I'm A Vampire! That's Nice Dear

I'm still working my way through the four vampire books of Stephenie Meyer. Having just finished New Moon, I'm wondering if I'll make it. In this second volume, our heroine Bella continues to trip, fall and smash her way in pursuit of wild vampire love with her paramour, Edward. I wish I had kept count of the ripped flesh releasing blood lusts, concussions, and comas. And yet this clumsy high school girl from a small town in the Pacific Northwest is supposed to be an intellectual lure to the Volturi, the royalty of vampires: alive for over 3,000 years, living in the realm of the Vatican (the poor Vatican gets blamed for a lot lately.) Bella hits their radar and they think she'd be suitable to join them. And oh yes, her friend, the Indian Jacob, now running with a pack of teenage werewolves.

What we have are a group of people disaffected with their self image. Bella wants to be a vampire, the Volturi want Bella to be some kind of vampire princess, Jacob wants to be a werewolf, Bella doesn't want to get old. It's like some perversion on America's Top Model. Make me a star! Forever! Chastity Bono is in the news this week. She's undergoing sex change therapies to turn herself into a man. All news sources are calling her "him" now, and she wants to change her name to "Chaz." Somewhere in Cher's secret soul, she has to be asking herself, "Is this because I named my daughter after one of my movies?"

Then there is the return to Bella's life of Edward and how at the end of the book, Edward's little family is voting whether or not to honor Bella's wish to make her a vampire so she won't grow older than her love, and she will be bound in eternity with him and his family. I started thinking about this as I put the volume down the other morning. "Yes," Bella is in the full flush of teen love and thinks all of the passion she feels will remain forever. But I'm sure after a few hundred years, things have got to taper off a bit.

I'm not sure she's thought it out, in her posthaste to become living dead. I could just envision conversations like, "You never take me anywhere. We never go anywhere during the day," or Edward bringing home a vampire's version of fast food, some wino, and then who's turn is it to take out the leftovers to the trash. "I did it last time." Or "all you do is sleep," or having to hear his stories about how he died in the 1918 influenza epidemic at 18, for the 5,000th time. I mean "Flu schmoo. Get over it." One day, she'll be snapping out at Edward "I could have been something special....I could have been a Volturi!" Somehow, I don't think vampires escape the banality in eternity. Just remember. You once loved "My Little Pony" and lived in pink and purple. Life could be very long, Bella. Everyone wants a bite of you. Do you want to be a perpetual caregiver to bloodlusters? They'll suck the life right out of you.

I'm Just A Teenage Dirtbag Redoux

I just finished reading Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, not my usual type of read, but I like to keep an open mind. The truth is, the book was just something I pulled off the library bookshelves in desperation while I waited for my "on holds" to turn up. I was aware of all of the hoopla over these books when they came out, and nothing registered for me at the time. I had zero interest. I may have even been going through blood issues myself when the first book came out, or the movie, due to severe anemia (which has since disappeared,) but not before some nasty testing and treatment. If you want gore and pain, try a bone marrow biopsy, Stephenie.

I was surprised some Gothbag teen hadn't smeared his or her own blood over the pages of the book in some perverse allegiance. Someone did drop black ink all over the pages, so that it was like reading through brimstone.

Beelzebub Publishing -- A Bit Of Brimstone On Every Page

While reading the book, I had the unsettling feeling I was back in high school, and I'm guessing that's who's been reading these novels? But it sure wasn't my high school. My high school was rebellion and Rimbaud and Rebel Without A Cause and The Wild One and beat poets and George Groz and this one sofa at the Phillips Gallery where you could be tucked in away from the Van Gogh freaks and think about the use of orange in the Renoir "Luncheon of the Boating Party," or a midnight showing at the Biograph of Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS and having my companion squirm at the maggot scene while I inched popcorn up his arm to mimic maggots, and when would I ever escape my parents and have my own life, but it sure wasn't about being a clumsy girl who needed rescuing or the living dead--unless you counted fifth period math or my biology teacher.

Probably the only thing I could connect with was that the vampires liked fast cars. And there's another song about escape for teens, Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car." I used to see her busking in Cambridge, Massachusetts near Harvard Square. Now that I can identify with. As for escapism....on the days when they had footballs games after school, I would climb through that fifth period math class window and leave the school grounds early. A ticket to football was my ticket to freedom. I didn't need the wings of the living dead to get me out of there. I did it on my own.