Bite Me!

I have something to confess. I've got a bit of a thing for vampires.

Had I admitted this a year and a half ago, however, you'd have thought I was mad (maybe you still do), but because of the - well-received, but typo-ridden- Twilight Saga, odaxelagnia is now a socially-accepted fetish. And we've even got to the stage of being able to discuss it like Marmite: you either love it or hate it. I'd say, if you love it, it's the raw and physical, shirt-ripping type of love... And then if you hate it, you just don't talk about it.

Once again, I turned to Ed Fraser for a male opinion.
"Do we fear what we do not understand?" he considered.
"Fear is kinky" I threw in for argument's sake.
He decided, following rather a lot of deliberation, that he might, were the vampirist to be at least part Scandinavian, consider involvement in such an indulgence. I wasn't satisfied.

Convinced this was a bigger fetish than I could immediately prove, I asked around, leading to conversations turning in every weird and wonderful direction possible. A vincent suggested a scenario in which both (or all) participants play vampires draped in cloaks, donning fangs and sharing blood, leading, however, to an argument over whether or not vampires have blood (very much up for debate). A james claimed "everyone likes a bit of pain". A tom didn't get it.

I spent the afternoon with my dear friend Alex last Saturday (although, as you may have noticed, my blog dates are now entirely out-of-sync, and so it is probably in fact next Saturday), when we caught one of the last matinees of Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray, which we both decided was really rather great (1). This alex once wrote a song called 'I Wanna Be A Sex Offender' (2), well received by 14-year-old Godolphin thoroughbreds in leotards, primary-school plimsols and little else but, no doubt, less by their mothers.

Alex explained that the song was in response to some silly ideas thought up by the Daily Mail regarding their ideas of sex offence, with headlines such as ‘POSTMAN POKES PACKAGE’ and ‘MILKMAN MILKS MANSLAVE’(3). Of course, my morally-Catholic mother maintains that anything sexual (4) is disgusting and a practice that not even, 'normal married couples' engage in(5). And so vampirism, as a way of life, is not something we have brought up over supper as yet, and so my sister and I remain living our half-lives cocooned between the covers of our Buffy and Angel boxsets and Twilight collector's editions.

Ok, uncatholic it may be, but if we must also insist it is also wrong, as Alex says, I too, wanna be a sex offender.

Reading Breaking Dawn - Stephenie Meyer
Listening to The Boat That Rocked Soundtrack

(1) Olivia-Anne requested some footnotes, so I thought I might add that of the shows currently a-playing in London, Dorian Gray is a great bounding skip better than Peter Pan but potentially not as a great as Waiting For Godot, even if Olivia-Anne described it as a play in which "nothing happens in the first half and then the second half is a repeat of the first".
(2) with his band The More Assured -buy their album on itunes!
(3) not really
(4) pronounced like 'capsule'.
(5) less of a joke than I would like.

Game Over

I just finished my exams but unfortunately, and as I'm sure you can imagine, finishing A Levels for the second time is somewhat of an anticlimactic. The first time, you relax thinking there is nothing more that can be done - until the second time, when continuing the pattern of failing indefinitely becomes a friendlier and friendlier option.

So although I guess I have now officially left school, I also left school last summer and two summers before that when I finished my GCSEs and every time, it has seemed more about holding hands and swaying uncontrollably to Eternal Flame than anything remotely linked to education - ironic really. This time, while everyone else was wasting away on buckets of Tequila and jumping through hoops of fire in the Far East, I finished off my Portuguese paper and signed off my coursework to the Devil, in whose utterly incapable hands my fate now lies.

I was thinking back over my academic life until arriving here in Limbo and my track record isn't a terribly inspiring one. While I may have been a scholar at two out of three schools, I've never won an award; had innumerous detentions and still got a D in my Physics GCSE, then again Annabel Banks did copy my spellings... but we won't go into that.

I applied for a job today that involved giving my Myspace URL (which I haven't looked at for quite some time). There, I found in a post, the first and only piece of A Level Latin work I ever produced before dropping the subject, and it is by no means any more or less exaggerated than an exactly literal translation of Ovid's Amores 1.5. I thought I had done quite well, I simply thought I could help Ovid out a bit:

It was past the sun's time with the gods, but not yet night. Pieces of the twilight entered our room, shredded -in a way that woodland does- by the part-open shutters. But let me tell you that between these shreds are found hidden, shy girls bidding their modesty.

And here, Corinna enters; an unbelted tunic in place of a masking veil. Hair, tumbling, surrounding an exposed fair decolletage: the look of a courtesan or queen, desired en masse.

I tore at her tunic, pulling it effortlessly from her. I would lie, were I to tell she had not struggled, but an apathetic struggle as it was, suggested it bore little intent. No, Corinna was out to be sought. Sought and conquered: to be dominated. And so, Corinna was taken not by force, but by the force of her own will.

And there she stood, before me, as though unspoiled- perfection in her natural shape. Nowhere could I find cause for any complaint- so flawless a form. Shoulders, as sweet as the arms I touched, and breasts, with caresses I may well not have done them justice. So worthy of appraisal, I could simply not admire them too greatly. This is not to say that her stomach, side or thighs were not worthy of vast awe- for they too: youthful and fair in colour. But I relate too much in detail, and in prose I am inept to describe such faultlessness.

Overcome with emotion and longing, I snatched her away from herself, embracing her body close to mine.

I narrate the rest in mind, and leave to you, my untold memoir. For lists do no credits to such actions past. Besides, that we both rested together, should illustrate alone. I make it no secret in hoping for echo.

OK, so I am evidently not to be an academic. Perhaps I should have listened to George Skerett, put my books away and invested more time in finding myself a husband. Why oh why did I never pursue Home Economics? While I may be able to elaborate heavily on the ideas of lots of really old men, I can neither cook nor sew - nor walk in a straight line at the best of times. On the other hand, there's always next year. It's not Game Over just yet.

New Game?

Press Continue

Reading O Alquimista - Paulo Coelho
Listening to The Sarah McLachlan trance remixes