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MANHATTAN
JULY 22, 11.30 PM

          They say to become your fears.
          I fear intimacy, love, pain, and blood.
          I became all four last night.
          Let's go back, just a little.

THE MACABRE
JULY 21, 9.30 PM

          I have a tendency to fall into things I can't get out of. That night? Not an exception.
          Let's face facts here. I was in a room full of vampires. The little punk girl in the back of the classroom taking notes went into a nightclub where most of the clientele don't need food, or water, or air. And she was wearing a dress so low-cut that she could see her own boobs defying gravity. As could the (admittedly gorgeous) boys there. And (admittedly stunning) girls; no one there was shy about who they look at. It must be a perk of being dead.
          Dead. I was in a room with dead things. And I had never felt more at home.

MANHATTAN
JULY 22, 11.30 PM

          Let's back up even further.

MANHATTAN
APRIL 15, 1987 TO JULY 21, 2004

          My life was ruled by words and phrases. One of my favorites: "Love is a dangerous angel." An author by the name of Francesca Lia Block wrote that, but 'love' should be replaced by 'lust.' Or at least that's how I died.
          Not to say I have regrets; I am what I once feared. That is more satisfying than any orgasm ever could be. But death is, after all, death, though when you draw that in a tarot deck it means rebirth, generally. I am, as Dickens wrote, "recalled to life." And death, as life, is to be taken seriously. I know that, and I practice that. I always have.
          I was cautious, smart, and a little depressed. And more than a little boring. My life? What? It consisted of writing poetry about how shitty life is, or the sinews of my latest boyfriend's arms, or how vampires meant more than Gothic novels portrayed them. It consisted of being in my room, trying to focus on the music while my love interest du jour--it could have been a girlfriend or a boyfriend, I didn't much care--awkwardly felt me up. It consisted of always feeling apathetic and pathetic, like my life held no existential meaning except to be an object that was considered pretty for her eyes and body but too strange to keep for long.
          I never held a lover for more than a month, but I always had one, which is more than I can say for most boring girls.
          I wanted there to be something more, because life couldn't be wasted. I decided that if I became outlandish I would find something to spur me on. Suicide was never a dream of mine, but I had this ennui that wouldn't go away with anything short of a complete (at least physical) overhaul.
          My parents once resisted my obsession with the underbelly of culture, but they gave up long ago. It was sometime after I dyed my hair black in eighth grade. I went in to take a shower with carrot-topped hair and came out an hour and a half later (which wasn't anything suspicious to them) with hair like soot. My mom complained, my dad rolled his eyes, and they tried one last time to buy me something pink and covered with the word 'princess' from Claire's. I took it to my friend Jonathan's house and filled his already-stained tub with black Rit dye, then submerged the blanket in that. Two days later I brought it home and I left it in the living room. My parents aren't that dense; they took the hint and ran with it.
          After that, my dad made sure to tell me when bands with names like Scissorblade Romance and Kindling played at the venue near his office. My mom never bought me anything that was tailored, floral, or pink. She wanted me to be a Goth girl for a while, but when I threw the velvet rose choker she bought me into our window flowerbox she let me buy my own 'damn clothes,' as she put it.
          My one Goth leaning was about vampires. If Jonathan, my best friend for years, ever brought a vamp movie to my house for our bi-weekly movie nights, I stared at it in awe and horror, even if the movie was campy and the fangs were obviously fake. Until the scene showed blood, I was epoxied to it, but when the red started showing I averted my eyes. It didn't make me squeamish. It awakened some primal, primitive instinct to hide in a hole. I called it fear and maybe I was right and maybe I was wrong.
          Jonathan was the one boy who never hit on me. I have big breasts and a little hip. I fill out a dress just right, and I can hide with jeans and a T-shirt. I've always had boys want me up close, and girls envy me and (a few of them at least) want me from afar. But I never had anyone I cared about more than sexually because I couldn't let myself be vulnerable. There was no way I'd let myself succumb to the turmoil Mimi, my other good friend, had nearly every day I talked to her. Her heart was cracked from the edges inwards, mostly because of a boy who dumped her in sophomore year, but there was always a string of others who shattered her.
          She wanted my coolness, my ability to screw whomever I wanted and still have zero emotional ties. Plus, I was never labeled a slut. The boys and sometimes girls realized how empty I was and didn't want anyone knowing that they'd spent time with me, even though (they admitted, when they were alone and horny) they'd enjoyed themselves more than they could say, at least in one way. The pleasures of the flesh always were essential for me. I could wrap myself around a person and feel like I was in the other hemisphere, even when my body told me otherwise, even when I was exhausted and spent and greedy for another kiss.
          It was Jonathan who told me about the Macabre. He knew all about my vampire fixation and thought it was a joke, a fluke. A place for the poor delusional souls to go. You know, the kids who wanted to fit in so badly they got fake fangs bonded onto their incisors and only came out at night (or at the very least carried an umbrella during the day). It was the tail end of a boring summer, I was lonely, without a lover for the first time in weeks, and I was exceptionally horny. Besides, what he said triggered something in me. I had to see this place.

