I N T E R V I E W S W I T H T H E V A M P I R E S 2

I N T E R V I E W S W I T H T H E V A M P I R E S   2

occupying the dark cultural capillaries that connect Gothic death rock, S&M
pornography and black-magic occultism, modern vampires -- they call themselv
es "self-made vampires" -- dispute the idea of a unified "vampire community.
" They do, however, have a micro-industry catering to their gory tastes. The
 Atlanta-based Gothic erotic magazine Blue Blood offers a medley of fiction,
 amateur porn photo spreads of fanged, eye-shadowed lovers, "how to" article
s about the joys of blood drinking and safe-sex guidelines for practicing va
mpires. Catalogs like Vyxyn's and Sabretooth Inc. sell vampiric paraphernali
a including leather accessories, enamel fangs and full-sized coffins. They e
ven have their own blood-drinking celebrity: vampire novelist Poppie Z. Brig
ht. As Danielle fixes tea in her kitchen, I peer hungrily at the array of ob
jects strewn across her San Francisco apartment, seeking clues to this life
that rarely meets the light of day. Video games, books, scarves, posters, ne
cklaces, talismans and mirrors adorn her floor, walls and the curling thorns
 of her wrought-iron bed. There is a picture of her dressed to the Gothic ni
nes and glaring into the camera with a cruel, preternatural beauty. When she
 comes back, she notices my roving eyes and apologizes for the mess. The dau
ghter of a university professor, Danielle grew up on Long Island, where she
often hung out in pre-revolutionary graveyards with her best friend, who wan
ted to be a werewolf. "I was terrified of the concept of dying as a child. I
 figured vampirism was a way to cheat death." Her voice has a rough, inhaled
 timbre -- as if part of her is holding her breath while the other rattles o
ff answers with a matter-of-fact efficiency. At age 10 she and her friend ma
de a pact that by 13 they would either be vampires or werewolves. But after
years of waiting in vain, Danielle decided to take matters into her own hand
s. "Finally, I realized that if I wanted to be a vampire, I was going to hav
e to do it myself. So I went to the dentist." She smiles, revealing a set of
 gleaming white fangs. "Only time will tell whether it's worked." For Valent
ine's Day four years ago she and her boyfriend, Violet Hemlock -- a phleboto
my technician -- visited the dentist to have their incisors capped. "I didn'
t get these to be trendy. I don't have any piercings or tattoos," she inform
s me, leaning forward to let me touch the sharp porcelain points. "Of course
, I don't have the jaw strength to really use them. Besides, the human mouth
 is filthy. And there's always the possibility of slipping with scalpels or
razors. Needles provide the minimum mess and the maximum out-take," Danielle
 declares with nonchalant enthusiasm. "With a butterfly needle, you can hook
 up a tube to somebody's vein and literally suck it out like a straw." While
 many vampires admit they only drink blood in small sacrilegious sips, she c
laims to drink as much as a cupful at a time. Unlike many of her kin, Daniel
le maintains that the act of drinking blood is more intimate than erotic. "S
ometimes it means friendship bonding, or romance, or drawing strength from s
omebody. I've had blood offered to me as a gesture of friendship when I was
down, and it definitely perked me up. It's saying that you trust a person en
ough to take a bodily fluid that's potentially lethal into your system." Aft
er dropping out of Barnard College, Danielle moved to the San Francisco Bay
Area, where she began a career as a stripper, dominatrix and writer of Gothi
c fiction. Her collection "Dogs in Lingerie" is a treacherous cocktail of da
rk fairy tales, sex industry reportage and drug poetry. While her writing st
ill oozes with the adolescent alienation so common to most vampire literatur
e, it also deromanticizes the old-fashioned glamour of the myth. As we share
 honeyed cinnamon tea, Danielle seems like a nice enough young woman, with h
er mix of cautious vulnerability and perfunctory good manners. But clearly t
here is more to her than meets my eye. The last page of her book features a
copy of a police report recording her arrest for biting a policeman. Her fri
ends and acquaintances refer to her heroin habit in casual passing. Sometime
s, for quick cash, she'll participate in a "blood orgy" at a local S&M club
-- the vampiric equivalent to prostitution. Evidently, blood drinking is onl
y one of many taboos Danielle toys with. Toward the end of our visit, she br
ings out a tiny, leather-bound journal, filled with delicate pen-and-ink dra
wings, painstaking script and blood drippings. "Sometimes I'll create little
 keepsakes from the blood. Or use it later in magic rituals." When I ask wha
t she means by magic, I am surprised by her definition's undertones of self-
help pragmatism and its lack of supernatural haze. "Magic is whatever form o
f theater that gets you charged up enough to enact your will on the physical
 world. When I live as a vampire, I feel more powerful. If you want to be so
mething, you have to go out and do it."