up with toothpaste and hit the sack for what little sleep I would be lucky to get, pleased to have solved at least one problem.