Sexy gay vampires and the crushing weight of existence
I’ve had a hard time reading fiction this past year or so. I psych myself up, convincing myself that I should be spending my free time learning new things–things rooted in reality and not allegory or metaphor. Psyching myself up around how my leisure time should be spent is one of my many, many endearing and sustaining qualities. Recently that has changed. Now all I want is escapism, fantasy, sexy gay vampires draining each other in sexy gay vampire ways.
I started reading Interview with the Vampire for the first time. I have seen the sexy gay new series, I saw the sexy gay movie at too young of an age, and now–in the heart of the empire during global collapse–I am reading the fucking vampire book.
Are there metaphors about time and longevity and human stupidity? Sure. Whatever, I am escaping. And nestled within that sexy gay escape is guilt. I have not abandoned learning new things from the non-fiction section, or listening to little philosophy podcasts–I even bought The Society of the Spectacle at the same time I picked-up the vampire book. But there is still the guilt of what I should be learning, doing, knowing in the face of the daily atrocities I see on my little screens, as an imminent, uncertainty looms in the not so distant future, making the sexy gay anxiety of people like myself even sexier and more overwhelming.
Nevertheless I persist in reading the sexy vampire book. I am reading the book and I am enjoying it. I am thinking about the performances I have on the horizon where I will troll academia and the non-profit industrial complex and vapid rich people in one fell swoop. I am wondering what drops in the bucket of “meaningful impact” I will make before everything falls apart or my back finally goes. I am numbing myself just the right amount to keep the pain at bay enough long enough to keep going. Keeping on going is the only way forward, it seems.
All of this is to say, I’m genuinely the most optimistic I’ve been in a while.
On a recent medical intake form, I had to answer the question: are you spiritual? I said no.
The form was submitted, but I am still thinking about it. Am I spiritual? What does that mean?
An older artist I get to work with through my job shared a performance he did in the 90’s asking “where have the guardian angels gone?” The spirituality so many were fed as young people went out the window once the AIDS crisis hit, especially once conservatives started to demonize people like them–something that hasn’t changed much in 30 years. Where have the angels gone? Are they with the countless people lost to government inaction? Are they with the countless more lost from our failure to learn from history, time and time again? An image of Saint Michael sits on a pendant hanging from my bedroom window, but where is he? Maybe I’m not looking in the right direction or maybe he’s mad at me?
I recently had the thought that if I were to be visited by angels, it would be funny if the first thing I said to them was: are you mad at me? I think they would get a kick out of it. Someone far more connected to the spiritual world once told me that those on the other side really like to laugh. I guess if laughter is a divine conduit, then sign me up, miss mama. Maybe Michael is sending me silly little jokes and I’m just not giving him enough credit. Maybe humor is the way forward and we should all be dumb little trolls more and laugh and laugh as it all falls down.
My chest has been hurting a lot lately. If it’s not a number of terrifying possibilities my daily Google searching has shown me, it might be grief. And I think tied to that grief is guilt. And I think this guilt is part of a larger, collective guilt–the ancestral kind that eats at you if you don’t look it in the face and decide to let it go.
Maybe sexy gay vampires are getting me closer to looking that in the face–giving me escape and catharsis and projection in the most divine way–so that I might be more useful in the long-game that is keeping on. Maybe taking screenshots of bizarre AI prayers from conservatives on social media and changing the word “god” to “cum” is just my way of connecting with the angels. And maybe those angels want for us to work less and care more about the people around us (maybe?).
Maybe we shouldn’t fall trap to despair, as impossible as it might feel, using our ability to imagine in an effort to shape a world worth living in. To imagine something better and then start to build tangible ways towards it? To not treat ourselves and each other as disposable cogs, to keep going with and for each other, imagining something new so that we can topple the old that is keeping us down. IDK. Maybe. Anyway, my back hurts and I am going to go read vampire smut. Will keep you posted on what I have coming up. Reach out and say hi sometimes–we can’t forget each other but we can hermit away sometimes. That’s totally fine!
Bye!