THE MACABRE
JULY 21, 2004 9.30 PM

          I wore a red-and-black two-piece dress, with the black ripping (on purpose) to show the red underneath, and it hung from thin straps on my shoulders, cupping my breasts in a very risqué way. The bottom of the shirt and the waist of the skirt left a little of my lower back exposed, but not skankily. It was something I was saving for just the right occasion. My parents let me have no curfew for the summer, and I felt free to walk to the Meatpacking District and check this place out. At the very least I'd get a laugh, and have my curiosity put to rest. Or I'd have something to write about. I planned to be a writer, despite the fact that I never had anything of real importance to expound upon.
          I was going clubbing, but I went alone. Moira going clubbing alone? It didn't seem like me. Nothing seemed normal that night, not the absent moon or the fact that I couldn't get a Bright Eyes song out of my head. 'I want a girl who's too sad to give a fuck.' That's not me. I'm not too sad; I just don't care. Or I didn't then.
          When I was inside, I was struck with the singular sense that these were decidedly not humans. Their eyes were too bright, or too dull; their skin gave off luminescence unattainable by humans without extreme airbrushing, or it was in desperate need of lotion. I sat down at the bar at first and the bartender barely blinked before handing me a shot glass and a bottle of vodka.
          I was astonished. No ID check?
          Of course not. Some of the people--the creatures, I continually reminded myself--here were around long before the concept of an ID was around.
          There was a stage in the middle where a band was playing the music I listened to, the music I needed, but at preternatural speed. The Ramones had nothing on these guys. Creatures, my thoughts chastised me.
          I checked myself in the mirror--a strange thing, I thought, when no one here would cast a reflection. My hair matched my dress that night, in thick, messy stripes of crimson against the soot. That's when I noticed that the mirror did, in fact, reflect the people here. It was hard to make out faces, because the place was mobbed, but reflect them it did.
          The weakness I didn't realize I had behind my knees tightened again. These were no vampires. It was my imagination getting the better of me. I wanted it so badly that I made myself think the effects of makeup and, probably, various drugs were something otherworldly.
          But the stuff behind the counter was red and viscous in a good third of the bottles.
          To avoid the bartender's hairy eye I left her for a round table close to the stage. Behind me there was a wooden door the color of honey. I sat at the table with my bottle of vodka and stared at the candle in front of me. The more I drank, the more comfortable I felt. This could be an inspiration, a muse in the form of cement floors and strange people. These people had lives, at least when they stepped in here.
          Maybe I could too.
          Maybe I was just drunk.
          A boy sat at my table and I was looking at him for a good thirty seconds before I realized that he had, indeed, just sat down at my table. He was the type I really like, the artsy type with floppy hair and large eyes. These were of the clearer-than-natural kind. I assumed it was from speed. He wore a button-down black shirt and black jeans, and he looked to be my age. At that point, I already wanted to bang him.
          That was before I saw the fangs.
          They were bonded on, I rationalized. Kelly, a girl who dated me for half a month, had the same kind. I remained unfazed.
          "You haven't been here before." This wasn't a question. It was a statement, not connotated or imbued with meaning.
          "Yeah. I'm guessing you have?" He nodded. His eyes stayed fixed on mine for a second, then moved to my lips, and (inevitably, considering what I was wearing) to my chest. They flicked back to my eyes.
          "You're human." Give the boy a Kewpie doll.
          "And let me guess. You're going to say you're not." He stared coolly for a moment before laughing, shaking his shoulders silently, almost doubling over. The smile twisted his lips sardonically.
          "I'm not going to say anything about it," he said, when the apparent hilarity of my guess died down. "It's just a surprise, seeing a human here who isn't freaked out or being fed on."
          "Don't you mean a freak, not freaked out?" He laughed a little, but his eyes remained coldly locked onto me. I didn't want to pose any questions about the 'being fed on' part. If he was so far gone that he could make statements like that, I didn't want to argue. I still wanted to fuck him, though. Hey, I have no prejudice against crazy people, so long as they're hot.
          "What's your name?" I didn't really want to answer.
          "Do you know what time it is?" He shook his head. After a protracted silence I sighed, downing the last drops of vodka, to his amusement. "I'm Moira," I said, tilting my now-empty bottle in his direction.
          "Jeremy." He smiled again, and I blinked. Fangs. They were there, and they blended in much more than Kelly's ever did. They were the right color, the right size.
          He leaned over and kissed me. He asked me what I was afraid of. I tried kissing him again when he said that, because I didn't want to talk. I wanted to keep the words in me down where no one would bring them to the dimmed lights of the Macabre, a place I was already enthralled with. But he pushed me away--not without effort, he said, not without wanting more--and made me talk.
          And I told him. Somehow I told him what I hadn't told any of the boys I did or who did me. Somehow I told him I was afraid of being close, at least emotionally, afraid of being split open. I told him about my poetry, inspired by something that I wasn't quite sure of because it couldn't come from my feelings, since I had none. I told him about the vampire movies. I told him how I could never cut myself to make me feel because I didn't want pain. I told him about my conquest of half my class and some above and below me, I told him about feeling shitty and alone and wanting something gorgeous and meaningful instead of the plastic shit that predominates.
          I'm relatively sure that it was the vodka.
          He promised to make me what I feared, if I wanted. I laughed at him took his hand, leading him to the wall. I pressed against him and he pressed right back. It was enough right then, to taste something metallic in his mouth, to have the tips of those sharp sharp teeth grazing my tongue every so often, gently, gently, although there was hardly anything else gentle.
          The music changed; it was the song I'd had stuck in my head earlier. "Lover I Don't Have To Love." Bright Eyes. Jeremy's eyes, though mine were closed and I imagine his were as well, were brighter than anything human. His hands were cool on my shoulders, on the space between my skirt and my shirt.
          It was Jeremy's voice ringing in my skull, not the band's singer, that woke something in me.
          "But you write such pretty words. But life's no storybook. Love's an excuse to get hurt. 'Do you like to hurt?'" My mind-voice responded. I'm not sure whether it was me or him imitating me. But it was my voice. "'I do. I do.'" "'Then hurt me.'"
          And it hurt, just for the barest second. For the second as his teeth touched my neck. I was gone by the time they sank in, by the time I tasted his blood in my own mouth, by the time I was somehow out on the street, in my dress, on my knees in the rain, with Jeremy standing over me, his lips bruised but red, as I can imagine my own were.
          Everything was gorgeous. I'd found my meaning.